Are today’s children becoming so technologically skilled that they are losing their social skills?
I have been reading an article by Jayne Dowle, one of the Yorkshire Post correspondents in which she is worried by the fact that so many children seem to live the vast part of their lives “on line.”
A new survey by the online charity YouthNet has discovered that as many as 75% of 16 – 24 years olds said they couldn’t live their lives without the internet. Jayne sites the example of her four years old daughter, who on coming home from school “stakes her claim on the laptop.”
Our own grandchildren seem to do very much the same.
The report from this survey goes on to call these children “Digital Natives”; under the age of twenty five and surrounded since toddlerhood by computers, the internet, mobile phones and video games. True, you can’t stop the technological advances, but isn’t there also a warning being sounded here? So many children think they are safe when they are on the internet - “as long as you know what you’re doing.” - but do they really know what they are doing, when so many of them consider that the internet can solve any of their problems quicker and better than a real human being?
What is happening to their social skills? How can they interact with real people?
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