Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Why Parents Should Worry More about Kids Being "Wired"

Few articles have angered me as much as a current feature in a nationally respected women’s magazine that pretended it was posing serious questions about the potential downsides of kids being wired to the Internet and other electronics every day. Yet their agenda—which was to show that really, there’s nothing to worry about—struck me as totally irresponsible. No matter what the question: are kids wasting too much time online? are their communication skills being damanged by the IM shorthand? Could there be social dangers from being online? Unbelievably, the answer was NO, there is nothing to worry about!

I know as a mother of four teens (13, 15, 17 and 19) and as a writer who has written on the topic of teens and the internet, how false these claims are. The writer managed to only find “experts” who supported her agenda that teens’ “e-dictions” are not only perfectly harmless, but perhaps even beneficial, despite her own admission that her daughter was flirting inappropriately on MySpace.com. Most of the experts’ advice flew in the face of common sense, including one claim that kids’ English skills are not only not being harmed, but that the kids are actually becoming “bilingual” as a result of Internet exchanges. You’d have to be blind not to see how IM shorthand is creeping into daily correspondence, even from supposed PR professionals, the youngest of whom actually are starting to sign their emails with “Hope to c/u soon!” – in a business email! This isn’t bi-lingual; it’s sloppy, a continued dumbing down of our language, courtesy of the IM culture.

The inane advice continued, including the idea that IMing or listening to music via iPod while doing homework is just another way of multitasking. Of course our kids need to be “net” savvy, but despite modern technology, sustained focus is still required to absorb information. Some people may be able to study and listen to music at the same time, but most kids cannot learn effectively this way, let alone try to study while updating their fantasy baseball team online.

I was most disgusted by the article’s take on the cyber social scene. Here again, the author quoted only people who can’t find any downsides to the Internet world. Had the writer and the magazine editors never heard of internet addictions? Addictions to gambling, shopping, and even porn sites? Addiction to going online simply as a way to avoid dealing with family and stress? Psychologists, marriage counselors, and members of the clergy are all seeing alarming rising rates of family and marriage dysfunction, much of which is clearly a result of these addictions. It is no exaggeration to say that many lives have already been ruined by these addictions, and the relative isolation of communing with a computer is also spiking rates of depression among teens and young adults, which is already a well documented problem. 

Agenda journalism is nothing new, but articles like this that give false comfort to many parents is beyond irresponsible. There are parents whose children are suffering silently from depression based on an internet addiction. And let’s be honest: most of us (I include myself in this) are in at least some small measure addicted to checking email and to the Internet. Why not recommend setting reasonable limits on how much time kids should spend online each day? Parenting isn’t about finding the path of least resistance; it’s about doing the right thing, which takes backbone and the ability to withstand having your kids hate you for a few hours or even a day or two. This is the price we have to pay to raise independent, mature kids who understand that limits actually set you free.

Posted by judy @ 12:40 PM • (2) Comments  

Comments


They are pushing to many laws to reform the internet to be child friendly, which is never going to work. Just like everything else with parenting, parents need to be active with what their child is doing and control issues like this before they get out of hand.

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