Everywhere you look today, you'll see people using phones and tablets to the point where they have effectively chosen virtual over reality.
A couple of years ago, we were at dinner with friends in Whakatane when a couple sat next to us and the whole time they were there, he was on his phone. She just sat there, ate her meal and looked dejected the entire time. It was very difficult to sit there and say nothing about the utter rudeness and disrespect he was showing to his dinner partner.
As adults, we can make choices. But our children can't and Sunday on TV 1 last night, aired a piece that looked at what is happening to children who are allowed unrestricted freedom on technological devices. It is very frightening.
Psychologists are now saying that tests are showing children who use these on an unrestricted basis are developing the same brain anomalies as heroin addicts when scanned. And their reactions to having these taken away from them mimics drug withdrawal symptoms.
Furthermore, the behavioural patterns of natural physical play - and learning by doing so - are disappearing. They literally empty their minds to all other than what is directly in front of them, and this was graphically shown by an experiment the producers did on one child who didn't even notice that a man he had never seen before had walked into the lounge of the boy's house and stood there for a few seconds before leaving. The boy simply never saw him.
And if that wasn't enough, their bones and musculature are being forced into positions that are already seeing too many of them at physiotherapists. These children have no interest in going outside the house during leisure time - or doing any leisure activities that do not involve the devices they have access to. They don't want to play sports; they don't learn the self discipline that comes from that and more importantly, the way the programmes are structured, the ability to solve problems and to expand lateral thinking that helps children develop their second and third dimensional ways of thinking, are being removed.
A teacher I know who works in a school that has the "Tomorrow's Schools" theme is reassessing how he feels about it.
"In the beginning, I thought it was a brilliant idea. But now I'm seeing kids who haven't learned to interact well with others, who are socially isolated products of the digital nannies so to speak, who actually aren't learning what they need to in the way they need to that encourages exploration and ways to find solutions. And what's more, this continual accepted use of text speak means that our literacy rates are the worst they have ever been. Where do we draw the line?"
In today's busy times where all adult members of a household have to work, it has become too easy to both push the use of a tablet or phone onto a child, knowing it will keep them quiet. Or, to expose a child very early on to not being taken any notice of because the parent is in exactly the same position - a technology junkie. Infants have been killed by people who didn't want to leave their devices to attend to the child's needs. People have died through blood clots gained from 12 hour or more sessions of gaming.
The logarythmic expansion of technology and how it works for us is such that we simply haven't had the time to see where this might be going. Now we are beginning to have it emphasised that too much of what was thought to be a good thing, could well be the undoing of our civilisation. If we stifle the natural curiosity and the ability to fathom out how and why and when things work; if we continue to allow the mindlessness that such programmes encourage that in turn stunts the frontal areas of the brain in a physical manner - what makes us different, great as a species will be lost in the very short term. Psychologists are now making the call that parents have to absolutely limit their children's time on these things; one hour a day during the week and two at the weekend.
I'm starting to think that perhaps there needs to be an actual age limit on them. I look around and see family members and friends who have no idea of how unsociable they have become, both with their children and their friends because their use of their devices is such they are like an extension of their hands. And I wonder... where to from here?
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