How Technological Machers Limit Consumption To Their Kids
This article in the New York Times is not to be missed. Steve Jobs didn’t let his kids have iPads.
The money quote from Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired regarding his five children, aged 6 to 17:
My kids accuse me and my wife of being fascists and overly concerned about tech, and they say that none of their friends have the same rules. That’s because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself, I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.
Sound an awful lot like baalei tshuvah (lhavdil). Of course we have no second generation studies to see if the approach works and for whom.
For example: But new research (DeWall et al., 2011) suggests it’s not so simple. If the circumstances or situation implicitly limit a person’s attention to an attractive alternative, that alternative suddenly becomes “forbidden fruit.”
KVCT
Technology is as dangerous as literacy. Letting your kid go to the public library or to travel on a NYC subway and the newstands below them will expose them to many if not most of the dangers of the internet and technology. What needs to be done is for people to build monitors into kids explaining to them that the world is a dangerous place, physically and morally. They need to learn to make proper choices — from the very begining of their “public” life. No cheating… pick the list to follow. What you do in private should be the same as that which you do in public and which you do when “adults” are watching. Presumably children are still raised with the idea that G-d is omnipresent. The rabbinic establishment is seeking to scapegoat technology for failings that precede the explosion of technology and for the moral failings that we as a community transgress (ed) and have been transgressing since I was a child.
I too am a bit frightened by an addiction to new technologies. But, a full discussion of the medium and the message is needed. YU torah is based on the Internet and Ipods. But so are selfies and worse.
I don’t see any wisdom in what these tech execs are doing. In fact, a lot of ballei teshuvah, often wealthy and successful, make similar parenting decisions concerning other secular institutions, with the same rationale’ that they’ve seen the dangers firsthand. Yet these same people still managed to become wealthy and successful. And often, in lighter moments, they wax nostalgic with pleasure about those experiences. But their children will now be denied those experiences. And with all their good intentions, they may be preventing their children from achieving the same success they did.
Why must we constantly play games? If we like who we are (more or less) and we’ve achieved some success (more or less) – shouldn’t we then try to reproduce for our children, more or less, the same upbringing we had?
Thank you for making a great case for Shabbat observance. My sense is that this will be part of the 21st century mantra for American Jews of all stripes (I’m already seeing some evidence in this area), for time and space to go off the grid.
If I were a parent, I would not let my children use any kind of modern technological communication, except the kind of phone one plugs into one’s wall, and maybe a word processor. Short of that, forget it. Maybe that is one of the reasons why it does seem to be my destiny that I will never become a parent.
Henry Silberman writes, Letting your kid go to the public library or to travel on a NYC subway and the newstands below them will expose them to many if not most of the dangers of the internet and technology.
I know this is not what you’re advocating, but just because filth is available at the newsstand, I should also bring it into my house? Of course we need to raise children to have internal drives to do the right thing. But until then, I know that if I leave the chocolate chips on the table, they will eat them.
DF writes, If we like who we are (more or less) and we’ve achieved some success (more or less) – shouldn’t we then try to reproduce for our children, more or less, the same upbringing we had?
Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do: give my kids the same upbringing I had – no Internet, no iPhone. They have not in the meantime requested permission to start reading the NYT; if they do, I guess I could let them.
(I’m lying. I have no intention of letting them watch Star Wars, even if it’s relatively harmless. Instead I try very hard to make time to take them hiking, take them to the beach, take them sailing … my hope is that if in future life they give Star Wars a try, they will decide that sailing is more fun.)
“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do: give my kids the same upbringing I had – no Internet, no iPhone.”
Providing the same upbringing is not literal. One does not have to use (e.g.) a Commodore Vic 20 and drive the same station wagon his parents did. The point is to have the same attitude. If your parents allowed you to use the technology of the time, you should allow your children the same with the technology of our time. Thety probably limited the amount of TV you could watch – you can limit the amount of screen time they can have. Clearly, like everything else in life, one has to have some shikul ha-daas in such matters. But wholesale changes, predicated on misguided beliefs that you are saving them from dangers you had to face, are precisely that – misguided.
DF writes, If your parents allowed you to use the technology of the time, you should allow your children the same with the technology of our time … But wholesale changes, predicated on misguided beliefs that you are saving them from dangers you had to face, are precisely that – misguided.
Nope. Just because it’s what everyone does, and just because someone invented it, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. I spent the last seven years working with teenagers. Their relationship with their phones is one of addiction. I think the majority of clinical psychologists would agree, and I have seen plenty of journal and mainstream press articles to that effect.
I would like to believe that were I secular, I would come to the same conclusion from שכל הפשוט.
FWIW, we recently began to move towards keeping Shabbat and the first step we took was to cease using media (TV, phone, internet) on Shabbat. This had an immediate and profound effect on my four year old. At this point, she is now fully aware that Shabbat is a day totally different from the rest of the week. When I explain this to others, I simply say “I wanted her to have an analog mode”.
I love the internet and the great things it has made possible. I feel privileged every day to be living in this era, to have seen the world change this profoundly during my lifetime. But I can also sit down and read a 90-page book from cover to cover without stopping. I can talk to someone for 2 hours without needing to look at my phone or wanting to talk to a different person about something else. I am not get emotionally upset if I cannot access Facebook. I can wait patiently for a fairly long time without playing a video game. These skills will not come naturally to anyone growing up today. They have to be taught. There are many possible ways to teach a skill that is “no longer needed”, but using the immersion method once a week is a pretty good one. And besides, our way comes with chulent.