Tech's Tug of War: Balancing Progress, Responsibility, and Parenting

What types of characters is technology in the making? I was asking myself this question during a phone talk with my mom the other day. My parents live abroad, and being in their early 60s, I make sure to check up on them as often as possible. She is not a TV type of person.

It's been years since she made the decision to quit on TV, but she still has Facebook, YouTube, and that's pretty much her only link with the digital realm. To be honest, to me, she is a good example of someone using Facebook as she only follows people and pages that are putting out valuable and uplifting content.

She told me yesterday about some research that was conducted recently on toddlers and how they are affected by their interaction with technology. However, anyone who has known me for a while on Hive knows that I am pro-technology. I don't believe we should put a halt on its evolution and live the way we lived fifty years ago just because there are cases of misuse of such tech.

We should point the elephant in the room, though, and right now one of these blue elephants that some of us can see represents the interaction between kids and internet-connected gadgets. I had my first computer when I was close to 16 years old and I enjoyed it a lot, but nowadays the young ones have access to screens and internet connections since two or three years old.

So, according to that above-mentioned study, it seems that toddlers who are left alone with all sorts of gadgets for hours and hours daily end up being more connected and attached to these devices than they are to their mothers. It kind of makes sense because the first seven years of our lives are the pavements for what we are building on during our entire lives.

The brain is developing a lot during these first years of life, and cognitive capacities are also being influenced by the young ones' interactions with technology. A whole world is being shaped around the young ones by the age of 7 or so, and we need to be careful about what we allow them to shape through the usage of technology.

To me, a lack of responsibility and an excessive reliance when it comes to taking ownership of all sorts of stuff related to the digital realm is what I would name as the negatives of technology's impact on society. Being able to create all sorts of accounts on all sorts of platforms and having these platforms handle everything for us, from security to usability and reliance, is making us a bit lazy in handling responsibility.

It takes you a couple of minutes to create a Facebook account and you're good to go. If you don't do or say anything that is considered disturbing, you will be able to use that account for many years ahead. But when it comes to Hive, it's a different story. The onboarding process is a bit slower and, on the other hand, for the majority, but once you've jumped on the horse, you realize that this is the way to go.

You are in control. A few days ago, I wrote about a friend of mine's girlfriend that I helped onboard to Hive, and as soon as we began the process of onboarding, I already noticed her WEB2 mentality asking for the convenience of traditional social media to be present in Hive as well. That's not really the case. This thing is beyond choosing a username and a password and being good to go.

True ownership implies being active about your safety as an internet user and not relying on some app to do all the safety stuff for you. This is a positive and a negative at the same time for Hive. Sometimes I wish Hive was a bit simpler to use, but then I realize that the blockchain is designed to be safe and immutable instead of convenient to use.

Let's get back to the mothers and their technology-addicted kids, shall we? Why do these kids end up in such a position? It's because their mothers choose so. They prefer handing the baby a phone instead of dealing with him crying and having to figure out why he is crying. It's more convenient for them, and this way they have more free time for themselves for wasting on the internet, reading all sorts of crap, and interacting with all sorts of idiots.

I am very grateful for being able to live in this era, but at the same time, I realize that all the good stuff related to technology comes with its perks. Some parents don't realize, though. And that's when we should ask ourselves what types of new generations are we raising right now? How responsible and grounded in real life are they?

Those are hard-to-answer questions, in my opinion, and most of the answers we can come up with regarding these issues are not taking into account artificial intelligence. We've yet to see how this thing is going to impact humanity once it is present in all sorts of gadgets that can alter or better our lives. We are living in an interesting era nevertheless.

I don't believe in the absolute good nor in the absolute bad; thus, I am sure that we will somehow reach a balance in terms of our technology interconnected lives. Getting there will require sacrifices and a lot of testing, though. What do you think?

Thanks for your attention,
Adrian