Staying Disconnected in a Connected World

A few days ago, my son Seth said, “I hate the ’puter daddy.” I asked my wife what that was all about. Seth, who used to beg to play on the computer – we don’t let him yet – apparently resents how this infernal machine steals his parents.

Keep in mind, we usually turn it off the moment he wants attention, but I can see his point. By the time he’s a teen, he may of course feel quite differently about computers and phones, as do these adolescents in this Los Angeles Times story:

In a not-at-all unusual month, Will Wu spent more than 10,000 minutes on his mobile phone – an average of 5-1/2 hours a day.

Sometimes he talked, sometimes he listened. But most of the time, the 15-year-old just dialed up a friend and left the phone on. Connected only by wireless headsets, Will and his pal spent entire days – together, but apart – shopping, snacking, doing homework and even nodding off to sleep.

“If I ever wanted to talk I could just say something into the phone and there’d be someone on the other end. You wouldn’t have to dial,” said Will, a sophomore at Miramonte High School in Orinda, east of San Francisco, whose Cingular Wireless calling plan includes free calls to any other Cingular customer. “Basically it was convenient.”

Like an increasing number of youths growing up in an age of cheap mobile phones and fast Internet connections, Will is connected 24/7 to family and friends through an array of gadgetry. So obsessed are teens with devices like digital music players, cell phones, digital cameras and hand-held organizers, that 15-year-old girls are now the world’s top consumers of computer chips, said Chuck Byers, director of global marketing at chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

The story goes on to discuss how teenagers spend hour after hour online via instant messaging and cell phones. Here’s another excerpt:

What is clear is that for teens, drifting from instant messaging to talking on a cell phone to using the cell phone to send and receive text messages is second nature. They switch devices depending on the complexity or emotional level of the conversation, their location or the availability of a computer.

“They don’t make the same distinctions between online and offline; they pick the best medium for them,” said Abbe Don, a consumer researcher at computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co., which recently completed a study of Internet use by so-called tweens, those ages 11 to 14.

Whether all this technology time is healthy or not is difficult to ascertain. Studies repeatedly show that toddlers should not be spending any time behind the TV or computer. But no one really knows how all this technology is affecting adolescents. On the one hand, today’s teens are far more tech savvy than their parents. On the other hand, researchers don’t really know what this means for social development.

The Times story, for example, mentions a dating relationship that was ended via Instant Message. While it may be easier to kill off a floundering romance this way, should teens get out of the consequences of seeing and hearing a hurt partner cry and scream after being told the relationship is over? I just don’t know.

I can already see that I will face challenges as a dad my mom never had to deal with. I was in college before pagers were all the fad in high schools. Expensive cell phones were not an option for my generation, and my only access to a computer was at school or work.

Seth, on the other hand, will be begging to have a cell phone just like all his other elementary school classmates. I’m pretty uncomfortable with this. I want him to learn how to deal with people face-to-face. I want him to read facial expressions and body language. I want him to see that technology is just a tool and not a replacement for “true” social contact.

There is a certain irony in my saying that. Until marriage, I tended to limit my social interactions to work and just a small handful of friends. I rented a powerboat on Lake Powell and boated alone for two weeks. I’ve taken several month-long bike tours by myself.

But reliance on technology as a primary source for social interaction is a new phenomenon in human history. Never before can people be so disconnected while being connected. I suspect we won’t understand the true impact of this until years from now.

Additional:
Mark Sicignano runs an excellent blog called Families and Technology that discusses related issues. He also sells software that helps parents put a time limit on how long children can spend on a computer, which you can learn about at SoftwareTime.

Comments

[Johnny]

Our society is changing too fast with all this new technology. Bad or good, I don't know. =P Imagine half a century from now.

[brettdl]

It will be interesting, won't it?