Theme is innocence and epiphanies - Essay Example

According to a New York Times piece this January, the normal child, ages 8-18, uses over 7 ? hours a day with technology gadgets almost 5 hours of TV and films, equaling 2 ? hours of music, three hours of video games and internet, and only 30 minutes of traditional reading. This technology use, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, sums up to an overwhelming 75 hours a week (Stone 1). This information is not just sheer figures. However, they are a manifestation of the way the world is heading.

There is a direct connection of the amount of time spent with gadgets and poor grades, obesity, violence, impatience, and mainly a loss of family interest. Therefore, it is safe to argue that children today still experience epiphanies from their daily experience within a technologically infused society (Stone 1). “Thinking, the ability to reason and reflect accurately, draws conclusions derived from our experiences, insights and knowledge. Thinking is what makes us human and has permitted us to create, communicate, build, progress and become civilized.

It encompasses so many phases of who our children are, as well as what they do, from learning, observing, questioning, remembering, and judging to innovating, deciding, arguing and performing” (Taylor 1). Families are being hurt by all of the new innovation. When a cluster of 4-6 year olds were asked to select between watching a television program and spending quality time with their parents along with siblings, 54% of them considered watching TV (Stone 1). In addition, according to a similar survey reported by the A.C. Nielson Company, the normal parent spends three and a half minutes only in a week to have meaningful discussions with their children.

Technology is shaping a generation gap, which makes parents feel left out as they cannot relate to what their children are doing (Stone 1). Whether child recognition of their parents’ experiences or students paying attention in class, a child’s immediate surrounding establishes the kind of attention, which he/she will develop. In generations past, for instance, children dedicated considerable sums of their time to studying, an activity which offered few interruptions and needed both intense and sustained attention, memory and imagination (Taylor 1).

The arrival of the television among other gadgets altered that concentration by providing children visual incentives, disjointed attention, as well as little need for imagination. Then the Internet was established, and children were propelled into an immensely different environment in which, since entertainment is the culture, consistent concentration is impractical, imagination is needless and memory is subdued. “Technology sets the mind to pay attention to information extremely differently compared to reading.

The metaphor, which Nicholas Carr adapts is the difference between jet skiing and scuba diving. Book reading is similar to scuba diving whereby the diver is submerged in a silence, visually controlled, negligent setting with few interruptions, and, as a result, is forced to focus intently and think intensely on the restricted information, which is available at that time. In comparison, using the Internet is similar to jet skiing, whereby the jet skier is skimming extremely fast along the surface of the water, open to