I see and hear from people all the time about gun control, immigration, violent video games, pharmaceutical lobbies, discipline, the list goes on and on.
I am left to wonder just what has changed over all these decades. I see technology as the root of our problems, or more specifically, our use of technology.
The further back in time that we look, the closer our family ties were. Transportation was slower and our communities were more rural in nature. This meant that most of our time was spent with family. We also spent time in our schools and places of worship. Our upbringing was defined by those that we were exposed to.
Enter the television.
When I was young there were three stations and PBS if you used the UHF dial. The news was one hour nightly and most of the programming was variety shows and sitcoms. There we became aware of things happening beyond our community. Still, we watched TV as a family.
It wasn't long before we developed the TV dinner and tray tables. The family meal was becoming a thing of the past. Soon, TV became the babysitter, keeping the kids occupied and out of their parents hair.
Today we have 100+ channels and in order to fill all of that time the networks have had to create programming that is often meaningless. We have channels dedicated to sports, food, news, weather, history. We have information (and disinformation) overload.
I remember the first home video game.
It really wasn't much more than a way to pass some time. Board games and card games with family and friends was still much more entertaining. Today's games are much more realistic looking, more addictive and solitary.
Along came the home computer and with it came the internet, although at 2400 baud it was slow.
The computers of today allow us access to pretty much anything and everything that we can conceive of. It is wonderful to be able to keep in touch with friends and family that live all over this country. I love finding new recipes with just a few clicks of the mouse. But I also find my inbox full of links to 'cheap viagra', 'meet singles', 'bitcoin opportunities', yada, yada, yada.
When we are young, we're taught how to be a contributing family member. Then we are taught how to be a member of our school and our church. In high school we are taught how to be a member of our community. It was in early adulthood that we learned how to be a member of the world at large.
Society these days, exposes children of very young ages to the world at large. We expect them to be able to develop a worldview without laying the groundwork in our homes first.
In my time, kindergarten was a fairly new concept. Now we have preschool. Children need that time to experience and learn family membership and to have the people in their lives model how to be 'good' people before they are sent forth into the larger world.
We have abdicated our roles as parents to the so-called experts and to technology.
There was a time when communication occurred face-to-face or over landlines. You actually had to sit where the phone was located, (and where you were within earshot of your parents) in order to use it.
In the modern world, children compete with technology for their parents' attention. Parents compete with technology for their children's attention. Look around on any street and you will see people walking around with a phone capable of delivering violent games,, internet craziness, news and nonnews, viewpoints with which we strongly agree and viewpoints with which we strongly disagree. Our young people have developed an addiction to these phones and we are the ones who give it to them.
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