WHAT’S ON TOP? The wonders of modern technology . . . Helen Kinsey-Wightman
Like many parents of teens I sometimes feel that the use of technology has become a battleground for my son and I. I should clarify that we are talking about his use of technology here, not mine! Despite the fact that my laptop, phone and iPad are all tools that make my working and social life easier and I do spend a fair amount of my day connected I also spend a lot of (largely wasted) energy discouraging my son from following my lead! I am not a technophobe – I couldn’t live without Google (how did our parents ever answer our questions without it?), I never venture anywhere new without getting directions online, I bank in the waiting room at the dentist and I keep in touch with our eldest son on Facetime. In addition, I frequently ridicule my partner for his reluctant use of technological innovations. To his mind, teachers shouldn’t set anything for homework that can’t be answered using the Children’s Encyclopaedia Brittanica (published in 1984) if he gets lost he pulls over and asks for directions and he only banks in a bank that has real people. Online banking with Kiwibank is OK as he has a nice online personal banker called Becks who send him messages when he has a question – I once ventured to suggest Becks could be a bloke called Bob who likes to wear stockings and suspenders on a Friday and he wouldn’t be any the wiser – he looked at me knowingly and said, “You’re in New Zealand now Helen!” However, ‘the times they are a-changing’. Earlier this year his second son travelled to Europe on a Social Studies trip and he was faced with the option of spending vast amounts on overseas calls or signing up to the class Facebook page. When he quietly and somewhat over-casually asked if someone could help him set up a Facebook account there was much hilarity – and curiously he chose his son’s offer of help over mine! Once set up (without a photograph or a relationship status obviously!) he then set about lambasting anyone who had the nerve to ask to be his friend. “John Smith wants to be my Facebook friend – what’s the point of that? I haven’t seen him since we were at school!” We quietly replied that this was exactly the point . . . More recently however, he is definitely beginning to embrace the social advantages of Facebook membership – last weekend while stopping for coffee in a town where he assured me he didn’t know anyone, we bumped into a long lost rugby mate (whom he didn’t introduce me to because predictably he couldn’t remember their name) and he casually said, “Oh yeah, I was chatting to Hamish McKay on Facebook the other day . . . ” How times have changed. My 12 year old son has needed no such encouragement to embrace modern technology – despite my refusal to provide
him with any of what he would consider to be the essentials of modern life – he does have his own laptop but only because it is a requirement for his class at school, he also has an iPod with a cracked screen which is so old that they don’t make any apps that work on it anymore (allegedly) and he – unlike all his friends – does not own a cellphone (I would like to add allegedly here too but this is actually true, I checked with a very reliable girl in his class!) The strange thing is that apart from some vague concerns about the dangers of him developing a technology addiction, I don’t have any evidence that his use of technology is having an adverse affect on his development. He Googles science videos on YouTube, uses a flight simulator and searches for birds of prey images for his desktop, admittedly his latest favourite Toribash edges towards gratuitous violence – its strange Ninja creature requires you to give details of every muscle which he must contract in order to deliver a kick to his opponent’s solar plexus – it is technically possible to rip off his head but only after an endless stream of technical anatomical directions. Minecraft does confound me – but mainly because it seems to be the online version of Lego Duplo! Sometimes as school leaders I think we are similarly conflicted about the lurking danger of technology. Of course we are right to be concerned about issues such as cyberbullying – but my new high school colleagues tell me that in reality bullying by phone or messaging often provides us with the evidence that we need to confront the behaviour. Over the holidays – in an effort to challenge my thinking on this issue – I came across an (online!) article by Vanessa Van Petten who is the creator of RadicalParenting.com, a parenting site written from a teens’ perspective with the goal of helping their (bemused) parents to understand them. She recently asked the 120 teen ‘interns’ (aged 13–19) who advise and write for RadicalParenting.com “What are the top 5 things you fight about with your parents?” The answers were all to do with technology—fights about cell phone bills, whether it was appropriate to listen to music while doing homework and
lectures about the safety of YouTube and Facebook. She followed up by asking what they wish their parents knew about their use and love (and hate) of technology. They replied: 1. Technology is not a choice, we have never known life without technology. Using technology as much as they can is a default—the choice is in how they choose to use it. 2. Stranger Danger is not nearly as serious as cyberbullying. Teens want their parents to ask more questions and be more concerned about online drama with friends and less about contacting strangers. 3. We are constantly making choices to keep ourselves safe—even if we do not tell you about it. One teen wrote: “Today I got a spam message with porn. I didn’t open it because I saw right away it was spam, but it still made me uncomfortable. We get stuff like that every day or a mean text message. I don’t know if my mum knows how I deal with these every day. I am learning to stand up for myself online.” – Kerri, 14. 4. We would love you to be our scapegoats. Sometimes the peer pressure to stay plugged in is tough, so if they know they can say, “Oh my mum made me turn it off last night,” it teaches them to slowly stand up for going offline. 5. We can’t say no to finding out more about ourselves. Teens find it absolutely irresistible to find out more about themselves online. “I wish my parents would talk to me—not lecture me, about how to say no to Formspring (now called Spring.me). I am dying to know what people think of me but I know it is a bad idea.” –Travis, 16.
As has always been – for parents and teachers – the secret to supporting teens lies in asking questions and listening to the answers rather than lecturing.
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