Last weekend, on a lazy Sunday morning, my parents who live away from us dropped in to see the children. After some initial small talk I left them with the grandkids to catch up whilst I went to make some refreshments. Once I came back, I was met with pin drop silence and was horrified to see all three of my children in separate corners of the rooms, with mobiles in hand, their fingers busy jabbing away at whatever was on the screen. Instead of talking to my parents, they had quite sweetly acquired my parent’s mobiles, wandered into a cosy corner to busy themselves with whatever they could access on the said devices, well-meaning grandparents totally forgotten. Our children are technology addicts, be it a mobile phone, the tab or Nintendo DS, once they are on it they become hooked, and transform into techno zombies if you so much as try and put a stop to their uninterrupted session. My sweet innocent four year old will spiral into a screaming spluttering unreasonable child, the minute I say “NO” to her tab time request. Why do these devices have our children hooked to such an extreme.

In fact be it gaming, watching multiple videos, texting or tweeting, all these activities have a stronghold on our children and can sometimes ruin lives, especially when it comes to excessive gaming. As children they have very little control over their environments, thus when they are gaming they are able to enter a situation that they have complete control over. Their actions control the outcomes and thus this gives them a thrill. Also the intricacies and challenges of keeping the game alive also gets their pulses raising, it’s exciting, it’s fun and it’s all conveniently contained in a small 7 to 10 inch screen. Also watching videos on these devices hook children in, the device is easily portable and children are able to access a plethora of videos requiring no intense mental or physical interaction from their part. For the older children who have phones, the constant checking of Facebook, WhatsApping, texting, tweeting are all distractions that when constantly at use can get out of hand and distract the studying children.

Therefore as parents we need to save our children from literally “the rise of the machines”. We have become so dependent on using our everyday friendly tools to socialize, to communicate to do business. They have become are an integral part of our daily existence. But we can still moderate the amount of usage that our children have for in reference to their bad behaviour it is evident that they cannot cope with it. Letting your child, sit in front  of an iPad etc for hours on end, is good for you but not good for the child. Yes you can get that quiet time to accomplish what you had to do, but from that half an hour which turned into an hour, you have pushed your child deeper into a situation where he doesn’t active use his brain, he passively accepts what is infront of him, good or bad. Of course you cannot put an abrupt stop to the usage of these technical devices. Also it is good for the children to learn to navigate through the windows of technology. I am always amazed at how savvy my children are when they do their research for projects. Thus taking both into consideration it is therefore important to balance the usage. Playing games should be a treat rather than an excuse. Surfing the net should only be for education purposes with strict parental control. In this way, you are keeping your children technologically adept but at the same time keeping everything under control. Save our children from the machines.

By Mayuri Jayasinghe