Hot Topic: Generation Z and Alpha

I was having lunch alone (as one does) and I noticed the table next to me sat a toddler on a high chair, watching his iPad on the table. He did not have food in front of him, just the iPad and showing the new Cars film (which is a total car wreck by the way, no pun intended). The parents and grandmother were blindly chatting about, and from time to time would feed their little boy pieces of bread or attempt to hold a conversation with him. The boy, obviously, was too mesmerized by the talking cars to respond. And I thought, this is the norm now.

Let's get to it:

Growing up, I was bereft of electronics. I played with barbies, blocks, and I drew blueprints of houses and schools and made up stories about my dolls. I lived in my own imagination and sometimes, I'd live in someone else's by picking up a book, which exercised my imagination even more as I built an entire world in my mind. I loved creating, that's the thing. I wanted to become an architect when I was younger, and I drew houses and rooms and built them with legos and wooden blocks. I, and many others of my generation, created. We planted flowers and rode our bikes to our friends' houses. We would play boggle and monopoly and domino with each other. The world was not mine but ours, and I reveled in the joy of sharing it with the people around me.

But kids nowadays grow up with 10 x 7 inch screens that hold the world for them. These iPads become an extension of their minds and arms. They no longer build what their imagination was capable of. In turn, their minds are constantly searching for quick stimulation.

When I was a kid, eating out with my parents required conversation. I brought nothing to the restaurant but the clothes on my back. If my parents wound up talking to each other, I would still be okay. I'd scan the room and be content with the silence. My hands wouldn't fidget and my brain wouldn't be racking itself for entertainment because my mind knew how to keep myself interested. A painting mounted on the wall would spark an idea or inspire me to paint the next day. A crying child would make me question my own abilities as a mother. I'd create stories about the waiters and what their lives were like.

But kids now would flip out if they didn't have their gadgets. Sitting with their parents would be taxing and a legitimately painful experience. Their brain would search for things, people, paintings, but none would suffice, as they rarely relied on abstract objects to ignite their interests. They needed something obvious, like movies or games, to oil the gears in their minds. They become kids dependent on perpetual mental stimulation.

Although this can be seen as a positive thing, there are drawbacks. I realized that kids now have trouble holding a regular conversation. Talking to them is exasperating because they talk about nothing but what they see on TV or the new Despicable Me game on their iPads or iPhones. They become even more self-absorbed because they never learned to hold a normal, two-sided conversation. I see many families who would prop an iPad and a film in front of their kids during dinner in hopes that they wouldn't cry. Instead of talking to their children, these parents ignored them and allowed their kids to hide in their pixelated world.

I rarely, if ever, hear a young kid ask me about things. Kids are supposed to be inquisitive. I remember asking my parents a million and one questions about the origins of life, about the existence of God and Heaven, about conception (which my mother refused to answer), and even about the rain. But I'm afraid these kids will become ignorant. They neither care about what's going on around them nor do they think it's important to. 

Being left alone in the silence of my own mind enabled me to ask myself and other people questions. It made me observant. I learned to remember certain details and etched it in my long-term memory. I notice the little things, like the color of the curtains in a Chinese restaurant or the funny name of the waitress. But when your brain is transfixed on a single object, you block out everything else. Kids have lost their abilities to think for themselves and to act according to their innate imaginations. I used to draw and write picture books even before school introduced Art and Creative Writing classes. A blank sheet of paper became my Everest. I wrote stories and poetry, drew, made paper planes and made origami swans. I took inspiration from what's around me and made it into my own creation, and I did so in silence. I made hundreds of origami swans, and the silence whilst I folded was so peaceful, so inspiring, that I wish I had the time to do it now.  That's the thing about living without the constant distraction of electronics; it makes you find out what you're mentally and physically capable of.

With their entire lives confined within a thin slate of metal and wires, there is no reason for these kids to engage in the outside world. People are just distractions to what's really going on.

The gadgets can educate children, but it shouldn't be the only way. Playing scrabble with someone through a Pass N' Play on a Scrabble app is not the same as playing it across your friend with scattered tiles. Watching an egg hatch in front of your eyes isn't the same as seeing a Youtube clip of it. Learning comes in different forms, and I feel like the best kinds are the ones from experience.

Now, I'm not saying that we should steal all the electronics in the world and chuck it down to the incinerator. But I think parents shouldn't allow their kids to bring their iPads and laptops in restaurants, and perhaps limit the amount of time they spend on their gadgets. I mean, if Newton wasn't daydreaming outside, the apple wouldn't have fallen on his head and he wouldn't have made the greatest discovery known to man, and if Archimedes didn't realize the water displacement when he entered the bath tub, he wouldn't have screamed, "Eureka!"