Why your kid should(n’t) use computers

Internet today is filled with parental horror. We often hear of game-addicted kids, or stories of kids being misguided by internet. Parents are panicked and computers are kept away from children.

This unfortunate situation will make the country to lag in future. Because in contrast, other countries encourage children to embrace computing from very early ages. Computer programming is taught at primary schools in Europe. Countries such as England and Belgium have even mandated computer programming from grade 1 onwards.

Why computing?

First, let us see why modern world embraces computing for kids. Today computers are everywhere, they are in your TV, car, phone and the watch. In no-time humans will have computers implanted to their brain too (interested readers may find Elon Musk’s new venture here). Coordinating and communicating with computers (and robots) will be an essential skill of a citizen of tomorrow, just like English, Maths, or Social Studies (BTW, isn’t this already true today?).

But the addiction is real!

If computer education is essential, are all those horror stories meaningless? Unfortunately they are not. The very cause for this is the way we introduce computers to our kids. Most parents use them as a digital ‘nanny’ to keep kids in place. We let them watch excessive amount of video junk (so called nursery rhymes) and install ‘Temple Runner’’ to play with. Essentially we make them victims of technology ‘consumerization’ just for our own ease, whereas they could have been encouraged to be ‘creative’ with technology. This is very much where we go wrong! It’s not the fault of computers, it’s the fault of our parenting.

What to do about it?

Kids learn about the world, the way they are introduced to it. This is true for computers too. There are plenty of ways computers can ‘build creativity’ in children. Instead of watching movies, we may guide kids to ‘make’ a movie. Instead of playing games, teach her to ‘develop’ a game. Rather than watching cartoons, let them ‘create’ an animated story.

Basically introduce computers as a tool to build things. Not only they would learn new skills, but also develop their creativity.

Instead for safety, most parents take the opposite extreme of keeping kids completely away from computers. Unfortunately this is simply counterproductive. How longer you think, you are able to keep kids away from computers? Its inevitable sooner or later children would gain access to this powerful tool which can be used for good or for a greater bad. Kids who lack knowledge and have had no guidance on what to do with it are the one to easily fall into the traps of the evil. Right guidance is always better than keeping in dark, because it’s only a matter of time otherwise.

Why is this so difficult?

I know most parents would say this is easier said than done. True, lack of awareness, knowledge and tooling is the primary challenges to controlled computer education for children. To make this possible, parents must be equipped with proper tools and should have knowhow to guide the kids to be creative with computers.

Understandably, not all parents have this knowledge. This is where MakerSpaces such as IgniterSpace may help you. IgniterSpace teaches kids computer programming (coding) from 5 years onwards. The tools are highly gamified and practical to keep kids interested. Staff also assists parents to setup their computers as a safe work environment for kids. After every coding activity, the parent brief contains information on the tools and the setup.

Note: Mandate for my kids

On a personal note, I have 2 boys. One is 6 years old and the other is 11. For anyone interested, here is the setup I have for them at my home computer (a laptop).

— Kids have a separate user account on which which new software installations are prohibited. All of the necessary software (such as Scratch) are preinstalled.

— This kid’s account can only be accessed during a predefined time table of the week. Allowed times are when I’m at home.

— Laptop has wifi enabled all the time. This is important to improve ‘learnability’ of the kids. I want them to learn to use internet for efficient knowledge acquisition.

— It has just one internet browser software installed. This browser is heavily armed with parental control plugins. It is practically impossible to access any web page having inappropriate content.

— I can monitor the browsing history from any other computer at anytime, and I do this regularly and discuss/help with the kids on their search phrases.

— There is one simple rule on playing games: “If you want to play games, develop it first”. Basically they can’t play games that are not made by them.

I hope you will find this post helpful in guiding your children on computers. Leave a comment with your experience on the subject.