Kids are getting wiser
than most of their parents in relation to this evolving digital technology. Since
these kids are ushered into this era of information technology which many of
their parents are still continually wrestling and attempting to master. In the
future, this Net Generation also known as N-Geners as author Don Tapscott in
his book Growing Up Digital has described
will ultimately rule and an undesirable prophecy will be realized, the children
will rule the nations. Men have cowered and the children rule.
Because most parents of today are unwilling to learn and familiarize the new technology, the intricacy of computers and the Internet, the inevitable consequence of offsprings getting more knowledgeable about the technology than their average parents can achieved. A new rule of the game will take shape in the coming age and it will be dictated by inexperienced and tender shoot Internet- savvy kids.
The parents who are reluctant to adapt these changes will surely suffer from the unparalleled revolt that will rock many parents-children relationships. These wise kids will begin to craft their own worlds, equipped with customized security measures that many technology-dumb parents can impossibly decipher and decode. With this scenario, the children will begin to assert their rules in this global technology they have freely accessed and mastered. Was the Lebanese philosopher, Khalil Gibran had precisely predicted when he had penned these lines on his poem entitled Children?
“Your children are
not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them
your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”
Love alone can conquer this fear. If parents can nurture love in the hearts of their children, surely the unwanted rebellion against parental authorities will be preempted. Only this unconditional love of parents to their children can conquer such threatening forces that are now taking shape as a consequence of the emergence of this powerful electronic technology, the computers and the Internet. The parents of today are the products of a bygone culture where militarism and the enforcement of discipline using physical as well as verbal abuse was the normal mode. Our children today are literally shielded by advocacies of children’s rights and welfares that are spelled into laws of the land. And such laws will be shrewdly used by some children as their license to challenge all our presently established social boundaries, which was intended to maintain peace and order of the society. Will this democratization of knowledge via the revolution of electronic technology and brazenly poured into the hands of inexperienced youth could lead to an unavoidable catastrophic anarchy?
The adult parents must humbly admit and accept that their children are getting the upper hand in this race towards achieving mastery over our digital technology. The fact that our children are born in an era when the computer technology and the powerful Internet are becoming widely accessible; it’s a metaphor that our children are born with hands and fingers ready to tap computer keyboards. It was not the sucklings and thumb suckings that today’s babes will easily learn, children are destined to embrace this phenomenal on-line, and hooked up environment, and it was the flashes of digital cameras that greeted them first when they were laid at the delivery tables of hospitals. And while they were still unborn inside their mothers’ wombs, it was the electronic ultrasound apparatus that have detected their heartbeats and have generated their 3D images on their fetal curling position while floating in amniotic fluids inside the wombs, and their genders were determined in advance.
The parents who have basic understanding about the technology of today will inevitably become ignorant of the relentlessly evolving technology in the future which only the adaptive minds of our young kids can surely catch up. As parent’s capacity to learn declines in direct proportion to regressing old age, in contrast with their progeny’s expansion of mental absorption, the latter will definitely outran their parents in this speed-light race against these unending technology innovations.
Our children’s adeptness with the new technology is no guarantee for them for an ultimate success to cope against future uncertainties. While parents are seasoned with experiences in handling and overcoming numerous difficulties in the past, sadly they are also handicapped by the lack of knowledge on the intricacy of this ubiquitous new technology found in the digital world.
It will take uncommon humility for parents to admit of their children’s supremacy in the latter’s control and adaption of this dynamic technology. It is a common fear among adults and parents that such admittance of inadequacy before young kids could mean an erosion of parental authorities that are welded naturally over our emotionally charged juveniles. This could be hard reality for many parents, an unharnessed walking through a tightrope. The unmarried adults and childless couples are spared from this dilemma, but they too will feel the inevitable result of young peoples’ dominance over this digital conundrum.
There is a need for parents and children to forge mutual agreements. The young ones expertise must be tempered by their parents’ emotional stabilities rightfully gained through deep and sustained experiences in coping with unpredictable troubles. The young ones must also acknowledge that their untested emotions must be guided by a strong parental support. Kids’ technology expertise when teamed up with parents emotional maturity, it could be a superb combination to cope up all future uncertainties brought by this perpetually moving technological innovations.
The attainment of parent’s maturity is a function of time and the element of vulnerability from painful consequences resulting from trial and error decision makings that took place in the past. The youth just lacked the time necessary for gaining emotional maturity. There is no shortcut for gaining such essential virtue for survival. It takes time. However, the youths have gained intellectual advancement as compared to their parents’ turtle -pace with just an increment of time.
The kids were internally pre-casted to embrace the external digital world. It was a metaphor that our young kids’ inner content is completely compatible with the outer context of this digital world. When the internal content compatibly aligns with the external context, what unimaginable result will come out from it? This same is true with our inexperience youths. The parents should accept this fact. Unless parents humbly accept this reality of their children’s ability of learning the technology faster than what the former can absorb in this ever mutating digital technology and that are unraveling before us.