Hello World: Technology and Human Development
I was sitting at dinner the other night, enjoying my sushi and the company I was with. I have often found that attention to cell phones takes away from the experience of having a meal with people. To combat the constant distraction, my friends and I challenge ourselves by placing our phones in a stack in the middle of the dinner table, and the first person to grab their phone from the pile has to pay for drinks. Its a fun game, but in reality it changes the way we interact. Removing the distraction that we all are constantly attracted to allows us to have more interactive, attentive, and genuine conversation. During this meal in particular, my friends and I were abiding by the rules of the game and were very present with one another. This concept of “being present” allowed me to not only be engaged with the people I was with, but also with my surroundings in the restaurant.
I found myself tuning in to the group seated next to us. I was not trying to be nosey or intrusive, but people interest me and I realize that simple actions can really tell a lot about personal and group dynamics. I was in close proximity to a family seated next to me and was paying attention while remaining incognito. One member of the family specifically caught my attention. It was a young boy who must have been around the age of 4 or 5, and was very obviously the youngest in the family. The rest of the table consisted of two parents, and two girls that seemed to be in there middle-school years. What caught my eye about the young boy was his unruly behavior. You could see the tired, annoyed expressions of the mother trying to deal with the whining and misbehavior of her son. He would not eat his food, would cry when his mom would force him to eat, and was clearly causing the family’s meal to be more of a burden than an enjoyable experience.
Now, this behavior is nothing atypical to behavior of a boy this age, so that was not why I found this story worth telling. What made this occurrence so alarming to me was the way the parents handled the behavior.
As the older sisters sat on there phones, scrolling through whatever nonsense was more important to them than their family dinner, the mother clearly wanted nothing more than her son’s behavior to end. In order to do this, she reached down into her purse and pulled out a screen, navigated to her son’s favorite game, and handed it to him at the table. Immediately the boy settled down and was content with the situation, he played on the screen at the table while his parents tried to enjoy the rest of the meal in peace.
The reason I tell this story is because I am becoming increasingly aware of what technology is accomplishing and affecting in our society today. What did this parental response do to the boy? How does this distraction and reward contribute to his development as a young human?
Seeing normal methods of parenting being compromised by the use of technology most definitely has an impact on all affected by it. Psychology is very important topic to me. In the most real sense of it, psychology is one’s reality.
Specifically, developmental psychology is fascinating to me. Nature vs. nurture has been one of the most heavily debated and talked about topics in psychology throughout history. It is clear to me that the way we are raised and what our environment brings to us, strongly affects the people we eventually become. There are reasons we are punished as children; we learn from mistakes.
I worry that the overwhelming presence of technology will have a negative affect on the way we develop throughout our ever-changing lives. We are undergoing constant growth and are always being affected by things present in our environment. I intend to use this forum to dive into some potential issues that technology can bring to personal psychological development, and how to possibly combat the negative affects of it. There are many positives to technology, but like anything, too much of something can often be detrimental.
