When I think back to my earliest memories of digital technology, I picture my sister and I picking which movie to watch from our grandmother’s collection of VHS tapes. I picture the birthday when I received the Tamagotchi I had been begging my parents for. I picture us sitting at mum’s bulky desktop computer playing with whatever we were able to find on the screen. I picture the days when the internet was something you had to log into, instead of something constantly at our fingertips.
Along came the iPad
I must’ve been about nine years old when I first encountered an iPad. Nowadays, they’re everywhere, and oftentimes in the hands of children. It saddens me, venturing to a nice restaurant only to be sat next to a family whose kids are set up at the table with iPads in front of them. Walking down the street and seeing a child in a pram entranced by the screen in their hands. Or being on the bus, and realising that sitting by the window watching the world go is far less exciting for kids than it had been when I was little.
My cousin has two young children, and from the day she shared her first pregnancy with us, their lives have been documented through daily photos uploaded onto an app that most of our family members have on their phones. I can quite vividly remember my mother taking videos of my sister and I using her silver Sony camcorder. The memories recorded in these videos are precious, partly because they were captured sparingly and with intention. Watching them back, neither my sister nor I were conscious of the fact we were being recorded. We didn’t know what the camera was or what it was doing. We weren’t performing and it wasn’t posted anywhere for other people’s enjoyment. As intended, we watch these videos back as twenty-something year olds and feel immense nostalgia and happiness. We love watching how curious and creative we were as children. How our childhood was spent painting, riding bikes, swimming.
What’s the harm?
I understand there are practical benefits to exposing children to technology, and that in many cases the iPad has been a useful parenting tool. But I wonder what effects this exposure will have on children growing up today. I wonder what these constant feedback loops of entertainment are doing to these kids, or the documentation of their every movement, experience and milestone. What will come of this childhood of being constantly observed and constantly distracted? How will children form a sense of self if inherently shaped by how they will be seen by others? Will they come to see digital technology as substitutes for human connection?
I’m grateful to have grown up in the last era of analog, and that my first memories of digital technology were simple and exceptional and sporadic. For this new generation of children plagued by the iPad epidemic, I worry that the opposite is true. I worry the impact of never experiencing the joy of being disconnected will cause irreparable damage and generate fewer memories. They will grow up having never been bored, or unstimulated, or unrecorded – experiences that I believe shaped my childhood for the better.
Your post resonates with me so deeply. Seeing my cousins grow up with iPads that have a lot of behavioural and psychological consequences on them is heart-breaking. I do understand why parents may use technology as entertainment, but recently this has grown to the point where playing or watching something on a device is a ‘default’ activity of the day for very young children. It is so sad that this generation is being robbed of opportunities to be creative and use their imagination to make games or have interest in the outside world. I also like your closing reflection on being grateful to have had a childhood without the iPad equivalent. I believe it massively shifted the perception of the digital for both children and parents, who may not get the sense of ‘genuine memory’ like the videos that you are looking back on after some years. Not knowing how the camera worked makes them more precious and honest in a way because they were created with a different intention than to be shared with an audience.