To Sputnik--and Beyond!

     One of the biggest blips on the parent radar these days is appropriate use of technology. How much screen time is too much? What are the effects of screen time? How can we mitigate for screen time? What are the dangers/benefits of screen time? Often, I find, it seems to boil down to, is our children’s childhood as good as ours was?

            Let me just say here that I am not worried. Inasmuch as every generation struggles to accept (and understand) the next, technology is our crux point. 

 My mom, who’s eighty, recalls looking up at the night sky in early October of 1957 to see Sputnik, the first satellite in outer space (launched by the Russians, throwing the world into cold war). She says she was much more interested in her upcoming wedding night than anything else, and had no inkling of the significance of that basketball-sized object orbiting earth.

            Zana’s mom, my grandmother Tina, was born into a Mennonite village in Tsarist Russia—in the 1800s! Imagine the changes and adaptations she had to accept over her lifetime, including the first World War, Russian Revolution, Stalin’s rise to power, a just-in-time move to the Canadian prairie in 1925, and a whole new life here. 

     My great-grandmother, Margarete, on my dad’s side, came to Canada as a Displaced Person after World War Two – when she was in her seventies. She started over then, with her clan, sharing her expertise as a bone-setter to several generations of people with aches and pains.

As a ten-year-old child, sitting in her Mennonite

school house on the prairie, my mom used logic to convince herself that the fundamental teachings of her Mennonite religion made no sense; later she opened the door for her own children to be ideologically free when she left the church at the age of forty-four.

            I tell these stories because it’s important to recognize that our adaptation to a world with technology, while it offers an intense learning curve, is nothing new. Every generation struggles to understand and accept the conditions and values of the next. Despite natural conservatism, the world continues to evolve and change, for that I am grateful. 

     After the advent of the printing press in 1450, books and information became more and more available to more and more people. Literacy became more and more important. Many people (including the church and prevailing powers-that-were) feared books and feared information. When trains picked up speed (from 8 km/h to 20 to 50! in the 1830s) people freaked out; many got sick, there was a lot of anxiety that humans were "moving too fast." Change is a sign of life; it's not always easy. But it is inevitable.

     To understand technology we have to use it. To know how to teach our kids discipline around use of screens, we have to be mindful of our own addictions and our need to control. As always, it's a matter of balance. 

     Socializing face-to-face and inter-generationally, spending time outside, being physical, reading, and going unplugged will give kids the skills they need to function in the world that is their future. 

     I always remember this: this is my kids' world. As a parent I need to ride out the change, and help them develop the skills necessary to navigate. And I have to remember, it's not possible to prepare them for everything. Life will have its way with them too. 

    Honestly, I'm mostly curious. And I am not afraid.