As Responsible Digital Mentors....

Let’s Stop the Blame game Please!

Today’s kids are almost always accused and blamed for being over-addicted to their smart phones!

[A generation ago, they were accused of spending much time on the internet!]

Well, the very concept of blaming or accusing another person makes you ‘feel’ elevated or superior to your intended ‘victim’, while the accused or the blamed, gets an inferior standing in their scheme of things.

Let’s put our hands to our hearts and ask ourselves, ‘What would we have done, as kids, in such a situation?’

Almost the same, or sometimes even more I guess! 

Unfortunately we didn’t have access to the digital sphere back then. That doesn’t mean we have to always assume the ‘holier-than-thou’ elevated status and constantly blame our today’s kids for their excessive ‘addiction’ to the digital!

Mother Teresa once famously said, ‘If you judge people, you have no time to love them.’

So yes! Let’s not blame our today’s kids for their ‘addiction’ to the smartphones! Instead let’s love them for who they are! For what they mean to us! I'm doubly confident and sure that they'd make us all proud exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think! 

Those of us from the 70s and 80s who haven’t had the privilege of growing up with gadgets, had our own unique ways of entertaining ourselves, ain't we?

The basic human instinct for harmony, balance, rhythm in life we too achieved through our own sweet ways of entertainment!

We had our own ways of amusement and entertainment like visiting the libraries or watching Doordarshan or watching the royal Russian circus, etc.

But today’s kids have a different mode of entertainment altogether!

They are, in today’s parlance, ‘digital natives’!

As such, blaming them on being excessively addicted to their smart phones is not right in any way, ain’t it? The legendary Stephen Hawking himself vouches to this fact! 

The only way in which we could possibly approach this issue, as responsible digital mentors would be, to help them downsize their time on the digital sphere. 

Probably we could suggest that they wean themselves away from the digital for at least eight hours a day - 1/3rd of a day, and help them channelise their creative quotient sky-high on the digital sphere.

I’ve personally seen our students do extremely well on the digital sphere – be it in graphic designing, or in their You Tube presentations, or in their podcasts - with such finesse and aplomb!

So yup! Let’s stop blaming today’s generation for their excessive use of the smart phone. It’s like throwing mud on ourselves!

Like we had our own sweet channels of entertainment, they have theirs!

They are also human, like you, and me and we! 

To each [generation] their aura!

And let’s start celebrating it!

PS: Three decades ago, we all were glued to our Doordarshan for our sports, our news, our breakfast ‘keep fit shows’, for our oliyum oliyum, etc. Back then, Doordarshan was the only player in the ‘telecasting’ industry. This diary entry that dates back to almost three decades ago, provided me with the spark and the impetus for this post!