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Isn't technology great but what is the world coming to?!?

Some might ask what today’s generation is coming to – with all these advances in technology and everything moving online. As someone who is in her 30s, I have to say I am still trying to catch up with today’s technological world. Some of you may say ‘OMG’, what generation do you live in? But when I see my 14-month-old son playing with the latest iPhone or iPad – it does really make me think… how do you know how to use these devices when you are still learning to talk?

titleIt does worry me, because I wonder if my child will communicate better in the digital world, and will this actually affect him in learning how to speak? You may think that it’s the parents fault letting the child play with these devices, but realistically, is it even possible to keep devices away from them – I am thinking NOT. We need to use a mobile phone every day to communicate and the laptop or iPad is always lying around. So as a 14-month-old, what would you prefer? A shiny new iPhone OR a soft teddy?? My son goes to sensory and music classes every week – they use traditional methods of teaching for babies to develop. BUT not all is traditional as the teacher is using her latest iPod to play music or when it was space week she used lasers and good old LED lighting to give the effect that we are in space. I also feel that my young son is now exploring the mechanisms built within his toy – like hello, what happened in the days where you would just push along your walker or watch a battery-powered animal dancing around the living room. NO in actual fact he now wants to see how are they built and how do they move. All sounds great however part of me thinks are children missing out on actually being kids? Are they becoming too advanced too young with the latest gadgets and technologies? 

So basically even if you try to use traditional methods to teach your children, you cannot escape technology – we are completely surrounded and I feel it’s going to develop even more to the point I won’t even understand OR I will just give up understanding because it hurts my brain! 

I remember on my 30th birthday I decided to join #twitter (I can perhaps see many of you gasping now with shock that I am that old school!) This wasn’t anything to do with wanting to be “in” with the other social media fanatics but it was to drive a campaign for #Mindy Kaling to attend my 30th bash. When someone gave me this idea I was like NO WAY surely social media can’t get these amazing celebs to attend your birthday party but when you see #Gary Barlow attending weddings that were all down to a Twitter campaign. Unfortunately my campaign sucked and didn’t get me far… so from that point I gave up and thought maybe Twitter wasn’t for me. OK, typical mother going off the track, my point is that for someone who isn’t techie and isn’t into social media, I was actually half convinced social media might work! Some of you may be slightly confused because as mentioned earlier I am no techie AND I am no social media queen either. However I think this has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t like how all our communication these days is done via social media. Like hello I don’t need to know someone’s status daily – you are not a celebrity!!!

Also I miss how we used to communicate as kids. These were the best time – we used to actually meet as a family and catch up OR we used to pick up the phone and speak. But these days what is the point meeting when your family and friends give you full updates via social media. So it makes you think… why am I going to bother and what will we have to say to each other when you have revealed your whole life story on the web for everyone to view. It then makes me think – is anything personal these days?

I have to say I do feel slightly embarrassed because when my child is older he will be way more advanced than me in terms of technology – so I now think will I be able to teach him OR will he end up teaching me?! While all these technology advances seem great to some, and please understand, I am not completely old school – I do use the web for online shopping and reading the paper because it’s so much easier and quicker. So although I may be contradicting myself slightly, I do like some parts of this online world. However my other concern is that it could come to the day when my child will prefer to be alone in his room all day, won’t want to socialise with friends or family and will just be so consumed with their latest phones or iPads etc.

My worry now is, will my 14 month old son start talking in code because he is constantly surrounded with technology – yes I try to discourage it, however if watching You Tube gets him to eat then why not?!?! The one thing I have noticed though is he is not interested in TV – which is great news but I do find it very confusing especially because he seems like such a big media fan. I must confess he does like the music of #Peppa Pig BUT then switches off. So in my eyes this is great because at least he won’t be speaking like a cartoon character BUT he might learn to text (sorry WhatsApp) in acronyms or text speak that I don’t understand.

Having said that, I do hope that once he gets older he will channel his head full of curly locks towards something more valuable, like programming (but again I hope he doesn’t ask me for help!), build things with Lego Mindstorms, or you never know, he might ask for a Raspberry Pi. This would actually be way more valuable in learning and perhaps a more creative experience compared with watching Peppa Pig or Barney the Dinosaur on You-Tube!

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