While I am all for children using technology, I wonder if there is a line that we’ve crossed somewhere.
I’ve had numerous conversations with people about their children using their gadgets. Toddlers and babies love the iPad. I’ve watched with my own eyes children barely older than 2-years-old happily navigating around an iPad and, by memory, locating their favourite games and applications. From Angry Birds to an episode of The Night Garden, they know how to find it. And turn the volume up.
I even had a conversation with someone whose toddler gets frustrated when they can't move things around on a flatscreen computer monitor. WHY IS IT NOT WORKING, they cry. The fact that every flat screen is not a touchscreen simply does not compute. And why would it if that’s all they’re used to!?
However, the following video making the rounds scares the technical crap out of me.
While technology is fantastic for kids from both an educational and entertainment prospective, they’re growing up in a world where the act of reading a book isn’t as straightforward at used to be. They can click the “next” button on a Kindle, they can “swipe” on an iPad, or they can turn the actual page with their fingers.
I’ve known kids who didn’t grow up with a TV in their house - only online television through their parents' laptops - and when they did encounter a TV with surround sound, it was like a whole new world to them. Where is the sound coming from?!
Am I worried by all of this just because children’s upbringing is so very different to mine? Because it’s new and odd to me that a child would expect to use their finger to swipe a page rather than physically turn it?
Or is it genuinely concerning and a perfect example of the real world and physical ways of doing things being quickly dismissed? Like it or not, the analogue world is still important. For those of us who are heavily dependent on technology and a digital identity, the minute we have a power outage or our broadband stops working - we’re all fucked.
Are we confusing kids by introducing them to the digital and shiny without giving them a proper understanding of the tangible and traditional, first? Surely it's just about balancing real books with digital ones - or is it not that simple?
Image via gretchichi's Flickr