Maybe We Did Not Turn Out Alright But How Is The Information Age Faring?
Midway into a meeting where matters of strategic importance were being discussed and decisions that would affect the company’s foreseeable future were being debated, with everyone worthy of the titles above the doors to their offices putting forth their best arguments. Unbeknownst to me, a colleague, we shall call her Zipporah, was having none of it and had zoned out, gotten absorbed in deep thought, and then with the zeal of an epiphany had turned to me and said she would soon be taking a leave of absence from work to reflect and make decisions around never having to do any unpaid work for the company again. — Some form of existential crisis had ensued.
Later on, after the “adults” had left the room, with our cups of tea in hand, I callously responded to her by saying that it was all her fault. The shock on her face was palpable. I offered to explain. This is a situation she had allowed to happen, I started. People treat you how you teach them to and they will always gorge on any encouragement extended to them. If you always avail yourself for tasks with no clear objectives and set terms, no questions asked, then complain not, when the predators devour your docile and unreservedly submissive self to smithereens.
The conversation glided on and somewhere as we had the back and forth I conceded that more factors were to blame for the predicament she now seemingly helplessly found herself in. Whereas some philosophers like Plato and Descartes argued that certain traits are inherent and occur naturally regardless of environmental influences, it was not to be overlooked that most of our upbringing in these parts of the world was inadvertently geared at taming our sense of inquisitiveness. We were raised to believe that elders were always right, never to question those in authority, to do exactly as we were told, no questions asked, and patiently wait for our turn to become elders then visit the same exact totalitarianism upon our children and the cycle goes on. A structure that partly explains why some adults today are timid, low on confidence, incapable of public speech, unable to ably fully express their innate genius, et cetera.
Undoubtedly, this approach of old, created rebels of its own, the ones who turned out to have a hostile relationship with all forms of authority. — Fireplace discussion for another time.
It, therefore, came with little surprise that it took repeated encumbrance of Zipporah’s rights and entitlements for her to realise that something was terribly amiss. All this didn’t occur to her quicker and more naturally because of years of hardline gruelling and conditioning.
Contrarily, the cycle alluded to won’t go uninterrupted for far longer. Needless to say, we are not our parents, neither are we our grandparents and as much of a cliche as it may sound, times have indeed changed. This is the information age! In the '90s and at the dawn of the millennium, my old man religiously bought and collected Newspapers which he guarded rather jealously, however, with the advent of the internet and the News going digital, he quickly discarded the practice because a simple single-word search on any search engine of choice now returned millions or even billions of results in a matter of microseconds.
With that level of unprecedented access to information, the parenting dynamics have inevitably had to shift. It is now no longer enough to issue instructions to children and back them up only by one’s position of being a parent, the merits of the same ought to be explained and they should make sense. For instance, it is not sufficient to simply require a six-year-old in this day to march into bed at 8 p.m. as the adults go about with their lives, without convincingly explaining to them the variance in biological needs pertaining to rest.
The larger drawback of this tech phenomenon and inexorable access to information, however, is that we have exposed these young minds to information and stimulation beyond their needs. You will be displeased to hear — if you aren’t doing it yourself — that social media applications like TikTok have replaced nannies and are therefore the new babysitters, children as young as 10 months respond to the app quite well, and that is only one of about 50 social media applications. The net extent of the damage from these actions on these infants and toddlers will only be better understood perhaps 20 or 30 years from today.
To offer you a sneak peek though, knowing the uncensored content on the internet, according to zerotothree.org, babies that miss consistent loving support from adults in their lives are deeply affected by trauma, causing their brains to become primed to react to the world in fear. In essence, it becomes more difficult over time for them to access their “thinking brain” (the cerebral cortex) and majorly function from their limbic system (“the caveman brain”). I will leave the finer details of the risks imbedded therein to your imagination.
It nevertheless goes without saying that some parents have taken their roles quite seriously and whereas they are cognizant of the fact that handing tech gadgets to their toddlers is nearly inescapable, they have gone on to deploy control measures ranging from the kind of content that is accessible to the hours of usage per week, God bless their hearts.
Our parents and their parents before them, with the information they had, did what they knew how best to do. With an avalanche of information today, the responsibility is heavier on us to not only know and do better but also to raise better offspring.
ThE LAst TeSO cHieF.
