I live in an agrarian area where potato farming is a major industry. It’s a hard life, and not one that I’d encourage my son to get into. I think he’ll be better off with a computer.
While I like the story, and I’m happy for his kids, I worry about a generation of children raised by Farmville.
Computers for the young, like sugary cereals, should be part of a greater life expeiernce that includes interacting with friends in person, reading, making music, and causing trouble.
Thanks, was just wondering. I have a 3 year old and the prospect of raising him in today's tech environment is daunting. I can't imagine I'll have to deal with him having a smartphone, etc. It's terrible.
Bingo. I'd summer at a farm where the only fun electronic item was a TRS-80. Apart from running outside or feeding the animals, that was my main entertainment. I spent hours writing adventure games for my cousins to play. Same, later on, in school, with TI calculators.
But my kids? Despite being "digital natives" don't even really know how to use computers. (Yes my failure as a parent, but also indicative of the environment.)
But I think what did it the most is that the adults in his life are all self-employed and a bit stuck on their phones/laptops/tablets. I'm thinking this may end up skipping a generation.
i made the mistake of giving my son a laptop at an early age so he could play some puzzle games while I work on my own laptop. Later on, his mother as part of pta of a private school handed out iphones as prizes to his class.
Now, we seldom have any conversations as he his immersed in his own world.
And you better watch out for that damn rock-and-roll noise too.
Seriously though, kids seem to have done pretty well against the onslaught of new ideas and concepts that have been doomed to corrupt them. I was exposed to computers almost as an infant, and it didn't stop me from getting into all kinds of trouble.
But letting Farmville raise your children is an issue for that reason alone - computers aren't parents, and neither is a television. As the author stated, actively participating with and encouraging a child's desires and inquisitive nature is what is most important.
You should be prepared for the possiblilty that your son will have no interest in Linux or figuring out how computers work. Kids are not always interested in the same things their parents are, and it can be a hard lesson to learn (ask me how I know).
Parents always worry like this. Mine used to worry I was "addicted" to programming on the home PC. I'd say, no mum. I don't go outside and frolic in the fields like a Victorian-era child because we live in the middle of a giant housing estate in the North West of England where it's always cold and pissing with rain. My friends live a car drive away and we aren't into football, which is the only thing available to do outside around here, plus I read most of the interesting books in the house already, I've grown out of cartoons, the computer is more interesting than children's TV and definitely more interesting than homework, most of which is of obviously marginal utility when I become an adult.
Or at least that's what I would have said, if I'd been articulate enough to know how.
The child in this article doesn't sound "addicted" to her phone. It sounds like the wealth of social, creative and interesting activities available through it are just far more interesting than playing dolls with her mum. Maybe it's tough for her mum to accept that her daughter is growing up, but she had to grow out of that at some point - it was inevitable that something would replace it. Would she prefer if it had been TV, like it was for prior generations?
I think his point was that this would be a very bad end result. If there are no desktops or laptops in a household it becomes very hard for a kid to be immersed in development from a young age as tablets and phones are almost exclusively meant for consumption.
Tech addiction is one of my biggest worries as a parent. I spent a huge amount of time playing Civilization, Doom, FIFA, and so on. Years later I spend a lot of time on WoW.
Nowadays games are even more addictive. You can play online. You can customize your character. And there's now 25 more years of advances in discovering what makes people hooked. I'm already seeing my kid's friends playing Fortnite all the time, and they're only 6 years old.
Plus now you need a computer to study. And the computer is now the best way to learn useful things as well. So I'm gonna end up trying to show the kid all sorts of things that I as a parent think are good for him, but the same device can be used to waste his whole life.
The thing is I've seen the computer lead people to both great things, or complete failure. Some kids get one and can code before university, they know how to find things out with it, and they can organise their lives with it. Others have literally lost their futures due to being unable to pull their eyes away from the screen.
My 16 years old will be pretty independent. He'll have a car and a motorbike. He'll be able to go out by himself, experience real people. He'll be able to work odd jobs, manage his own money, read whatever books and learn whatever things he wants.
But he won't have a smartphone or unsupervised internet access. Neither provide independence, but shackles to kilotons of the worst quality content humanity has ever created.
No, this is why it worries him: his salary depends on it.
Frankly, I have never seen a good reason why kids need to use computers or the internet aside from peer pressure, especially in elementary school. There's nothing that requires it until at least high school, at least as much as they should learn to frame a house because they might be a construction worker some day.
The existence of computers, and increasingly realistic behavior of hardware and software, does not deprive anyone of anything. Rather, raising children entirely on Surface and TV, or with no technology at all, leaves them ill-prepared for the real world.
I'm hoping to expose my children to all kinds of technology. I hope they come away from these experiences with the same sense of wonder and awe as I do. But I'm still planning on cleaning finger paint off the walls.
Problem is that plenty of those kids will wont have the opportunity to explore that interest since they wont have a computer to access. Even poor homes used to have a computer at home since it was such a useful device, but then they switched to smartphones and having a computer is becoming a class issue again.
Sorry, I'm not sure if that came off as an insult("the kid won't use that computer"), but just that the kid will probably use the computer to the extent that it is useful or interesting to her, and have an easier time putting it aside, which is different from traditional computing these days where everything is designed to suck you in regardless of what your interests are.
Because technology in itself is not good or evil. Technology is a tool to be used if you think it brings something of value to you. If you think your kid is spending too much time on the iPad or on the PS3 and that he should spend more time outside, address this point.
As another commenter pointed out [1], this is more a case of brainless dogma than anything else. The fact that the father is having a hard time finding a job because job applications have to be done online is a nice example of that.
Western culture (I can only speak for this one) too often goes to the extremes to address subtle points, and we end up with movements like "no technology in the house whatsoever" or "protein only diet". Sudden changes sound good on paper ("from now on, I'm going to work out 5 hours a day every day!"), but pervasive progress more often comes from changes in small every day actions and habits.
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