From Playgrounds to Growing a Farm - The Growth of Cyber Kids

chillibreeze writer — Kasturi Jadhav

Childhood vacations not too long ago meant climbing trees, swimming and fishing in the local pond, and sleeping to the slumbering voice of grandma’s tales. After school, playtime meant playing cricket, football, and imaginative games like playing house or doctor.

These days with working parents, easy access to the Internet and television, childhood vacations are no longer about carefree exploration and noisy playfields. The Internet has supposedly laid claim on the childhood lures of imagination, curiosity, and the spirit of adventure. Now it translates to sowing, reaping, and harvesting peanuts on an online farm, chasing after cars, and shooting mutants in the virtual world!

Games with superior graphics, cute animals you can adopt, and the high of creaming your opponent are vying with the pleasures of gambolling in a playground. Fish, mafia mobs, or farming games are going digital. Popular board games like chess, scrabble, and monopoly already have online versions and having chunky square boxes of these games at home and keeping score manually is getting cumbersome.

Kids and the Internet
Welcome to the world of cyber kids, who are increasingly comfortable wielding a mouse than scaling a wall or climbing a tree. Sample this: according to a survey conducted by TCS in 2009 across 12 Indian cities in 2009, 63% of urban students spend over an hour online daily and 62% have a personal computer at home.

The Internet provides easy anonymity and ready answers to any questions children might have. Social networking gives them the false sense of being connected through minute by minute updates on Twitter and Facebook.

Hazards of the Internet
There have been cases of what is known as cyber bullying which led to the death of a teen in the US lately. She was bullied by classmates online by leaving derogatory comments on her social networking profile. It also poses the added danger of kids being lured to porn sites, adult games, and chat sites by clicking on innocuous links.

Child pyschologists are worried about this increasing trend of children spending more time surfing than on group activities. Surfing over extended periods of time sparks online addiction and blurs the difference between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’. It doesn’t leave children enough free time for real world games which exercise children’s imagination.

Play time is important
Unstructured play time is important for children to develop their imagination, free of bandwidth or space restrictions. Psychologists argue it is important for children to mingle with children their age to develop vital social and leadership skills.

On the flipside, the internet has resulted in abundance of child prodigies. You have 13 to 16 year olds who are exploiting technology to start their own online ventures and are alreading earning more than their pocket money. This, however, comes at the risk of social isolation from the real world. It also hooks them on early to the vicious cycle of consumerism at an early age.
Parents should look out for signs of internet addiction and set predefined rules for surfing the internet. Parents need to watch out for signs of net addiction such as migraine, backache, irregular eating habits, sleep disturbances or change in sleep pattern, and anxiety.

What can parents do to counter internet addiction?

Do not keep the computer in the child"s room.
Don"t completely ban the Internet but have strict rules regarding the time spent on the computer and follow through with rules.
Spend more time with children in educative and playtime activties. You can get out board games and invite his friend’s over.
Examine your own online habits. He is likely to mime you.
Install software to restrict access to web sites that they visit compulsively.

To sum it up, the Internet remains a veritable mine of useful information and a great way to hone motor and cognitive skills in youngsters. It also is a valuable source for educational projects and presentations. But like all other things it is favorable in small doses. Children take to the Internet in absence of other social activities and monitoring. It is the responsibility of parents to try and include children in as many ‘real life’ activities as possible and keep Internet from turning into an addiction.

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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in August, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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—About our writer:

Kasturi Jadhav, has an MBA in marketing and has worked in advertising for about 5 years. She ventured into writing and now works as a web content writer and concept developer. She writes on marketing and branding, self improvement, societal trends, lifestyle and beauty. She enjoys writing poetry. She is currently based in Mumbai

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