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Strollerderby
I’m posting from Buenos Aires today, where I’ll be spending a month with my family visiting my husband’s parents. It took me three days after arriving to get my various electronic devices up and running so I could surf the web, post to my blogs and charge my camera batteries.
Last time we were here, I just left all that behind. But even on vacation, I’m not willing to walk away from my precious Internet connection these days. That makes me pretty typical, the Washington Post says. Teens are the biggest culprits when it comes to staying plugged in on vacation, but parents are guilty too.
A lot of parents think taking technology on vacation is wrecking an old tradition, but for others, it’s just a sign of the times. Obviously, I’m in the latter camp.
Writer Steph Thompson wrote Does My Blackberry Make Me a Bad Parent? for Babble earlier this month, and this morning, she copped to her answer on CNN: Yes, yes it does. In the video, she says she was listening to her kids on autopilot, with more of her mind on her email than on their stories of field days, and a CNN reporter describes her as addicted: the Blackberry that makes her constantly available to others is making her unavailable to her children. “Don’t you worry that you’re taking your eye off the ball, so to speak–your child?” Continue reading »
It’s a technology backlash: the New York Times has Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price. Here at Babble, we offer Does My Blackberry Make Me a Bad Parent? Our smartphones were our saviors, allowing us to watch a Little League Game even while we waited for an important but unpredictable call and to vacation while keeping an eye on an important project–but now, those are exactly the things we’re not supposed to do. Without defending the parent texting away while his child plays in the street, can we take a step back and remember the way things used to be?
A still from the 3D, online game the couple was addicted to, courtesy of CNN.
You’re not gonna believe this.
A couple in South Korea were convicted Friday of letting their newborn daughter starve to death while they “addictively played an online game raising a virtual child.”
I know. I know, I know. But it gets worse.
The couple were sentenced to two years in prison – just two years! – but the mother’s term was suspended because – drum roll, please – she’s pregnant. And, according to the AP, “The mother will avoid jail time if she stays out of trouble for three years.” Ummmmm…… please tell me you’re not going to let this woman raise another child. You’re taking her baby away the second it’s born, right? Continue reading »
Maybe you’ve seen the signs on the highway: Give a laptop. Change the world.
The One Laptop Per Child project says its mission is to “create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.”
OLPC founder and MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte says, “When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.”
Really? Haven’t we been talking a lot lately about how technology is disconnecting us from our kids and disconnecting our kids from the world around them? Just the other night I was lecturing my 12-year-old niece about how if she never stops texting people she’s not with, she’s never really with the people she’s with. (Even saying that to myself makes my head spin.)
The laptop project is in the news because OLPC announced yesterday that they’ve partnered with Marvell, a computer chip and silicon manufacturer, “to develop a new family of tablet computers for the project.” The price of the tablets, to be used for education and health care in the US, “is supposed to hover around $100, but Mr. Negroponte said the ones distributed by the project could cost less, possibly $75.”
According to The New York Times,“the new tablets will offer a bevy of high-tech parts, including a full high-definition video encoder and 3-D graphics chip. In addition, the tablet will have a built-in video and still camera, a multitouch display and a soft keyboard similar to that of the Apple iPad.” Mr. Negroponte said, “the tablets will have a clean design, and be thin, measuring a height of 10.8 millimeters.” The iPad measures 12.7 millimeters.
So is this about the kids or the computers? Continue reading »
My 4-year-old is always on her toy cell phone, talking to her “sister,” jotting down phone numbers and making imaginary plans with imaginary friends. Occasionally she’ll man two phones at the same time, and once she even got a text letting her know her neighbor had developed breast cancer. The kids these days! LULLABY! (Laughing Uber Loud Like A Baby’s Yell.) That being said, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that “almost half of the top 100-selling apps in the iTunes App Store were for preschool or elementary-aged children in November 2009,” according to a piece by CNN, the headline simply reading, “Parents using smartphones to entertain bored kids.”
Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve never liked watching children play with handheld devices in public. I was 12 when Nintendo introduced the first Gameboy back in 1989, and I remember seeing kids in restaurants as young as 5-years-old ferociously thumbing away at the controls while their parents stared off into space. My parents and I loved going out to dinner together, talking through the whole meal. (Or at least until the cheese-covered onion rings hit the table.) Continue reading »
Whether or not you’re one of the lucky ones to have an Apple iPad in your hot little hands after this past weekend’s release, chances are your kids — if they’re under the age of 10 — will end up with an iPad-like computer in the not-too-distant future. It may not be an actual iPad or even come from Apple Computer, but the odds are even that they’ll end up with a touchscreen computer in five years’ time.
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