Food for Thought
The Gadget Generation
If you are over the age of 20, and spend any time whatsoever with children, you've probably noticed that the current generation of kids seem remarkably tech-savvy. The degree of shock, awe and possible inadequacy you are likely to feel with regard to this, increases in direct proportion to your own age.
There are those who will argue, with some justification, that this is the result of the exposure that the modern-day child has to such technology. They grow up imbibing the use and care of mobile phones with their mother's milk, progress quickly to slightly larger devices such as BlackBerries and tablets, and in most cases, wouldn't recognise or know what to do with the traditional stationary phone with its cumbersome circular dial. Their vocabulary is peppered with tech-friendly terms, and the way that they use those terms are sometimes as surprisingly creative as they are logical.
Take my friend's little son Gawhon. When his father was trying to wake him up for school one morning, a sleepy Gawhon responded “Chotto Gawhon-ta amaar mathar bhitore sleep button press korechhe, ami uthte parchinaa” (“The tiny Gawhon inside my head has pressed the sleep button, I can't get up”)! This is clearly one child who not only likes his sleep, but knows how to handle a (digital) alarm as well.
The truth about how the children of today relate to technology seems more complicated than a simple matter of having greater familiarity with gadgets. The way that user-friendly technology is designed seems, and this is probably not an accident, to mimic the wiring of our brains and our intuitive responses. If that notion is accurate, then it goes a long way to explain how even children who are less often exposed to such devices pick up their use with relative ease, especially in comparison with adults.
One of my friends, who moved to Dhaka to study recently and lives as a lodger in a lower middle-class family, told me how the three-year-old in that family (which does not have a computer) is already yearning after consumer hardware. On a recent long-distance phone call to his uncle in the US, he urged him to send home an iPhone and a “compet”, because he urgently needed them!
I cannot claim a lack of exposure to explain away my own occasional incompetence with electronics, but will admit to having a relatively pragmatic approach to gadgets. As far as I'm concerned, they are there to perform a function (word processing, financial calculations, or even – gasp - calling someone). Hence, provided they perform that function effectively, I'm not particularly interested in the 597 other things that they can do. I don't, for example, play games. So I couldn't tell you what games might be lurking quietly on my underutilised mobile.
Recently, my friend's seven-year-old wanted to experiment with my cell-phone. As a joyless bore, I usually take the stance that my mobile is not a toy. This logic is almost never well received by children. Anyway, the conversation went something like this:
Little girl (said in a tone of approving surprise): Farah Khala, you have a Smart phone! Ma just has an old phone. Can I play a game on your phone?
Me: Sorry, I don't have any games on my phone.
Little girl: Yes, you do! Everyone does. Just give me your phone, and I will show you.
Me (changing tactic): No, I used to have games, but I've deleted them. I don't like playing games, so I don't have any games left in my phone.
(Little girl gives me a withering look of “you're such a loser”)
Now for everyone who booed and hissed at me for my lack of generosity, let me throw in a word of warning here. This is particularly directed to the many parents who quite blithely encourage - or in many cases, simply give in - to children who pester them for use of their mobile phone, time to play on the laptop et cetera. While it is undoubtedly tempting to view such technology as an improvement on the traditional idiot box, the television, it's not quite that straightforward.
TV has long played an important role in rescuing the sanity of parents who need a break from dealing with their child, and much has been said about the effects of television viewing on children's attention spans, learning capacity in the classroom, and general behaviour. It is becoming increasingly obvious that while we may wish to tell ourselves that allowing children to use such devices is a harmless way of keeping them occupied - and perhaps even beneficial by giving them some kind of “head start” in using technology (not to mention getting them off our cases when they want to play with our mobile phones) - this too has consequences.
I'm not referring to the more obvious concerns regarding safety and privacy that arise from children using the Internet or mobile phones unsupervised. Those can partly be taken care of using the key phrase “under supervision”. The issues I refer to are more nebulous, because research is only just beginning to be undertaken on how the technology of these modern devices actually affects - and indeed, in many cases, shapes - the development of immature brains.
Perhaps the most common concern voiced thus far has been related to how those who belong to a generation that is used to living in the virtual world with its easily-tailored programmes and apps will learn to properly interact with each other, and what the effects will be on the development of children's play patterns and imagination when so much is effectively handed to them on a platter.
There have also been some questions raised with regard to how an excessive preoccupation with, and access to, this technology can impact the attention span, mood shifts and behaviour of children. For example, there appears to be some evidence to indicate that the immediate gratification provided by videogame technology means that too much exposure to that kind of stimulation can make it harder for a child to maintain concentration and learn effectively in the inevitably more static classroom environment.
And last, but not least, there are definite physical side-effects to all this. There are a significant number of cases where children have developed repetitive strain injuries, particularly as a result of playing Wii or console-type games. But the most obvious concern is over the simple lack of sufficient physical activity. We all know that child who looks at you blankly when you urge them to “go outside and play” - and not just because there are so few open spaces that city children can access nowadays.
A friend of mine recently mentioned how she had wanted to take her visiting expatriate Bangladeshi friend and her two Bangladeshi-American children to Bashundhara to look at the kashphul growing there. Her own 12 year old immediately piped up - leaving her speechless - "But Ma, why should we go to Bashundhara? I can just Google kashphul for her to see them here"!
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