Jayne Dowle: Hi-tech toddlers born into world of iPad isolation

An iPad. For a toddler. I’m not completely behind the times. My two children are 11 and 14 now, but I’m fully aware that even the youngest children are entertained by technology these days. Surely there is a time and a place? I don’t think that any child, in any pushchair, ever, needs an iPad to keep them happy.

I am all for technology, but if this is the world our youngsters are growing up into, heaven help us in our old age. Will our grandchildren and great-grandchildren be able to speak to us at all? Will we communicate only by tapping what we wish to say into a keyboard? It’s a vision of the future I don’t wish to imagine.

My fears of such a dystopia are shared by the very respected children’s author, Michael Morpurgo. He is warning that the web of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram has now spread so wide that young people are losing the art of personal communication entirely.

The former Children’s Laureate believes that phones and tablets represent “such a strong culture of communication that children forget about talking to people”. His voice is added to a cacophony of concern. We’ve had report after report highlighting this threat and warning that children are increasingly lonely.

I hope that Mr Morpurgo’s strong words hit home where others have failed. He makes no bones; he believes that not communicating leads to social isolation, depression and mental health conditions in children and young people.

I don’t wish to be alarmist, but just imagine that baby in an iPad-enabled pushchair for a moment. When the child sees a bird or hears an aeroplane fly by, who do they tell? Mother, father, older brother or sister walking alongside? Or the screen flickering in front of its innocent eyes?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want technology to take over anybody’s life to this extent. Enough is enough. It’s time that parents made decisions based on the welfare and well-being of their children, not their own convenience.

I’d never presume to lay down the law, but I would advise any parent to at least set some limits in place. Introduce children to technology by all means, but for time periods which are reasonable and allow plenty of opportunity for other activities.

With two children of my own, I know what it’s like when there is work to be done and it’s the weekend or school holidays and raining outside.

None of us can give our offspring all the attention they need, all the time. However we can try. And I mean try. There is no point forcing the phones out of their hands and then ignoring them.

Too many parents shake their heads and tut at the hours their children are engrossed in video games or surfing the net, but then do nothing to provide an alternative. I’ve seen families which comprise of four or five individuals, all related to each other and living in the same house, but with no idea of what makes each other happy.

I know this isn’t easy. I have a teenage son who would actually live in his bedroom if he could. As the adult in the house though, it’s up to me to arrange things so that he does emerge from time to time and he is encouraged to share his thoughts and feelings. If this means setting the table and ordering him down to eat his meal with us, instead of scurrying upstairs with a tray, so be it.

If this means putting aside a Saturday evening to have a “family night”, which usually means a general knowledge quiz set by his sister and some exhausting guessing games, the headache is the price to pay for being a parent.

And if this means switching my brain into listening mode, I should feel privileged. Jack’s theories and ideas on history 
and politics and inevitably, football, aren’t always based 
on factual accuracy or even reality, but the very least I can 
do is to listen.

We adults are in danger of forgetting one major thing. Communication is a two-way street. We have to accept this and play our part. We also have to set a good example; how many parents are guilty of never putting down their own phone? There aren’t many reports or surveys conducted into this particular habit, but there should be.

We live in an age in which communication has never been easier. Or more difficult. We can beam a signal to space and back again in the blink of an eye, yet we can’t talk to the person sitting next to us on the sofa in our own home. If we want to raise happy, well-adjusted children into adults capable of stringing a sentence together, we should have a word with ourselves first.