Think of the internet, Children!

With the speed and advancement of technology, and as a technical person, I’ve worried about what people, especially those younger than myself and my peers, learn, understand, and have experience with. It’s also something that can easily create a big debate on technology and youth. The internet has a mind-numbing amount of information that shouldn’t be restricted for anyone* and is an extremely valuable learning resource. So valuable that some have even gone so far as to say that internet is a basic human right. I don’t agree with that, but it is outside the scope of this post.

So where does my worry come from? I’ve jokingly, I think, been told my first word was “Tractor”. By age 5, I had taken apart every toy I’ve owned. Age 6 I took apart a computer, down to disassembling the HDD, CRT monitor, etc. The only computer I was allowed to use was my family’s Gateway 2000, a 2.5’ tall solid steel desktop that had a mind numbing 100MB of HDD space (it was 2 50MB HDDs) and ran Windows 3.1. I wanted to spend every minute on it, but my parents had other plans. My dad “enjoyed” doing yardwork and decided I should do yardwork whenever he did yardwork. Might I inform you, his form of yardwork started Friday at 7pm-10pm, then continued on the weekend starting at 7am and going to 10pm. I hated it with a passion and would take advantage of every moment when my mother would need to go shopping, and otherwise was away from the house. It gave me a chance to get away from yardwork but kept me away from the computer too. It was not uncommon to bug my mother to go to a toy store and convince her to buy me a toy. Most of the time, it was some K’nex or Legos that were made for someone 2-3 times my age. I made K’nex structures that were taller than the ceiling height of my house and I would have to build them in my basement, which had a higher ceiling height.

So what does this mean? While it might not have been alluded to in that previous paragraph, I still managed to get on the computer a lot. I was able to get ~50% of my “non-sleeping” time to be on the computer, and the rest was split between eating, playing with friends, yardwork, playing with Legos and K’nex, various trips and chores, reading, and drawing. In 7th grade, I got my first cell phone. A “perk” for my dad’s full time job working at Verizon. I loved it, but it wasn’t a smartphone. I would send a few txts to my parents (yes, they knew how to txt almost 9 years ago), but otherwise didn’t do too much with it. I heard about this Bluetooth thing, and that you could get these wireless headsets and talk without holding up your phone to your head. Then one day, maybe 8th or 9th grade, I saw a kid younger them myself by at least 3 or 4 years, standing in the middle of a crowd, yelling what seemed like gibberish. When approached him, he turned and I saw one, a Bluetooth headset. He was talking about a cartoon with what I assume to be a friend of his. I was horrified. I thought “Why does he need a Bluetooth headset? Couldn’t he talk about the cartoon with him in person or wait until he saw them in school?”

Today, it’s become common to see a kid, still in a stroller and highchair, playing games and watching videos on an iPad, a parent’s cellphone, etc. It’s become “the new norm”, but it also seems to show. Some of my older cousins and many people who are as little as 2 years older than me are lucky they can work a computer well**, but can do every other basic human action moderately well or better. My generation tends to be much better with computers, with moderate experience with handtools, cooking, driving, etc. But my younger cousins, their friends, and many phycology studies and news articles, can work a computer to an amazing degree (debatable what defines “better” computer skills), but are lucky to know how to use a screw driver.

So with that long winded, I propose the question: What is too young, or better, what is too much time for using a computer or electronic device? Radios may or may not have had these issues, TVs almost certainly have, but also may have been taken advantage of TV producers (mainstream kids shows tend to be early in the morning before school, or around the time school gets out, until 8-9pm when kids were often put to bed). Computers and mobile devices often have parental controls, but I’m not sure I’ve found someone who, on their own, have setup parental controls or time limits without asking someone else. Heck, most of the time they don’t even know it exists. What is the proper balance to let a child get access to the knowledge and access of the internet and electronic devices along with games and entertainment, while still getting experience to learn basic skills and having literal hands on knowledge of “stuff”?

I’d also just like to throw in that I find it idiotic that parents can get arrested for letting children play outside and think they should (be allowed to) play outside and that kids should be allowed to get dirty, as horrible as it might sound to many parents these days.

* There are arguments about youth getting access to violence, “bad” language, pornography, etc. I feel that’s up to the parents to decide as opposed to a law or public internet filtering.
** Exceptions for the original “computer generation” who were existed in various states between the 50s and 90s.