STARING AND TAPPING VS. PLAYING AND CLAPPING?
By: Pranit Singh
Tags: Online Addiction, Happy, Childhood, Parents

I used to stand by the foyer and wait with my brand new maroon-colored Polygon bicycle for my friends at exactly 5:00, sitting there staring blankly into space while tapping my feet monotonously in a complete state of boredom and thinking about all the things I needed to tell my friends until all of them arrived. After everyone arrived we started playing tag with our bodies filled with adrenaline and we jumped into our swimming pool which was filled with joyful laughter and animated faces. Exploring and imagining our next potential games while gazing at the large metallic abandoned buildings in our complex, cycling till our legs ached and our brakes were boiling hot, and not come back until our parents threatened us by banning us from playing the next day.

The eagerness on the next day’s share of fun is what drove us.

Those were the best times of my life, but now modern technology has ruined the children of this age.

Now when I go down to the foyer, I don’t see 12-year-old kids cycling around and laughing but rather see them sitting in the corner huddled together staring at their phones and screaming at each other to “revive” them in the addictive game called PUBG. Their eyes are glued to their screens and are completely oblivious to everything around them making them equivalent to an automaton. They now know how to invite each other online and not know how to tell each other to play basketball or pass them the ball in the final minute of a football match. As we used to dare each other to explore the dark hallways of the underground parking lot, they explore the blue light enriched “maps” of the “new battle royale game”.

These great, fun-filled experiences are what shaped our present, they are not old ideas, but are ideas that are simply ignored. WE CAN CHANGE THAT!

Chartered Psychologist Dr. David Lewis suggests that modern-day kids are in danger of missing out on some of the finest and best of life’s experiences. Some reports reckon that an average person checks their phone up to 1050 times a week. This widespread use of technology trickles down to the youngest members of our families. Data from Britain shows almost 70 percent of “11- to 12-year-olds use a mobile phone and this increases to close to 90 percent by the age of 14.”

The warning that people are losing their lives on their phones comes out of the fear that technology is creating a generation of lonely children who struggle to make friends in the real world, but manage to become friends with grown men from halfway across the world.

Lack of exercise is also a key factor behind soaring levels of obesity, as many youngsters play video games for an average of nearly six hours each week. According to Amy Moes Williams a licensed clinical psychologist, Gamers spend most of their time, approximately 10 hours each week, on their tiny 5.8-inch, 2,436 x 1,125 display with less than half an hour a day on exercise.

Let’s stop them from racing cars on their screens, and start them racing each other outside!

Kids need to be stripped of the habit of taking their gadgets with them while going outside at a young age so that they learn to have fun without their enslaving devices. If your family restricts the phone usage to a minimum, others will follow, you can make the difference, you can be the change. It would be naive of you to watch your child’s childhood slip past without doing anything to change it. So bring this new idea into your family to give your children what they deserve.

Children don’t know what they are missing out on.

But you do.

LEAD THE CHANGE!