Elizabeth’s Introduction to the Digital Age

The other day I was babysitting for a friend of mine, helping her third grade son with his homework, when he asked me how much I knew about the Roman Colosseum. Although I’d studied in Rome for a semester while an undergrad, I was embarrassed to admit that aside from providing him with directions to the closest bar to the Colosseum, there wasn’t much I could tell him to further his research for a report that was due the following week. He shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I’ll just Google it.”

I sat there for a second and had my first, “I’m old” moment, for when I was a third grader back in the day, my mom would send me upstairs to the study to sift through the encyclopedias when I needed information. After I came back downstairs and reported my findings, she would sit down, call in my dad, and the two of them would share any additional information they knew about the subject I was searching for. Often the topic would have some relevance to a relative or friend of the family and it wasn’t unusual when my mom recommended that I call my grandma to ask her about the Civil War or get in touch with my sister to ask her a question about biology (she loved science). It was a search that required hard work and dedication, and was often enriched by a personal story (from my grandma or anyone else I was forced to call at 8 pm on a Wednesday night). Although I could summarize the second half of Battelle’s book in great detail, I’d like to reflect on a point that Martin Shore, a California-based real-estate developer mentioned in Chapter 7: Information has replaced relationships.

 This past Sunday, an article appeared in The New York Times, which discussed teens’ reliance on technology and the division this semi-obsession creates among children and parents. The article provided an example of a teenage girl who was riding in a car driven by her dad and sitting with her friends in the backseat. At one point, her dad noticed her frantically texting away and reminded her of how rude that behavior was, especially when she had guests sitting right next to her. This teenage daughter informed her father that he was like so out of it, and that she was totally texting her posse who were sitting in the back seat for her. The article went on to say that technology, including the computer, along with the Internet, “has given even very young children virtual lives distinctly separate from those of their parents and siblings.” How has technology impacted our relationships with members of our own family? How has it inhibited our efforts to make face-to-face contact with each other? What implications will this reliance have on future generations?  Unfortunately, these lackadaisical communication habits are not only done on the phone. In addition to being able to send each other messages instantaneously through social networking sites and instant messenger services, the search component of the Internet also makes information retrieval much easier. Instead of executing extensive research on an obscure topic, students are now able to simply type in a couple of key words and have the needed information within a matter of milliseconds. Individuals no longer have to work hard to seek out information. Why is having all of the necessary information at our fingertips perceived as a positive thing? What are individuals missing out on when they locate information online versus through history books and personal interviews? Additionally, this ability to locate information at the click of a mouse often leads to security concerns which Batetelle discussed. According to an article on MSNBC, 61% of child bloggers provide their full contact information on the Internet. Although Scoble and Israel might promote these open lines of communication, such exposure can be dangerous for children. Even more concerning is that over 1/3 of children have blogs, and only 5% of parents know about them. The MSNBC article recommends that parents utilize the search to locate what information is being made public about their children. It’s a bit ironic to think that the search now becomes a powerful navigational tool for parents, but the same search bar that is helping them locate their children’s information is the same one that countless individuals who are up to no good could have clicked on.  

Individuals’ ability to easily access information via the search function is not  only diminishing the importance of relationships–it’s replacing them. And all those lessons learned from hard work have been thrown out the window with ‘em.