Parenting in the Modern Society

Analyzing how the rise in technology will affect parenting today was one of the main focuses of this book. The authors not only studied how parenting is changing but also how the relationship between parents and children is different than it was in the past. Parents are now faced with the dilemma of deciding how much to expose their young children to technology. The book discussed how an overbearing parent can make a child go behind their back and use technology. Once this happens, trust is hard to gain back between parents and their children, which can cause problems. A parent that is too lackadaisical can allow their kid to be too indulged in the various screens and distractions that come along with them. Closer Together, Further Apart encourages parents to take a middle ground. They think it is important to have an honest open relationship with their kids about the potential harm of too much screen time.

It is inevitable that parents will worry about their children’s development and maturation. They must accept this worry and try to help their kids understand how technology works while still balancing social skill development. As discussed in Watkins' “The Very Well Connected,” there are legitimate fears that the Internet’s prevalence in our daily lives is impacting our ability to talk to others and build intimate relationships. The displacement theory mentions how time spent on the Internet and with screens is replacing other activities that people could be doing. This can be potentially harmful, but the long term effects are still unclear. Watkins stated in his article, “the proliferation of personalized screens and communication technologies in our lives encourages widespread abandonment of our neighbors and informal public life. The end result: the steady erosion and eventual collapse of community and any sense of connection to a wider public and social good” (Watkins 51). This is very similar to the crisis in ability to talk, a potential result of children losing social skills because of too much interaction with computers and video games. Parents need to understand this fact and ask themselves a couple of important questions when dealing with their children’s activity online.

Is the content my kid is seeing age appropriate?

Is the amount of time they spend engaged with this technology a large or small part of my child’s total social interaction?

Closer Together, Further Apart mentioned that children ages 8 to 18 spend 11.5 hours a day using technology. The worry is that these children are using this much technology at such an important cognitive and social developmental stage in their lives.

Here is Lenski's Four Stages of Human Development:

Others have responded to this criticism of the internet and say that it actually helps increase our social interaction and can allow us to build more relationships without having to physically see as many people as before. The Internet can provide a “third place,” or a place where kids can meet virtually and informally to communicate and interact with each other. The Internet can also allow users to quickly jump around to many different web pages to learn, think, and interpret information for themselves. This can help them be self-sufficient and non-biased students of the world. Parents need to understand both the good and bad potential technology has for their kids. They cannot over shelter these technological natives because that is where the future of our society is heading.

At the end of the day, people can discuss the potential effects of the information age indefinitely.  There are so many factors contributing to development that it is important to know that even “perfect” parenting will not guarantee a child’s success in the world. Despite all of Schneider and Weiss’ research they still say, “we do not yet have the necessary amount of unbiased, broad-based, longitudinal, multi-generational, cross-cultural reach to reach definitive conclusions” (Schneider, Weiss 63). Only time will tell what the effects of this huge cultural change will have on our society in the future. Right now it is important for our youth to not become too involved with technology while still balancing staying up to date in this fast paced digital world.