New communication technologies could be as much hindrance to academic pursuits as they have proved to be helping the cause. Obsession with cell phones, androids, iPads, iPods and laptops that have made deep inroads into the lives of an average urban youth, is on the rise. Youth texting and chatting on the cells pressed between the books are common sight on the backbenches and libraries, notwithstanding the dire warnings in the campus code book. With iPods slinging down their necks, fingers texting on cells and eyes surfing through email menus, the youth are deft at camouflaging their e-engagement from their parents as well as wardens. While the miniscule nature of gadgets defies surveillance, some of the activity could very well be faked as perfectly academic for onlookers.
With every finger on communication tools and 24 X 7 media access, the amount of time an average youth spends gaming and texting has risen phenomenally. This is resulting in lesser time being devoted to serious study. Not merely socializing on the media, the youth are vulnerable to practices that may amount to cheating too. A retired principal of an international school in Dubai had the following instance to relate while speaking at an education conference in Bangalore. Kids in a mathematics class were assigned to work out 20 sums as part of the homework to be submitted the next day. The smart kids distributed the sums between themselves so as each one need not do more than one.
Returning home as usual, they did their part of the work and sent out the solved sum to each of the 19 others and similarly received a worked out sum from each of them: all on email! All of them presented the neat printouts of their homework, needing not even a dot to be added. The perplexed teacher was nonplussed at the smart work.
Need to monitor the online lives of teenage children is greater today than ever. The task of parents is getting more complex at homes where both of them work and where there is a gap of three or four hours between return of kids and parents from schools and places of work respectively. Recent studies, suggesting that kids spend at least four hours a day on social and recreational media, distracted and disengaged from the world and each other, must cause ripple of alarm. Parents fear that their children’s engagement with electronics will hinder their path through life, yet it were precisely they who got them what could distract them from their calling.
A study in the United States by Kaiser Family Foundation has found that an average youth (8 to 18-year-old) devotes an average of seven hours and 38 minutes with the entertainment media on a typical day. The time is spent multitasking, using more than one medium at a time. The study says while the time spent reading books remained steady, the proportion of young people who read a newspaper in a typical day dropped from 42% in 1999 to 23% in 2009.
Noted journalist Thomas Friedman attributes the falling academic standards in American schools to rising e-involvement. He says half of American teenagers (aged 12 through 17) send 50 or more text messages a day, and one third send more than 100 a day. In 1960, students at four-year colleges in the US studied 24 hours per week. Today the average is 14 hours per week, 42% less. (Thomas Friedman & Michael Mandelbaum, That Used to be US, Little Brown, 2011)
E-engagement is also leading to severe reduction in time spent outdoors and on physical activity, a key ingredient in total well-being of the children. A survey collecting data from 400 mothers of diverse nationalities in the United Arab Emirates reveals that children in the age group of 2-12 spent less than an hour on outdoor activity but spent three hours on an activity involving interaction with technology. One in five (i.e., 20%) children spends more than four hours on an average watching TV each day. This time increases to 1.5 hours on weekends. The survey titled ‘Fun City Children’s Play Index’ was carried out by Landmark Leisure. The study also shows 58% of children spend their time playing indoor games as compared to 29% who spend their play time outdoors, while 12% also engage in learning or playing an outdoor sport. The parents who have to spend more time at work tend more to pamper their kids with engaging e-toys like video games.
Facebook is emerging yet another consuming passion among the young. According to a consumer survey, 7.5 million kids 12 and younger are on the Facebook. Some of their parents helped their kids create fake birth date to get them access to the sites. Many kids today confess that they are most friendly with some of the people they have not seen. Such persons could be dangerous. Three girls were raped by old men who befriended them on the websites. It has to be understood that what was invented for efficiency is being used (or misused) for intimacy, often with complete strangers who could turn out to harbor characteristics totally different from what they claim to possess.
There is also a need to prohibit commercial organizations seeking information from kids online about their choice of clothes, eatables, gifts, shoes and books. Legislation has not kept pace with the technology. Even as developed a nation as the US, is still in the process of making the provisions of Children’s Online Privacy Protect Act of 1998 stronger against exploitation. We in India still do not have any law at all.
The teenagers need to be counseled to switch off their mobiles during study hours and keep it away in the closet. The parents too need to take caution and disconnect the TV and mobile connection during periods preceding examinations in consultation with children.
Source: http://tinyurl.com/kozem8u
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