Technology is on the rise; some may even say that it is taking over. As young adults, we had the opportunity to know a bit of the world before technology became such a prominent force in our lives. We grew up with flip phones and having to reference the library if we had any questions that our friends couldn’t answer. We experienced the rise of the information age and we were some of the first to learn and take advantage of the knowledge at our fingertips.
The same can be said of the newest generations of young minds growing up in the middle of a constant information flux. We all see it in restaurants and in the front of grocery shopping carts, children, even toddlers are engrossed in the screen of an iPad watching their favorite novelty television shows or playing the latest children’s app game. Instead of learning basic communication skills and observing their adult counterparts, they are naively distracted.
Asking questions is a completely different process compared to when we were growing up. Instead of going to your parents or teacher with a question that you craved to be answered, all one had to do is open their parent’s laptop and type in Google.com.
Children are exposed to many opinions from a young age because of the wide variety of information from the Internet. Instead of being raised to each have similar views on politics and the world like their immediate family and closest friends, young kids have the option of doing their own research, finding out what it is that interest them and forming an opinion through this method.
Parents no longer have the option to decide when their children learn about specific things and/or the kinds of facts that they learn about. If a child is curious they can find out anything that they wish. If parents have child safety on the home computers, it in no way stops the child from learning about the information wish to seek.
Children are growing up faster thanks to Google. It appears they are completely skipping the important innocent phases of life before the hardships of “growing up” forces them to become an adult. Innocence is casually shattered thanks to the plethora of information available at the click of a button.
As a young adult, the information available on Google is nothing but a plus, for the younger generation this kind of data can be harmful towards them. It is becoming harder and harder to police the kind of things a toddler can see online, and as technology expands, this conundrum will only get worse.
