Today’s reflections are a slight aberration from my normal thoughts. They come more from a culmination of years of teaching young children and observing some trends in that time. I would like to make a note of my observations here.
It’s an undeniable truth that since its inception, the internet, and all the devices linked to it, has held so many innumerable people hostage. As time goes by, there is a burgeoning amount of material (most of it useless) that is available to view online. The youth, in particular, have succumbed to this consumerism. However, even younger children aren’t immune from this phenomenon. Although they may not have necessarily been poisoned yet by the nefarious vicissitudes of social media, they definitely are drowning in the addiction of entertainment that online gadgets bring.
The result is an impatience or restlessness with things not related to flashing screens. Anything outside of that which requires more than just a cursory understanding, seems to vy for the attention of young minds. Obviously, I’m referring to their education first and foremost. Where parts of that are still conducted through the more traditional means of pen and paper and books, there seems to be a paucity of interest. How many occasions have I sat with the children I tutor and noticed a lack of presence? It’s not just that they are children and are inherently predisposed to distraction. I get that. What I have noticed in recent years is different. It’s almost as if this newest generation finds being in a lesson as a rude interruption to their busy schedules at home in front of a screen of some sort.
Of course, the overwhelming majority of children I have tutored have actually succeeded at the task at hand and done very well. But it’s sometimes been a tortuous and painful process to get there. I wonder about the trajectory of these childrens’ lives in years to come in the sphere of learning. There will be exponentially more distractions for them to contend with as the internet takes over their lives at dizzying rates. Soon, there will no longer be a generation that laments the loss of a good book on the shelf because they will never have known that pleasure in the first place.
Perhaps I have a romantic nostalgia for the past – the way things were. I’m sure our hunter- gatherer forefathers would have looked on in horror had they seen the way modern-day man lives now. But there does genuinely seem to be a startling change in the preoccupations of this generation compared to preceding ones. They can connect to all corners of the world at lightning speed and yet the irony is they are disconnected from reality. Children and young adults have real problems interacting in the public domain in person; sensibilities and sensitivities are ultra-fragile. The resilience needed to withstand disappointment in life seems to have withered away. Their virtual reality has become the one in which they live and their actual living is done through the inane world that exists on the other side of their screen.
I have seen young people waste away in front of screens and yet fail to understand the indisputable link between that sedentary existence and depression. Simple truth is they need to be off-line and switched on to so much more that the world has to offer or even what they can offer to the world. Physical exercise and being out in the open are the best antidotes to the many woes people face, young and old. Moving away from an existence which nature intended is a recipe for disaster. We were never designed to lead a passive and solitary life allegedly interacting in such an artificial way. Covid definitely taught us that valuable lesson.
For myself, I continue to endeavour to be master of my mobile phone. I want to keep it at arm’s length and limit the way it has a pernicious hold on my life. For every unnecessary minute I engage with it, I have lost a precious minute gazing at the sky or something else which is beautiful in the natural world. I value the time I have left in this world too much to miss on the small but wondrous things life has to offer.
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