Picture the scene: it’s Monday morning and teens trail into class, tired out from their weekend outings and, probably, early-morning catching up on home-works.
They settle down – and instantly log into their favourite social sites in order to bring one another up to date about what happened to whom, where, and when, and how.
From the surreptitious glances they occasionally throw across the room, you may tell that what is scrolling down on the screen in front of them was written by a peer across the room. Or about him.
The students – or at least some of them – have the grace to minimise their pages, walls, or what have you, when the lecturer walks into the room. Yet some of them are brash enough to assume she will not notice they are not giving her their full attention.
When she asks them to put away their technology and take out good old pencil and paper to take down notes, instead, they groan – in fact, some of them are so efficient at word processing that they have almost forgotten how to wield a writing implement that is not a stylus.
This, of course, could be a sign of the times – that the world is the oyster of young people, and that we oldies might as well get used to it, cupcakes. But it also points towards another dire conclusion that today’s youth is addicted to technology, and also, as a corollary, the Web. This, despite evidence to the contrary, means that the personal, emotional, mental and social lives of those afflicted is affected, sometimes irrevocably, irreversibly and irreparably.
One thing is sure – it is not funny when you call your teen down to lunch and he cannot hear you because of his ear-plugs. It is even worse when you have to resort to calling him on his cellular phone – and degenerates into a tragedy when he either picks up his plate and takes it to his room to continue where he left off in his current favourite game, or eats with one hand while he texts his friends on his ubiquitous mobile phone with the other.
It is ironic that while in the company of “real” humans, some teens prefer to connect with virtual ones. However, technology addiction is not really recognised since it is passed off as “normal” behaviour for teens. However, new research indicates that social sites, sexting, and online gambling are fast gaining ground in teenagers’ lives.
The fine line between business, work, and pleasure – and wasting time – blurs, the more advanced technological toys become. It has been proven that people are relying more and more on their paraphernalia, whereas before, they would boast that they remembered all the necessary data – telephone numbers, dates of birth, addresses, and so forth – without having the need to write them down.
An addiction to technology may, in susceptible people, trigger pathological behaviour. People have been known to forego eating and sleeping in order to remain online – and to seriously harm anyone who tries to prevent them from doing so.
What makes the problem worse is that these teenagers’ parents have sometimes been provided with the very things off which they want to wean their children, by their own bosses. The idea is to provide them with a means to remain on call even during their off hours – and, as a bonus “allowing” them to use the equipment for personal affairs.
Teens would laugh if you had to suggest they are addicted the world inside their laptops; addiction to them, is a word that describes a junkie. However, since the real meaning of addiction implies that other things suffer because of that to which you are addicted, it is this point that must be explained thoroughly, for the lesson to get across.
The reaction obtaining when one forbids any type of gizmo on the dinner table is a mere indication of what lies beneath. But of course, we must be aware of the fact that we must lead by example. The calls we are expecting are not that much “more important” than those of our teens.
You realise the extent of the aforementioned addiction when you see that each person is occupied with his own keyboard, even when a television set in the room is on.
As the teen if he is able to resist “getting the message out” of his “social skin” the minute something happens, even if the something is an accident, a film they are watching, or a book they are reading (if they do still read).
You cannot just emulate the dad whose clip of shooting his daughter’s laptop for a discourteous comment she passed about her parent on Facebook went viral.
But you can gently explain the insidious way that addiction takes over a life, while at the same time, opening up the “real” ways of communication again, with your teens. Each parent knows the best way to do this, according to the child’s character and emotional maturity.
Technology Addictions
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