Mum Anna’s oldest daughter is just seven years old but she’s already feeling the effects of technology as her friends are less interested in connecting and more interested in their phones.
I’m a Pilates teacher and mum living in Wiltshire with three small children. The “world of tech” feels like it is coming towards us like a freight train as our eldest daughter turns seven and is about to move to a new, bigger school.
My daughter recently told me that she felt she had lost connection with a couple of older girlfriends of hers because when she sees them they are “on their phones and not interested in spending time with me”. It made me think of when I was growing up. I had the privilege of spending time with some older girls at a camp. I admired them and they had so much time for me and my friends. It was the time before smart phones, and they had nowhere else to “connect” to, other than to us, adoring young fans! To this day we are the greatest of friends.
My husband and I have a vision that offers an alternative approach to giving smart phones to our kids before a certain age. How about we put technology in its proper place? Let’s avoid “cultural capitulation” as Andy Crouch puts it, and just do what everyone else is doing without thinking it through and being informed about the consequences.
My daughter told me that she felt she had lost connection with some older girlfriends because they are “on their phones and not interested in spending time with me”.
The community we are building is called PIGS (parents information group for smartphones!). It is a platform that is informative, supportive and offers an alternative to how society and families are currently dealing with tech. The first step is to encourage families to delay giving their kids a smart phone.
We are hoping to build a community to give kids the space and time to develop face to face communication skills, enhance their natural creativity and enable them to embrace the opportunities ahead of them. The greater the number of families that choose to delay giving their kids a smart phone the better.
Like most things in life there are age appropriate limits in order to keep us safe from harm. The internet gives us unlimited access to anything you could think of and wouldn’t want to think of! We know how useful smart phones can be, but there is an increasing body of evidence to suggest they can also cause a huge amount of damage from anxiety, loneliness, bullying, sexting, under age introduction to pornography, grooming, identity theft and more.
A third of children aged eight to 15 who go online said they had seen something worrying or nasty.
Head teacher, Katherine Birdalsingh urged parents to restrict children’s access to mobile phones, saying “all problems start with them”. You can read more about that in the Telegraph. A third of children aged eight to 15 who go online said they had seen something worrying or nasty. 60 per cent of parents with children aged eight to eleven have an online profile, despite the official age limit being 13+.
This means we as parents need to be ahead of the game when it comes to how our kids use these devices, so they are protected. We need to take time to understand how to restrict devices. Unlimited and unrestricted internet enabled access limits our most important basic human need, which is for connection. Smartphones are posing as these connectors but they are not fulfilling the roll, therefore humans are becoming more lonely and insecure. Have a look at this article with more details.
We are passionate about leading our kids into a faith filled life where they can rely on Jesus to go before them, be beside them and have their back through thick and thin.
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