Growing Up in the High-Tech World

Recently, I was leaving the grocery store when I passed a young girl, about six years old, animatedly talking on a cell phone. This scene greatly disturbed me. I like to imagine children skipping along the sidewalks, mesmerized by the blooming flowers, not cell phones, oblivious to the world around them. The most bothersome sight, however, was that the six-year-old was not alone. She was walking with her mother, also on a cell phone.

I am not anti-technology. Nor am I anti-video, anti-computer, or against any type of progress in general. As a high school teacher, however, I am for education—and human contact, patience, silence and solitude. Behaviors, attitudes, and what society deems acceptable have been dramatically affected by constantly changing technology and our reliance on it. For education and learning to be successful, we must acknowledge the role of technology and its impact on the lives of children and students.

While television has always been the recipient of some criticism, its present-day pervasiveness is inescapable. In many homes it has become a babysitter or background noise. However, television is not passive. A recent study by the Children’s Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati found 40 percent of two-year-olds watch at least three hours of television a day. While visiting a new mother’s house, I was on the floor, trying to play with her 14-month-old daughter. Although the baby was surrounded by toys and books, the television continuously distracted her. Try as she might, she couldn’t resist its powerful grasp. To be forced to compete for attention with a television is an impossible feat: the television will win.

Under particular circumstances, certain television programs can be something to think about, talk about, and learn from. Often, though, television is given precedence over everything else. A patient’s mother criticized an occupational thera-

Page 23

pist I know because she asked for the television to be turned off during therapy sessions. Is it any wonder that kids grow up distracted and unable to concentrate at school and at home? Attention spans drastically shrink when television and the Internet provide countless new options every second.

It is unfortunate when we willingly expose our children to innumerable hours of television, not only at home, but at school as well. Even our schools have given up the idea of quiet places. The school where I teach has a library entrance area equipped with a large screen television. The TV is always on, showing CNN Headline News or ESPN Sports Center. When did we decide that students couldn’t be satisfied sitting and reading books, newspapers, and magazines? Silence, which used to be a rule in libraries, has been replaced by 24-hour news. As if lunch in the cafeteria wasn’t rushed and chaotic enough already, my school recently added televisions—not just one, but five. The school has acutely neglected its role of fostering conversation and people skills to its students. For those students who do want to talk at lunch, they must yell over the televisions.

Silence and solitude are endangered in today’s world of instant communication. It is rare to have a house without the television on, movies playing, music blaring from speakers, telephones ringing, cell phones playing songs, fax machines chirping, and computers dinging. We can always be found, thanks to our countless cell phones, beepers, and Web cameras. It is not uncommon in high school and college classes for teachers to have to remind students to turn off cell phones.

The accessibility to technology is everywhere. Business cards are filled with multiple options for communication: work phone, home phone, cell phone, voicemail, business fax, home fax, work e-mail, and personal e-mail. Syllabi for courses are found on the Internet. Two-year-olds know how to operate VCRs. High school students check e-mail and chat online before school, during lunch, and after school.

Whether consciously or not, we are creating a world lacking in personal, face-to-face human contact. The need to actually meet with a teacher during office hours has been replaced by e-mail. Instant electronic contact, from instant messaging to faxes, is regarded as good, while actually having to be patient and wait for someone is perceived negatively. I am often teased when sending a handwritten note or letter by postal mail. “Why use snail mail?” people ask. “Just scan it on the computer.” In a world where the Federal Express motto is “Better Faster,” we are encouraged to do everything in an instant.

While the Internet is beneficial to many, it has sent schools and teachers scrambling to figure out how to incorporate it safely and successfully. If you send a class to the library to do research on an author, they will head for the computers. Never mind that the Web pages might be incorrect or grossly inadequate. Students have a tendency to accept and trust everything found. So-called “research” is being done from sites where the Webmaster could be a 10-year old boy or a pathological liar. Because anyone can have a Web page, reliable and trustworthy information is difficult to verify.

Two years ago, toward the end of the school year, I thanked a dedicated student for doing the day’s journal writing assignment. Most of her classmates were absent and many had decided they shouldn’t have to do anything. “That’s what I’m here for,” she told me with a shrug of her shoulders. This young woman was at school to learn. She implicitly understood school wasn’t a place for mindless television or unmonitored Internet. Most children and students need guidance as they find their way in the rapidly changing environment of technology. We must not be afraid to question or become aware of schools’ various uses of technology. It is worthwhile for children and students to see people using forms of “old fashioned” communication, such as newspapers, books, magazines, and hand-written letters. As generations grow up always having known computers and the Internet, it is up to us to educate them about all types of communicating with and relating to others. It is only with our help and support that technology can be used as a tool, not an irreplaceable part of life.

Page 24