Save nextgen from becoming gadget slaves!

Anyone born in the 70's and 80's would know how exciting it was when school vacations started. No more studies, no more nagging teachers and parents for a full 2 months, which felt like being on top of the world. Be it playing Hide-n-Seek, Kabaddi, Kho-kho, Lagori, Langdi,  or activities like cycling, swimming, badminton with friends was always fun. No special efforts were needed to exercise and keep fit. Getting sunlight and fresh air was a routine rather than a dedicated effort. Television had only one national channel (Doordarshan) that broadcasted news and entertainment programmes for 3-4 hours, beyond which other entertainment options had to be explored for good.

Over the past 20 odd years, gadgets like video games, mobiles and tablets have gradually influenced our lives greatly. Children prefer communicating on social media and messenger more than spending time with each other personally. Computer and mobile games have taken the place of physical activities. Kids are able to exceed high scores in Temple run or Subway surfer, but running around a 200 meter track is a humongous task for them. This has given way to a whole new generation full of health problems that were rarely seen or heard of in the past. Problems like obesity, physical and mental stagnancy, psychological and emotional stress, lack of sleep and vitamin deficiencies are very common now. Too much dependency on technology like calculators is gradually depleting the thinking power of our brains. For example, I can hardly remember any number tables beyond 10, and our grandchildren might be worse than that.

While development of technology has it's advantages of easing communication and getting work done faster with better quality, we have not yet learnt the importance of prioritizing our lives and striking the right balance between technology and health.This is a threatening trend for the generations to come after us, and something which we should be able to control to a reasonable extent if not completely stop.

Most of us take pride in showing off that our two year old kid can unlock a smartphone, play music and games, replay a favorite song many times etc. The rude truth is, this is nothing to feel proud of. Given that children under 5 years of age have tremendously high grasping power than any adult, when they get hands on a mobile device, it is only natural for them to fiddle with it and learn it's operations much faster than us. If not controlled at the right time, this adaptive capability soon transforms into addiction that is almost impossible to come out of. Further, early exposure to mobile screens results in eyesight related problems among children at a relatively younger age. Effectively, the proud parents of a tech savvy two year old kid unknowingly become the worst enemies of the child, who within the next decade will develop into a problem ridden lazy teenager.

Below is a list of 10 things we can do to mitigate the damage inflicted by technology on our children:

1. As far as possible, keep mobile phones and gadgets away from children under 5 years.
2. Enable parental controls on phones and minimize the number of games installed on them.
3. Do not give personal mobile phones to children under 15 years. Parents often like to shower the latest tech gadgets on their kids without realizing that by doing so, they are becoming the child's worst enemies.
4. For children using their parent's mobiles, always keep a close watch on what activities children do, and step in to interrupt them when needed.
5. Keep an eye on how many social media (Whatsapp, Facebook) groups your child is on. Often school children tend to be members of multiple groups under the pretext of "discussing" studies with friends and teachers, which turns out to be more of a distraction than help.
6. Keep all gadgets away at lunch and dinner times.
7. Fix a time period for children, say 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM during which no mobiles or tablets allowed.
8. Limit the time that kids can watch TV to 1 hour or less per day.
9. Spend personal time with your children instead of turning on Cartoon Network/ Pogo to keep the them busy.
10. Motivate children to regularly exercise, and participate in physical activities like cycling, swimming, badminton or any sport that needs at least an hour of physical workout.

Nobody knows what technology will do to the human race in the next 50 years, but every small effort we as parent's can take to protect our children would help them become better humans rather than slaves of technology.