Screens and Things, what do you do?

 So many things to cover this week!  What a topic at hand too.  Kids, screens, screen time and these childrens lives online before the child themselves have their own social media accounts?  That last one actual blew my mind a bit more than the others actually..

I’ve never really thought about that adn I suppose it’s because I never really had to.  My life was very much not online until I chose to put some of it there.  Even now, there are times I wish I didn’t have so much of it online, but at least it was my choice to put it out there.  I can’t even imagine if someone else had chosen to put things out there.

I know once I was speaking to a lady and had a bad connection.  I didn’t catch the part where she said she was from the local newspaper nad planned to quote me.  Whatever it was that I said wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t something I would have chosen to have pull up any time some one googled my name.  These are simple little things that the older generation has to worry about.  

Now, imagine for  a moment that you are just an 8 year old girl.  You’re awkward years your mother or father are documenteing online for the world to see.  Before you are even allowed to have a social media account, you have photos and embarrassing stories out there about you.  This just seems unfair.  

Let’s see, another topic we touched on this week were screen times and childrens usage of technology.

Screen time is something that has had to be monitored since the beginning of screens.  The more screens there are in a home, the more monitoring that needs to happen and the more difficult monitoring becomes, especially for working parents and parents of more than one child.  

While there are so many negative aspects associated with the ability to access so much technology at any given time, there is also so much good that can come from it.  For example, children’s math homework.  Oh my, need I say more?  When I was a child I basically stopped asking my parents for help when it came to math because my dad just didn’t get it and even though my mom did, she wasn’t able to explain it very well.  This resulted in my not ever really learning much about math.  One of the great benefits of technology and everything being online is that when my children come to me to ask me a question that I actually don’t know the answer to, I have the opportunity to teach them how to seek out answers to complex questions (yes, I believe math is complex) and I don’t have to let them know that I don’t actually know the answer in the process (also teaching them a smart communication skill).  

It is so difficult to maximize benefits and still minimize negative side effects, but I do believe that teaching the positive uses of the internet and technology are the best ways to do that.

What about our childrens imagination?  Have you thought about the loss of imagination due to the screen and access to so much information at any given time at their fingertips?  What type of changes should we be making in our homes?

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