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childhoodandtech · 5 years ago

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“Kids These Days” by Kayleigh Ryan

One day when I was about nine years old, I asked my mom if we could order pizza. She said yes and instructed me to find the phone number, and I immediately googled the information on our computer. After I’d done so, I had a realization and a question.

“Mom, how did you order pizza before Google?” I asked her. She raised her eyebrows in smug disbelief.

“We used the phone book, don’t you know what those are?” she replied, her voice dripping with condescension.

I felt shame in that moment. Of course I knew what a phone book was, and I didn’t like that she was trying to make me feel stupid, even if that wasn’t her intention.

It’s been ten years since then, and though I was born in 2000, an era when home computers were already pretty commonplace, digital technology has already advanced far beyond what I ever could have imagined. I have no doubt the digital landscape will be completely different by the time I die.

With time, I’ve gained some perspective on the pizza situation with my Mom. I’ve realized that I wasn’t being stupid. I knew what phone books were – there were several in my own house. But I really only understood them in theory. My entire life, I had never once had to resort to using a phone book, and even my parents had moved on from them by the time of this conversation. Phone books had never been considered as a valid option in my mind. The difference was that my parents remembered a time when they were a common source of information. They remembered a time before the internet. I didn’t.

I find myself falling into this trap too, sometimes, in regard to the group of kids younger than me. I was born in 2000. My cousins were born in 2004, 2008, and 2011. We are all technically apart of Gen Z, but the rate at which technology accelerated between my childhood and theirs was enormous, a rate I don’t think has really been seen at other times in history. My cousins can’t remember a time before the introduction of smartphones. I can. I grew up playing games on our home computer, but my use always remained at home in my parents’ bedroom, not because my parents were necessarily trying to limit my screen time, but because that was the only option that existed. Now, kids can bring mobile screens everywhere.

Once, when I was about thirteen, my younger cousin, age five, was watching me play a game on my laptop. She came over, interested, wanting to play. The problem was, she didn’t know how to use a keyboard or mouse. She swiped her hand across my laptop screen, not understanding that it wasn’t touch sensitive. She’d grown up on an iPad. For a moment, I felt myself reacting the same way my mom did that day when I wanted to order a pizza. I felt smarter, superior. But then I realized – she has never in her life had to use a laptop or desktop computer before. That didn’t make me better. It just made our experiences different.

I’ve learned to get off my high horse. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have any worries about the younger generation’s use of technology.

One example that is drastically different from my childhood is the way kids growing up today receive their digital entertainment. I had access to computer games, TV, DVDs, and VHS tapes. Now, kids get their entertainment primarily from the internet, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that medium. Times change, and technology goes in and out of fashion. My main problem with kids getting their entertainment primarily from the internet – particularly YouTube – is that there are essentially no government regulations in place for kids’ content. Kids still watch television, of course, but television is regulated by the FCC, which sets rules in place about how many advertisements kids will see, the significance of educational content, and the appropriateness of kids’ content (“Children’s”).

There are safe ways for children to consume digital media. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, advises that parents should “co-view media with children to help them understand what they are seeing and apply it to the world around them” (“American”). I know that my parents definitely didn’t always watch TV with my brother and I, but our screen time was regulated by the FCC and confined to our house, to the living room, where my mom was never really out of earshot. Over the years, I have seen young parents distract their children with mobile screens any time that they are antsy. I understand that that’s necessary sometimes; many parents don’t always have the time to sit and fully absorb what their kids are viewing. That said, I’m not sure that the parents of today’s young children completely understand what their kids are watching, coming from a lack of knowledge about YouTube, which was never initially designed for childrens’ entertainment. Furthermore, it’s not a very productive way to deal with behavioral problems.

The convenience of distracting kids with technology during times of boredom plays into another worry of mine: the state of attention spans. I worry about this with kids because I worry about it in myself, my parents, my grandparents – all of our brains are being affected by the ease of finding means to distract ourselves at all hours of the day (and quite frankly, I tire of my younger cousins asking to play with my phone at family gatherings). We distract ourselves not just because of ease, but because of compulsion; smartphones were designed to be addictive, and they tempt us with the promise of never-ending stimuli (Ehmke). I’ve noticed a significant decrease in my own ability to stay focused, and at least in my case, it strongly correlates with when I received my first smartphone in middle school. I can’t imagine having had constant access to smartphones at a younger age than that. Boredom is so necessary – it’s where many of our ideas come from and challenges us to make our own fun. Boredom is also something I see becoming more and more scarce with the younger generation.

I think technology is so amazing. I love social media. I love YouTube. I love being able to Google every question I could ever ask and find the answer within seconds. Even with all of my worries and the things I don’t like about technology, I still would never wish to grow up in any other time than the age of the internet. I recognize the privileges and ease of being born in 2000 instead of 1970, and I’m grateful for it. At the same time, there is a trade-off for everything. I think we’re only beginning to see what the cost will be, and I think kids and young people will probably pay the most.

Still, in the future, I’ll be curious to see which devices I find myself laughing at my own kids over for not knowing how to use. I feel certain I will be just as annoying as the people in my own time who talk about “kids these days.”

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