This past Tuesday, I attended the deliberation, From Make Believe to iPhone Screens: How to Approach Children’s Use of Technology. In this deliberation, the group brought up the growing usage of technology within our society, focusing on kids from Pre-K to 8th grade. At the beginning, they first summarized the current state of this topic. Studies say that up to 25% of children ages 2 to 5 have a smartphone. While there are some benefits of the growing usage of technology in our youth, there are also noticeable drawbacks that we can equate to this growing trend. The three aspects that this group focused on during this deliberation were regulate, educate, and encourage.
Beginning with the topic of regulate, they asked valid questions such as if government intervention would be viable or just to enforce to make sure that kids at this age did not get too much exposure to technology. However, I disagreed with this claim and the people who supported it, simply because the government has no right or reason to do this. Additionally, questions were asked and discussion was brought up about regulating how much technology should be allowed for kids this age in the public school system. Several different perspectives were brought to the table during this question, and it was very interesting to see how other people were raised and how their schools operated while they attended as a kid.
Moving on to educate, what I believe to be their strongest point, the group discussed possible ways that we can educate parents and even kids about the positive and negative impacts that too much technology can cause. For example, while some can argue that kids are becoming too dependent on technology, it is becoming a norm across the world as the entire planet has revolutionized the way it operates in practically every field. I found this as the most interesting discussion and this group who deliberated this point also did the best.
Finally, moving on to encourage, what I sadly must determine as the weakest point, reiterated previously said claims and how we should sometimes encourage kids to use technology and sometimes encourage them to get away from technology. Like I said, a lot of the points mentioned before seemed to be echoed during this point, and plus it was at the end of the entire deliberation, causing me to lose interest after being there for so long.
My overall opinion on this deliberation was that it was mediocre at best. They had many things that I did not necessarily enjoy and a few things that they did that I commend them for. There was no real introduction for the entire deliberation, all of the speakers but a few spoke very quietly and lacked confidence in their claims, there was a lot of dead air, and many points were repeated, which means that maybe they should have reevaluated the three approaches they took. On the contrary, they asked many good questions and were kind and seemed passionate on the subject. If I had to give it an overall grade in my opinion, I’d give it a solid C.