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| Breeding toxic childhood | | Growing use of internet by young teens is assuming more dangerous dimensions than having a positive impact on them | | Sajjad Bazaz
Just a few days back, a re
tired government official mailed me woes of his MBA pass-out unemployed son. Among other things, his communiqué had a surprising mention of a list of recurring expenses which he has been bearing for his unemployed son. The most striking item in the expenses' list was a regular expenses on internet. Though the retired official has narrated his own financial worries, yet his query reminded me of growing dangers of internet in which our society is being engulfed. Internet is not only an unnoticed hole in our pocket but is also emerging like a menace as the growing use of internet by our children is assuming more dangerous dimensions than having a positive impact on our young teens.
I have come across several parents of young children with some kind of disgusting Internet stories. One of my acquaintances told me that panic struck him when his nine-year-old stumbled onto a pornographic photo. He told me that he literally dove for the computer, tugging out the power cord and then rushing his kid outside.
Almost the same thing happened with one of my friends when his son, a 12-year-old toddler, was Googling something related to his studies on the computer. At some point, he pulled up a picture of porn stars, showing them in their act. I am sure most of us must have experienced the likes of internet horror anecdotes and it's not hard to find scattered tales about terrible things that happen online, most of the time unintentionally at the hands of our toddlers.
Today the parents whose children are in middle school or are approaching this level of schooling must be somewhat a worried lot. Since kids today prefer internet mode to learn and experiment things, cyber-bullying is today a more realistic threat. When online in the anonymous atmosphere of the Internet, there's every possibility of these kids experimenting in a nastier way. Precisely, what I really think today is that this whole everyone and everything on the internet is an evil era and needs immediate attention before it takes toll of our youth. Kids on Internet without any surveillance and checks and balances are just like in any other potentially dangerous situation. It is to be remembered that parental neurosis is far more detrimental to childhood development than the ease at which the internet will corrupt the personality development of our youth.
Meanwhile, we cannot overlook a shift in the attitude of our kids. Earlier the television was their preferred medium of entertainment. Now it's computer with most of the time online activities where they spend most of their time. Their growing online activity is building barriers between them and their parents.
I came across some interesting facts revealed in a survey. Some parents who have stopped their children from having a TV in their bedroom for fear they will watch it too much have justified internet access on the basis that it will help with homework. But the survey has found children and young teens are more likely to socialise than do homework online.
The survey also reveals that for one in three the computer is the single thing they couldn't live without, compared with a declining number - one in five - who named television.
How kids get backing of their parents for having a computer is interesting narrative. Initially they begin using the internet to do homework and later they are much more likely to spend their time online socialising. Before the situation gets out of control of the parents.
In succinct, the computer screen time has become so invasive in the daily lives of our toddlers, mostly in the age group of 5 to 16 that they are not less than a skilled manager of their free time, juggling technology to fit in on average three to four hours of TV, playing computer games and surfing the net.
There are several things you as a parent can do to protect your child from being a victim of toxic childhood and vulnerable to online evils. For example, if your kid is on social network site, create an account for yourself on the site. Give clear and specific expectations on who they should add as friends and what type of personal information they can or cannot give on their profile page. Give a lesson to them about the use of the privacy settings so that only known users can see their full profile. Most importantly, you should know the account information like password etc of your child's page. This way you can periodically monitor the activities of the kid on the site.
(The views are of the
author & not the
institution he works for) |
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