Smart phones & kids: A slow social change is indicating itself

 

 

TO his four children, the legendary Steve Jobs had not given smart phones. This information may shock all of us. But then, he had decided to keep his kids away from those gadgets until they grew up. ‘I don’t want my kids to go wayward or to get addicted to wrong things at wrong times’, he was reported to have told a neighbour (who was also his partner in business) when the latter had come over with his family for dinner. Of course, try to talk to average Indian parents about this issue and most of them will tell you openly and clearly that smart phones have become a necessity today and that kids must be given those gadgets. Obviously, the average Indian parents are smarter than Steve Jobs, so to say! Despite this reality, there is good news from this social front -- that at least some Indian parents are beginning to realise the dangers and risks of giving smart phones to their kids who are immature and therefore unaware of how to use and how not to use the gadget. Possibly, a social change appears to be coming over.

 

 

 

Let us wait for that change to fructify in due course of time. But the fact of the matter is that at least at this stage, parental realisation is terribly slow in coming. Meanwhile, a lot of social conversation in the country is dominated by anecdotes of how countless numbers of children in Indian homes have been negatively affected by the addiction to gadgets in general and smart phones in particular. But the loud-thinker has not lost hope. He has been at it -- campaigning against allowing children to get addicted to smart phones. He has found reasons to believe in due time, the average Indian families will realise their folly -- and rectify their thought and action. True, until such a wave overtakes the larger Indian society, a lot of damage may have been done to our youngsters in impressionable age. But then, the loud-thinker has also realised that some good changes take their own, sweet time to come about. Last week, however, a family accosted the loud-thinker on his morning walk in the park. They were a nice foursome -- Papa, Mummy, and two sons. Offering broad smiles, they shared their successful experiment of keeping the two little ones -- possibly aged 12 and 10 years -- away from smart phones.

 

“We have made a conscious decision to do that”, the father said. “We took our sons into confidence, and spent good time with them doing good things, so that they do not get gravitated to mobile phones,” he added. Then the mother took over: “We also went to their school to talk about this issue to the teachers and the principal. We convinced them that they should not share home assignments with the kids on phones. After some difficulty, we won the argument. Now, at least our sons do not get their home assignments on phones, she said. That was a good example to know -- and quote subsequently. The loud-thinker knows that the number of such families is growing. That is the point of hope -- though a faint one. After all, hope is the potion that keeps us going.