Because people’s skin gets wrinkled and because people’s eyes get worse and because pop stars people have never heard of are somehow already insanely popular, it’s common for adults to gripe about the kids these days. A lot of that talk eventually leads to how today’s kids only know smartphones and iPads and YouTube and Facebook. They don’t go outside! They don’t play in the street! They should have grown up like us!
Never mind that every generation yells at the following generation for having too much. If you’re not yelling at kids about the internet, you’re probably yelling at them for watching too much television or playing too much GameBoy or raising tamagotchis as pets or playing with slingshots or hanging in a diner. You get the point. Technology changes, kids adapt, adults yell at them.
But what if you didn’t want to surround your kids with technology? What if you raised your kids *GASP* without technology? Well, a couple is actually experimenting with this. Blair McMillan and his girlfriend Morgan have banned technology invented after 1986 (the year they were born) from their house because their son Trey was growing too addicted to the iPad. It’s an extreme take — no iPad, no Facebook, no internet, GPS, no fancy coffee machine, no nothing — that’ll be lasting an entire year. They say their friends can’t reach them anymore and they feel ghost text messages in their pockets but they read a lot more and talk to each other more. Is that a worthy trade off or is that just crazy?
Could you do it? Would you do it? And if you are doing it, are you allowing your kids to grow up just the way you did or are you robbing them from enjoying their own childhood? [Sun News]
Picture: Shutterstock/Stokkete