The inconvenience of convenience!

I am simply asking this question is convenience really a big inconvenience?  It comes as no surprise that our culture has evolved into a over technological group of kids who barely know their own phone numbers.  If you stop a kid that you know and ask them to tell you his/her home phone number they will give you one of three responses.

1.      We don’t have a home phone, but I can give you my mom’s cell number.

2.      Wait a minute let me look in my phone.

3.      Or (and this is highly unlikely) they will tell it to you from memory.

Have we as a people started to dumb our kids down never once thinking about the effects all of these conveniences have on our children? As parents we give our kids what we think they should have and we provide for them the best way we know how.  What we don’t do is stop and think about the fact that we are tossing them into is a society of availability. We inadvertently push off the standard of always being available.  When you get a new cell phone it tells you to turn your phone off when you’re charging it, but how many people honestly do that for fear of missing out on an important call. What is so super important under general circumstances that we need our phones on late at night when we are supposed to be resting?  People seem to forget there was a time when not everyone had access to you unless they wrote and if something was important you received a call on your house phone or you were beeped. 

Fast forward to modern day and no matter the level of importance there is a way for me to access you at all times.  Do we not realize that there are a couple things at work here that we unintentionally teach?

1.      Everything needs to be immediate (fast results).

2.      We have created a group of kids that don’t need and imagination, because media has created one for them.

3.      I should always be able to get in touch with you even when your sleep.

4.      It is better to be socially connected instead of physically connected to others.

5.      Forget about memorization, writing, spelling, and reading skills.  When you have things like texting code, spell check, auto correct, and email.

Even at a young age we let technology do the raising, and at times even parenting for us. We all have been in public and seen the child with the cell phone playing games or the kid falling out and their parents instead of dealing with the behavior so that it will stop they hand them their cell phone or ipad.  Then wonder why after about 10 minutes the kid is bored again.  Never once stopping to think that when there were no cell phones children knew how to act in public a lot better.  Moms had more control over their little ones and keeping them occupied meant “when we get in this store you better not move, touch anything, say anything, or you already know what is going to happen.” Oh let’s not forget the wonderful child statement “I am bored” of course you are if you don’t have any technology. There is no reason why a 5 year old should be bored when they have so many things to get into. There is a TV show called Super Nanny and one of the first things she does when she enters a home is take away all the technology why? It is a distraction for children, and parents. Instead of surfing the web you could be playing hide and seek, tag, or reading a book to your kids. Believe it or not kids love to hear stories about things you did with them when they were little.

What happened to the notes that stated “do you like me check yes or no or maybe? They have been replaced with a text message. Or the cute letters that were wrote and handed to the guy/girl you liked. Yes we must evolve, but at what cost are we taking up that evolution. The world has become so much smaller due to being able to talk to people all over on the internet, but it has also spawned whole new waves of crime. It is easier for a person to steal your identity online then traveling to where you are to steal it. Albert Einstein was quoted as saying this about technology “I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots.” So I ask have we overlapped our humanity?

By: Monique Lloyd