PAEDIATRICIANS used to tell parents to let the child be a child. This was before most things around us went online.
Now that our children live and play mostly in the digital world, that medical advice of old must be given a new urgency.
Already, newspapers like The Economist are reporting cases of teddy bears turning into sex toys. Soon paedophiles would be roaming our streets as freely as foreign fortunetellers did in the recent past.
We can’t deny that technology like artificial intelligence (AI) brings with it opportunities.
The child at home and at school today are not the same when the Internet wasn’t even a word.
Parents often shift the blame to teachers when technology reshapes childhood. But the problem starts at home. Just take a stroll along malls and one will notice toddlers playing games on devices all their own.
They may have started with cartoons but gaming is just a step or two away.
By the time the child gets to school, it is a little late in the day to do any taming of technology. It takes time to turn “robots” into humans again.
What was encouraged by the parents to keep the children quiet —pacifiers of the digital age? —has now turned into addiction.
There is even a word for it: Internet gaming disorder (IGD), a result of persistent and repetitive gaming leading to social withdrawal and loss of interest in other activities.
The social beings that we humans are supposed to be have been made into robots. This is the consequence of leaving every man to his own devices, pardon the pun.
So we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that 55.7 per cent of Malaysian children reportedly spent between one and four hours online was each day last year, with 60.7 per cent of them using their own devices.
The findings were made known in the Dewan Rakyat by the Special Select Committee on Women, Children and Community Development chairman Yeo Bee Yin. A study involving 5,290 adolescents conducted in seven states, says about 3.5 per cent were diagnosed with IGD, lending support to the national worry.
Extrapolating, she reasoned that this could mean 315,000 children nationwide are down with IGD, enough reason to stop the slide any further.
But for those who think that they can wait, here is a more dark and dangerous risk: nearly half the sexual crimes online involve children.
As The Economist says, we must rethink the business of growing up. The word “business” is an unfortunate use, but apt in another way.
Human life in the technology-infested world —from childhood to old age —is a hurried one.
In this time-is-money world, we have somehow forgotten to live the only life we have been given. This means going back to basics.
Rethinking growing up means parents learning how to be parents again. Abdication of parenting to helpers and teachers will only worsen Internet addiction.
Only parents can make children real-world ready, not teachers nor Putrajaya.
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
