EE ARTICLES: The Role of Technology in Your Child's Development

Our last blog post and first offering for the EE Article Series explored what many believe is an impending consciousness revolution and I believe that it will actually be activated or driven by technology. The responses to "Conscious Revolution - The Youth Response to Technology" were enormous and sparked many discussions. One off-spin discussion is 'What role (if any) should technology play in our children's lives?' 

To venture to speak of the merits of technology is to allow oneself to sit on a pendulum that can swing between two very extreme trends of thought. And these thoughts are all so much more passionately expressed and felt when one thinks of what is best for one's child.

Parents Who Hate Technology

On one extreme end of the spectrum, are those for whom technology is the tool of the devil or the Illuminati. The thought of introducing technology to their precious child is beyond unthinkable. For these souls, the ideal spiritual approach to life is one where we abandon our concrete jungles and live in the real jungle. Swimming with the dolphins, eating wild berries and sleeping under the stars are for them the hallmarks of true spiritual living. 

These are the ones who who, quite notably, call for us to unplug from the matrix and get out into nature.

To the extremists - electronics and media houses are the tools of the alien reptilian race, which are used to program and monitor us. These folks won’t even own a tablet, far less introduce them to the pure, innocent minds of their star-seed children. 

(For what it is worth, there is something in the very core of my being which finds this lifestyle appealing although quite honestly, I have never truly experienced living in the wild).

Questions for this Parent: This parent needs to consider the following questions - Am I inadvertently teaching my children to be fearful of the unknown? Am I sufficiently open minded and balanced in my thinking? Can I acknowledge that even science can be spiritual? Am I ensuring that my child is well equipped for living in this technological era?

Image courtesy: http://estruda.deviantart.com/art/Living-with-nature-193978709

Image Courtesy Amazon.com - The Watch Over Me Dream Station

Parents Who Love Technology 

On the other extreme end are those who view technology as the pinnacle and ultimate achievement of mankind. Research and studies that electronics invariably emit frequencies which may be harmful and serve in some way to affect the natural frequencies of the brain, mean nothing to them. 

How could it? They live in a fully automated smart house, sleep with their phones and tablets charging within easy reach from their pillows (not a good idea), and cannot imagine making it through the day without checking in to their Outlook calendar, Facebook news feed, Google circles. Twitter updates and other daily notifications. 

Will they introduce technology to their child? Why the baby room is already outfitted with the latest smart gadgets! Who needs mobiles, which are so last decade by the way, when there are sophisticated smart-sensor technology baby monitors? With built in sensors to detect baby’s movements and sleep patterns, one monitor on the market can adjust its display of lights and sounds to create different moods and environment to either soothe baby to sleep or greet them on waking in the morning. 

  

These parents will, quite naturally, gift their one year old baby with a tablet loaded with age appropriate apps and content and they will tell you that it’s to ‘help stimulate baby’s brain’’.

Questions for this Parent:

Am I using technology as a pacifier to avoid the act of parenting my child? Does my child sense that I genuinely want and enjoy spending time with them? Do I responsibly monitor my child's usage of technological devices? Am I sufficiently aware of the real dangers that exist not only with the internet but with the use of electronic devices?

Where should we stand?

Well let's eliminate the passions and just try to objectively consider the well researched and documented pros and cons:

The Pros:

Despite all the naysayers, there is growing support for the actual benefits of technology in childhood development.

●      Increased visual-spatial ability - A person’s visual-spatial ability which speaks to their capacity to understand and remember the spatial relations among objects is said to be quite indicative of a person’s adeptness to success in mathematics and science. Several notable bodies including the John Hopkins University recognise this and even recommends the playing of video and computer games to improve this skill within oneself.

●      Better Hand-Eye Coordination - The University of Toronto has researched increased sensorimotor skills among video gamers. Sensorimotor control speaks to coordinated vision and hand movement.

●      Improved Cognitive Development - There are certain regions of the brain that are engaged in the use of computerized devices which can be said to lead to improved cognitive development.

●      Improved Verbal Skills - It is not uncommon for children using these devices to quickly learn the nursery rhymes which can played on repeat to enhance rapid learning. As new words are learnt in the nursery rhymes, they can then start linking these words together in daily conversation.

The Cons:

To develop a more balanced perspective let us consider the research done in this authoritative report from Public Health England which highlights the major detriments to extensive ‘screen time’, a term which encapsulates television viewing time, time spent surfing the internet or playing video games etc.

The main cons are:

●      attention deficit problems - switching from the fast stimulation of technology to the slower pace of natural life means that children get bored more easily with the regular pace of life

●      Hyperactivity - strongly linked with the problem of attention deficiency. If the child’s natural environment is too slow and boring, children may become hyperactive to assist with giving themselves the heightened stimulation they have come to accept as normal from their computerized environments.

●      Socialization problems - most of the technology gadgets and activities can be engaged alone which means that children who spend excessive time playing alone on these gadgets won’t be able to develop crucial social skills which comes from interactions with other people and children

●      Lower levels of wellbeing - emotional distress, anxiety and depression are never too far off for kids who possess poor social skills from spending too much time alone.

●      Several physical health problems - such as eye strain and underdeveloped muscles from long periods of inactivity.

(NOTE: This article does not quite scratch the surface of other ills such as online predators, hackers who hack into your home camera system etc. but suffice it to be said that there are real dangers inherent with technology use which one must become aware of. This article is simply focused on how technology may affect your child's development.)

Conclusion ~ Technology and Your Child: To Be or Not to Be?

In the same way the pendulum eventually comes to rest in a neutral position after a period of time, so too our passionate thoughts and beliefs eventually find a more neutral and balanced view. And so my position is:

“I’m not afraid to expose my child to technology. Technology is a tool which I will manage the usage of, for both myself and my child”.

After starting with a complex mathematical function for our pendulum swing, we end up with a very simple equation:

Love = Time

The most crucial thing you can do to aid your child's development is spend time with them. This is how children interpret love.

So gadget loving mommy or tree hugging daddy (and yes I purposefully switched these from the expected stereotypes) - whatever you do, make sure to spend adequate time with your child. Your love, which comes across in the time you dedicate to them, is the best development tool ever.

Love, Light and Blessings

Elizabeth Energy

EE Articles: Consciousness Revolution - The Youth Response to Technology

Meme Courtesy the Internet

 In reviewing the definite impact technology is having on our youth, our minds can easily become fixated on the negatives because of how prevalent they are. Sexting, virtual sex, streaming pornography and the easy ability to meet strangers online are all new realities made possible by the technology era.

Yet technology brings positives as well. Remote and online education programs are typically more flexible and more feasible. The large availability of data from various resources leads to more comprehensive research and more conclusive findings.

The exposure to different cultures and ways of thinking leads to greater tolerance and there are countless income generating opportunities for young writers, programmers and online entrepreneurs.

Let us look at the different facets of a teenager’s life and consider technology’s influence and try to identify the picture that is developing.

Home & Family

Children are now requesting laptops, tablets, cell phones and video games at younger ages and the increasing sales of these devices every Christmas shows that their parents are listening.

However children are not the only ones affected. Technology has changed the way of living and working for parents. Thanks to the internet and the many mobile platforms, parents can easily work from home. While this is still highly romanticized and touted as giving parents ‘more time at home with the kids’, what it really translates into is parents who are always working at home.

Even when not working, parents may tend to recreate online, visiting social media sites or playing online games.

What this means is that many people who share a home, very rarely share quality time together. Each person is plugged into their own device.

“Alone Together” is a phenomenon that psychoanalyst Sherry Turkle explores in her book of the same name and she discusses among several things, the sense of community and connection people now derive and expect from technology while expecting less from each other in person.

School & Education

For a long time the book was synonymous with education. That is no longer so. The nails on the coffin for books were firmly secured the minute the advanced search engine was created. Spending hours poring through the pages of various texts is simply archaic and a waste of time.

To make matters worse for the book lovers, the search engine’s results are also not only limited to text. Videos provide visual instruction and present opportunities to easily learn new skills without attending a course or institution of learning.

Education providers therefore are forced to change with the times and provide more visually stimulating computerized environments to engage young minds.

What this means or rather strongly suggests is that the brains of the young have been rewired somewhat. The old linear, sequential manner of processing information as is encouraged by book reading has been retired. Emphasis is now placed on information gathering skills which focus on how to skim large quantities of data from multiple sources and retrieve what is pertinent. Memory retention is also not as important as critical analysis.

Technology writer, Nicholas Carr has greatly supported this notion in his book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”. He states:

“...the argument is that online activities—surfing, searching, jumping from e-mail to text—actually change the nature of the brain. The more time we spend online, the more we are incapable of quiet reverie, not because of habits of mind but because of a rewiring of our circuitry.”

Pop Culture and Celebrity Stardom

The effects on this may still be downplayed by a media that does not yet wish to lose their venerated cash cows in Hollywood. However it stands to reason that the ability for anyone to become a star by posting a YouTube video displaying their talent will affect the perception of stardom.

Fullscreen, Inc. is a company which helps to finance videos for young creators, from any part of the world. According to their CEO, George Strompolos, any teenager with a web camera who can connect with an audience can become a millionaire and they have helped to create several. These internet stars, which are generally unknown to those over the age of 30, have their own substantial fan base and following and they can come from any part of the world.

What this means is that firmly rooted into the psyche of the new emerging youth culture is that you don’t need to go to New York or Hollywood to become famous. Literally anyone from anywhere can be a star.

Money and Careers

Online entrepreneurship is booming and even among the young. Almost anyone who has access to a computer can create a blog and again once the content is engaging, once a niche market can be found, money can be made. There’s also money in selling photography, web programming, affiliate marketing, virtual outsourcing to brick and mortar companies and of course these skills can be acquired – online!

What this means is the traditional way of making money, following the path of school, college and ‘5 day a week’ job is being booted out along with books. Anyone can make a lot of money at any age and from anywhere.

Views on Politics

For many people, religion and politics are hallmarks of what define you as an individual and are what gives you a sense of stability and belonging within a community. However a young person’s community is no longer just the people he physically meets in his neighbourhood at church, temple or mosque but rather anyone in cyberspace who share his interests.

In times past, governments attempted to control people’s thinking by controlling the media. Technology has severely compromised this control because for example, it is hard to gobble up the sensational media coverage of terrorism when video footage of serene images pop up for a region reportedly under bomb and gun fire.

2011 is recorded in history as the year of major social media organized uprisings. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all played roles in the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Bahrain as well as the Occupy Movements in the United States. Quite worthy of mention is the sharing of lessons learnt between the different activist groups such as when Tunisian Facebook users advised their Egyptian peers to ‘Put vinegar or onion under your scarf for tear gas’.

Image courtesy: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Essam_Sharaf

The London rioters used another telecommunications channel - the Blackberry Messenger service.

What this means is that young people are aware of the potential that technology offers and have been exposed to the power it can wield to influence political events. Various governments have responded by limiting and controlling internet usage and have even at times blocked cell phone connectivity. This response however has only pushed the younger innovative minds to go underground as there are talks of a new ‘off-the-grid’ network.

Views on Religion and God

I am from the Caribbean and most everyone I know attends church, mosque or temple and practice some fundamental religion but yet here I am belonging to the Light Body Travelers community, exploring energy work and practising meditation. I may not belong to the age bracket defined by William May when he introduced our focus on Youth Culture but I can see how the expansion of my views was partially affected by technology.

It is relatively hard to simply accept that those who don’t believe in God the way you do are doomed to hell’s fire when you have the opportunity to meet and interact with so many different people across various cultures.

The internet also provides easy accessibility to many holy books and teachings online, and discussion forums where one can be exposed to different dissecting views.

What this means is that young people have a unique opportunity to develop more comprehensive world views and are abandoning old dogmas and prejudices. Consider Will Smith’s children who are reading quantum physics and books such as “The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life”.

In fact I believe that religion is slowly but surely being replaced by a more all-inclusive, earth conscious spirituality.

                     

Views on Love

The children growing up in smart homes and heavily computerized environments are also the children of an alarmingly growing percentage of divorced parents. For many of those whose parents are still together, they watch them argue and fight and spend little to no time having meaningful interactions. And these are people who fell in love after growing up in the same neighbourhood or attending the same college.

On the other hand, these young people go online and can find someone they can connect with. This person shares similar world views and likes the same things they do. Thanks to video calling capabilities, they can see each other and fall in love from half way across the world.

For many, the hours spent texting and chatting long distance strengthens their sense of a soul connection and their belief in a ‘one true soul-mate’ or twin flame. The reality however is sometimes painfully disastrous.

What this means is that young people no longer see themselves as limited to only finding love or casual friendships in their physical location. Some of these ‘too good to be true’ relationships unfortunately are exactly that, which means that there is also a growing dissatisfaction with love regardless of where is found. They yearn for something deeper, something more real, truer even. Something connected to spirit perhaps?

So What Does This All Mean?

There are many articles that speak to the real psychological problems of depression and narcissism among young people who feel the need to constantly check how many likes their latest ‘selfie’ photo has garnered. Cyber-bullying has been directly linked to some teenage suicides and suicide attempts, and online sexual predators do prey on the gullible young.

However there are those who hold more optimistic views as far as technology and the young are concerned. Carr believes that there is an ‘incipient Net backlash’ which will be led by the idealistic young. Blogger Manel Blanco adds a spiritual element and sees the internet as ‘a platform in which we can create energetic webs’ that can help to raise consciousness. My view embraces these two.

I believe that a consciousness revolution is imminent and its rumblings are already starting.  I believe that this consciousness revolution will look a lot like Adam Bucko’s and Matthew Fox’s Occupy Spirituality and I believe that it will eventually lead to us discarding the internet. We simply won’t need it, not when telepathy, soul travel, acute intuition and psychic abilities all become available to us at higher levels of consciousness.

 

The off grid network that people currently seek has always existed and technology is nothing but a prelude to all this. We have arrived at the ‘the technological simulation of consciousness’ that Marshall McLuhan spoke of and it is only a matter of time before we recognize that the simulation is nothing but a poor imitation.

I believe too that it is the young - the ones who recognise the archaic uselessness of our current systems; the ones who are breaking down mental, religious and financial barriers; the ones whose brains are being trained for higher analytical thinking; the ones who have felt the pinch of being ‘together and yet alone’ and who are looking for a love that is real and spiritual - will be the ones leading the way.

What do you think?

Image courtesy: http://spiritualityhealth.com/articles/book-review-occupy-spirituality

As originally submitted to Spiritualist International Magazine for their Youth Culture focus under the title - 'How Technology is Shaping Youth Culture'. Apologies to all those who had problems accessing it on their site. Their techies are busy working to resolve the Chrome compatibility issues!

Love, light & blessings,

Elizabeth Energy