Susan Pozo Francisco Baptista

TFL 05 April 4th 2016

Why should parents care about the environment their children live? Isn’t it just a change of time and
technology upgrading our way of living? Or is technology and automatization taking man into a
zombiefied cash-less society were people don’t have opinions and just work, consume and die?

Children nowadays cannot live without technology. It is very painful to see a 4-year-old using a cell
phone to play all-day. When I was growing up the only thing I had was my imagination and regular toys,
then came Atari and Nintendo and entertainment changed. A child nowadays is so disconnected to
reality that it is scary. It is a must for parents to return to the countryside to enjoy what’s left with their
children. A simple fire, star-gazing and camping can really change the perception of a little being.

Activities for the little ones have changed drastically in the lapse of these past years. Young people use
to play much more outdoors, breathe fresh air and use their bodies to get dirty and play with mud, stick
and stones. Even girls use to play simple games such as hopscotch or hide-and seek. Great games for
boys like spinning- tops or cacho were made out of wood and ropes. Another favorite game was
marbles. Of course all these games disappeared in the 80’s when videogame consoles arrived. I
remember clearly when my first Atari arrived home. Very poor graphics and degraded sound, but the
hype of interacting with such a futuristic device was all it took to get me hooked. After a couple of years
came Nintendo and Super Nintendo. Both of this I played until I discovered music.

But for other individuals playing digital games never ends. This recent decade has groomed a legion of
adult gamers that live to play. And this is not an understatement. Professional gamers use adult diapers
to keep playing on-line games till they become champions. There is literally people that play video-
games for entire days and forget about using the restroom, taking a shower or eating a regular meal.
They do it all in front of the screen. This is where it gets a little awkward. Why are young generations
more concerned about their on-line profiles than their own real lifes? Why do young people think that
technology is so harmless that they need to have it 24 hours a day? This is called dependency and like a
drug or a bad-habit; it can destroy lives. A good example is a kid that will do anything to get a
videogame. And there are even cases that young people have committed suicide and blamed it on the
video-games. Of course one cannot blame art for a violent action. Because these games started as digital
art, elaborate coded-software that transforms into a beautiful virtual reality. How can these be a bad
thing? The platform itself is not responsible for bad deeds, but most of the time modern video-games
portray a very violent reality. War games and hit-men games such as Assassin’s Creed motivate gamers
to keep the body-count up. The more you kill, the more you become an expert gamer. Other video-
games like GTA (Grand theft auto) show kids how to participate in illicit behavior such as robbing cars or
stomping pedestrians for extra points. All these games (although they are R-Rated which means they are
not suitable for children) make a way into the children’s home because if not purchased parents expect
a temper tantrum that can last for days.

Do I need to give more examples on how technology is eating-up our children’s minds? I think not.
Technology is very useful most of the times, but children do not need it until they are adolescent.
Teenagers are crazy about their social media sites, and it is impossible for a parent to prohibit the use of
these. But until they become teens, parents are still in control of what their children should or should
not do.