Land n Sand Jan / Feb 2014 | Page 28

“As a geek, what irks me the mos Technology is not the problem. W assumptions and our lack of faith in o We run: We know we cannot and will never understand technology enough to keep up with them. It is completely alien to the way in which we learned to survive on the planet and there is so much negative press about it that we just ban it all together. We did not have computers, cell phones, the Internet, Facebook, computer games or Xboxes and we have managed to survive and flourish in this world so our kids should also be able to without all this technological paraphernalia. W ell we do what humans do when they’re terrified – we fight, we run, or we freeze. We fight: We find ourselves continuously at war with our kids over technology. We freak out, become extraordinarily strict about screen time and device usage and fluctuate between allowing it and banning it all together. Our children think we’re unreasonable, we’re at our wits end and we blame the ongoing angst in our family squarely at the foot of technology We freeze: We accept that we cannot even begin to understand this world that they are so much a part of, so we give up. We allow them free reign to do whatever it is they need to do and retreat into our old-fashioned world of books and newspapers and the afternoon soap. We give them whatever they need to keep them happy like a contract at the local Internet Cafe, a new plasma TV or a game they say is awesome called GTA. As a geek, what irks me the most is that technology gets blamed all the time. Technology is not the problem. We are. It is our fear, our lack of knowledge, our assumptions and our lack of faith in ourselves and in our children that is the problem.