Children understand technologies and gadgets better than their parents and spend all their free time on the Web. Adults are sounding the alarm: ban, take away, return to reality! Psychologist Irina Mlodik is sure that there is no need to fight with the virtual world of children. After all, we live in their world, not they in ours.
I’m walking through the park. Morning. Spring. Greenery. Birds. A hunched grandfather sits with his back to me, muttering something. I sympathize, I think: old age, illness, loneliness, talking to himself. I come closer — it turns out that he is hunched over the tablet, and talking on Skype. Apparently with my granddaughter. Or maybe with a great-granddaughter, judging by his advanced age.
Who did you play with yesterday? With a bear?
A joyful, completely childish voice answers — the girl is three years old, no more. Grandpa is in the park, being in another city or even another country, talking to his loved ones. It was impossible to think about this at the time of not only his youth, even maturity.
And his great-granddaughter was already born in a world where almost everyone has mobile communications and the Internet. So quietly, but dramatically changed our lives and our opportunities. Many things have changed.
We live in a world where schoolchildren condescendingly tell their mothers to «log in with a different browser» without realizing that these words are like Chinese to them. Parents have difficulty mastering Yandex.Maps — their child has about fifty applications on his phone, and he actively uses all of them.
I often hear from adults: gadgets are evil, they take our children away from us. You need to control, take away, stop buying them. Let’s, they say, return hide-and-seek, bouncers or even bast shoes to children. Children need fresh air, communication and outdoor games. As a psychologist, it’s hard for me to argue with this.
A child who is buried in the phone and plays only computer games, communicates exclusively in social networks, causes natural anxiety among both relatives and specialists.
Parents used to fight against the desire of children to disappear on the street, now they are fighting for the opportunity for children to play for real
I observed many times during consultations: complaints about going into virtual reality are just a way to manifest a family or personal psychological problem. It’s easier to blame gadgets for everything than to ask the question: why does my child or husband prefer virtuality to the world around: family, school, work, friends?
Are smartphones and the Web able to «take away» our children? I don’t think. A gadget is a tool. It depends on us what it will be: a means of communication, a toy, a way to reward or punish, an escape from reality. And then: to teach children to deal not only with a computer, but also with reality — isn’t it the task of parents?
To deprive children of the opportunities that the world of computer and other modern technologies offers them is to deprive them of their confidence in the future, which actively uses virtuality and technology. And intends to continue doing so. It is much more difficult to offer them an interesting and fulfilling life in a real family and school.
We have no time, we have many adult tasks. Many do not manage to go hiking with their children, organize their live play with other children. Often we do not even know what to talk about with them. Previously, parents «fought» with the desire of children to disappear on the street, now they are fighting for the opportunity for children to play for real, and even in the fresh air.
In the virtual world, the same traps, dangers and opportunities as in the real world
If they have something to fill their lives with your help, they are unlikely to choose virtuality. For such children, the gadget will be only a means of communication, a little rest and a means of communication.
In the virtual world, the same traps, dangers and opportunities as in the real world. They can deceive, use, cheat, but they can also teach, help, make life easier, solve problems. There are general safety rules that should be taught to children in order to protect them from harmful and dangerous things — both in the real world and in the virtual one.
There have always been representatives of the older generation who reproached the young: “In our times …” Really, if we insist that everything in our past should be inherited by children, will they refuse what the present and future offers them?
Maintaining traditions is an important part of the work of any passing generation. But young people are interested in the new and progressive — sometimes actively rejecting everything old and conservative. They are quickly mastering the future, and either we will learn new things next to them and offer, rather than impose, the proven old, or the gap between generations will only increase.
In attempts to deny progress, the older generation becomes more and more dissatisfied and lonely, because progress, like the future, cannot be stopped — it can only be accepted, studied and used. As long as our children are around, they will teach.