Like many parents, Rosanna and I are concerned about our kids’ obsession with “technology”, so we tried “tech free Saturdays”, and it worked for about an hour (I — more than slightly ironically — spent that hour with the girls playing with an Elenco electronics set — something far better than the “150-in-one” electronics kit I dreamed of when I was a kid), and then gave up. Short of getting exercise outdoors — which while almost certainly a Good Thing To Do is hardly something of which I am an examplar — what was there to do without “technology”?
I don’t pretend to know what stuff is going to be important to the success of my kids. A lot of the stuff I learned in school has turned out to be useful, or at least makes for interesting conversation (apparently, most people forget almost everything they learned in school, and — having had no interest in it when they were 14, find it intriguing as adults). But the most useful stuff I learned as a kid is the stuff society — i.e. teachers and parents — made me feel guilty about spending time on. And I don’t think this is rare. I think it’s the people who were obsessed with computer games, or Science Fiction, or Dungeons & Dragons, back in 1982, who are creating the world we live in today.
We won (or, at least, we’re ahead — when we all die young from heart disease and diabetes because we never get any exercise, the jocks from high school whose knees still work can gloat).
And having won by willfully ignoring society’s ideas of what a “healthy” obsession was when we were kids, who are we to impose our ideas of what a “healthy” obsession is on our kids? Well, we’re parents, of course, and “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds”. Perhaps we’re just that much smarter than our parents and teachers.
Another possibility that occurs to me is that a passion for anything — programming, role-playing games, the collected works of Jack Vance — only turns into something powerful and character-building if it involves pushing against social pressure. In other words, it’s OK for us to try to stop our kids from doing what they want to do, but it’s even better if they defy us and it anyway.
In the end, I don’t mind if my kids are obsessed with Minecraft, or even Youtube. What worries me is that its too easy to feed those obsessions, and I don’t think technology is the problem. But, having said that, my father narrowly avoided the Holocaust and my mother lived through famine and the Vietnam War, whereas I had to cope with the poor selection of science fiction in local libraries and the fact that our school only had one Apple II computer.