Connected Kids

I finished Turkles’ book “Alone Together” and there are many parts to it that I do not want to believe.  I do not want to believe that children crave robotic toys, much less connect with them as their “children” that they must care for.  I do not want to believe that adults would crave the same from sociable robots because they do not have that confidence to find human companionship.  I for certain do not want to believe that we have become a race where we would leave our elderly in the care of robots so we are free from the responsibility.  I agree with Turkle when she states “I understand the virtues of partnerships with a robot in war, space and medicine.  I understand that robots are useful in dangerous working conditions.  But why are we so keen on ‘caring’? To me, it seems transgressive, a ‘forbidden experiment.’

All that I have discussed is not what bothers me the most.  What bothers me the most is the simulated and networked life that our children are growing up in and probably feel that it is “real life.”  Turkles’ chapter titles in the second part of her book say it all.  In our present digital world, our children are Always On.  They are constantly on Facebook, tweeting and messaging each other often.  Turkle recorded that the communication between teenagers could be as high as 8 – 10, 000 texts a month!  With this many texts, one will definitely be Growing Up Tethered.  With demands of that many texts teens and the “high” they get from receiving these texts has them cutting off one person to talk to the next.  Communication has turned from something that should be natural to one that is demanding and often causing anxiety in our teens.  For this reason, teens feel that there is No Need To Call.  The teens that participated in Turkles’ study discussed their anxiety when having to make a call or receive a call.  They would rather have digital written communication where they had time to think about what they wanted to say or how they wanted to appear.

I am wondering what kind of adults these teens are going to grow up to be.  Though these teens are seeking privacy from their parents, tend to post personal aspects of their life on the internet and don’t realize that have placed it on the most public domain.  If they do realize how public the internet is, then they feel that it’s just a part of life to “stalk” someone on Facebook or have pictures of themselves posted on the Net without their permission.  Often, cyberbullying is happening because of the anonymity of the Net.

These teens are growing up not knowing what it means to have a meaningful conversation to completion.  They do not understand the true meaning of privacy and finally they need to learn to filter what they put on the Net with the understanding that they may be doing harm to themselves or someone else.  My hope is to find more research on these issues and explore it further.  Stay Tuned!