We are right in the midst of a Digital era. It is probably safe to say every house hold has a laptop, data enabled phones, iPad’s, notebook or some form of digital toy!
This is a big change with kids. My daughter thinks board games are bored games and when I say play they think it is game online or watching TV. The word game has a changed meaning? I don’t know if this just with all the kids? I used to take my son for a little sport clinic and I used to see parents with iPad and kids’s version of iPad’s. The little siblings waiting for their brother or sister would be occupied with those digital toys.
I heard this sometime on radio during Christmas last year. They were questioned on how much is safe to spend for Christmas and I had hard digesting they all were thinking in hundreds and most of them said they buy all new digital accessories for their kids from their wish list.
For me all these is a Nice to have and not a Must have. I still struggle to push my kids to play games like we did growing up..but I do have to agree it is a challenge. They come back to me every five mins asking what next and I am bored. Kids play date is more a mom’s planning even with 10 year old kids. But in turn if you let them loose they exactly know where on web should they navigate to and not come back to you for hours.
Where are we headed? Was the digital change good or is this being overused?
I am sure we have benefits of learning and exposing them to various new languages or art form or music. Search and dictionary is easy. No more big books. I am able draft a blog on my iPhone and spell check/grammar check. Lots of nice and easy things. I am planning to consolidate the list we benefit as well. Stay tuned!!
Meanwhile share your thoughts and experiences with digital era.
a life among my words... 
Digital era has its boons and banes. When it comes to kids and youth, definitely banes are turning out to be more.
Good that you posted this. I’ll tell something I have been facing long and it irritates me like anything. Cell phones and sms, this seem to be like epidemic when it comes to India. I don’t know how it is in other countries. It really makes me go mad when during meetings or any one to one discussion, I find someone quietly replying to these messages hiding the cell below the table. Why, can’t you wait till meeting is over??? Half the time they don’t even pay attention to what is being explained as their attention is diverted. So many times I felt there should be a rule to keep the cell phone switched off during any such meeting. I remember one day I got so irritated with a girl in our office that I stopped explaining and asked her to first finish off messaging. =))
Technology has made our lives easy. But it has brought in lot of other problems. In kgp I don’t see that many kids anymore in the playground last when I was there. They are more busy with FB or Twitter. And now with easy access to these social networking sites on cell, I see students busy on these sites even during school and college hours. I doubt if any solution can be found, more because people objecting to such issues are now frowned upon.
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I totally agree. Here we do have messages but like you said it is common sense not to use the phones or texting during meetings unless it is an emergency.
I do strongly believe this will impact creativity and development in kids. You will start to see them getting into mental and depressions in early ages due to lack of physical activity.
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Technology seems to be in their blood nowadays. I keep wondering if we parents are to be blamed… Aydin has been exposed to ipad since he was a newborn, where I would show him animals, etc..and he has been using it himself since he was 9 months(I guess or was it earlier??) if I am positive I see that he has learnt soo much from the Elmos and the Barneys and a whole lot of Ed stuff online… The flip side is that now I have to hide the m/c from him just so that he explores his other toys and maybe go out to play….
All in all, as an optimistic though inexperienced mother, I would say it is possible to maintain a healthy balance between the real and the virtual world (enrol him in fun classes) and that both are important in this fast paced world….
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