This piece of news just blew me off.

Read the complete news here


Call me old school and old! As I completely fail to understand the Farmville / Fishville addiction and the joy one derives from creating a virtual farm. Let alone virtual currencies. I first came to know of Farmville when my 14 year old screamed in excitement during one of his 30 minutes restricted online time – I got a pig! I got a pig! Yes! Yes! Yes! Apparently, someone had gifted him a pig and it is oh so expensive! This kid would give up anything for 15 minutes of Farmville. They even make and break real life friends depending on their interaction in the virtual world aka gifts sent in this case.

Farmville is just a game after all, but the addiction is real. The news above where the couple starve their 3 month old kid over raising a virtual kid is on the extreme. Hope this dies as a one off case.

When we moved to Bangalore less than a year back, the husband was pretty adamant on not buying the TV. The LH is a man of his own values, and adheres to them earnestly, no matter what the world makes of him. Me, on the other hand, lives by the rules, likes moderation and believes in balance.

Acknowledging the fact that me and the LH don’t converge on any said topic, and to save our kids from the constant dilemma, we made a conscious decision to let me have the final say on parenting issues. Not because I am the better parent(Hell no!, the husband is the epitome of patience, more well read and well traveled, all of which attribute to better decision making ), but simply because I am the more involved parent as far as providing consistent, predictable time with them and their day to day activities. And thus I self proclaim myself as knowing them better

So, when the LH had declared that we won’t get TV, I was game for experimentation, convincing self that I could always find a reason and force him into to getting one if-and-when needed. D and Dlittle hardly watched TV while we were at our in-laws place, as they were used to watching pbskids in the bay area, and could not relate much to the programming here. When they did not seem to care for the existence of the idiot box, I cared less. While youtube serves me well for the likes of Tere mere beach mein, Google news and the morning papers serve their purpose of instilling the little worldly knowledge that I need.

It is close to a year now, and we have survived without the idiot box. We still don’t feel the necessity to have one.

However, the influence on kids, by taking extreme measures of not having the TV in the house Vs allowing restricted quality viewing, while 99.99 percent of the population we relate to has one, is the question of concern.

Allow me to digress here, for the only way I know to get my point across is by quoting happenings and analyzing the after effects. What made me choose this topic for the weekend post is something that happened the day before yesterday night. A good lot of our family and extended family kids(10+ years) are on twitter, we have successfully phased the younger ones out of facebook and orkut(Some had faked their age as 13, just to get a facebook account. I had written about Social Networking some time back and still believe that it is not a safer place for younger kids to hang out without parental monitoring). We got them on to twitter, some have even started blogging. I feel twitter is much more simpler and transparent and makes it is easy for us parents/guardians to keep a watch.
(My dear handful of readers, before you judge us to be a crazy internet addicted family. Let me tell you that our business revolves around social networking, we have 2 software engineers in the making, one JEE zone topper, all die hard fans of their chacha’s/maama’s bindas attitude on life life-is-short-do-only-what-you believe-in-and-what-gives-YOU-happiness and entrepreneurial capability and keep asking for fun projects to do. So, it is not entirely our fault that our family’s primary mode of communication has become direct messaging via twitter instead of phone. phew!).

Before I go on, let me first formally introduce my nephew to this blog. Babio, as Dlittle lovingly calls him, is my 13 year old nephew, a very very sweet kid, staying with us and studying here. Babio came into the office room asking if he could open a twitter account for his sisters. You guessed that right. An account for D and Dlittle. That’s when it hit me that I had taken a twitter account in D’s name in early 2007 and even tweeted one mere line. Call me nuts, I did it. And conveniently forgot about it. I opened up the twitter page and D was supremely excited to read her name there. In less than 2 minutes she demanded the page background be changed pink, to be made very colorful like a rainbow.

Then comes the defining moment, leading to this heavy duty post.

She spots her name on the browser url – http://twitter.com/hername, selects just her name using the mouse and asks –
If I type Dlittle’s name here, her page will come?

“P.A.G.E?”. You said PAGE?

When I told her that I had not created Dlittle’s twitter page yet, she says in these exact words.
Sign up, mumma. Sign up.

S.I.G.N U.P????

Where in the world did she get that? S.I.G.N. U.P. Still remains a mystery. When asked, she simply said, I was imagining about it. Whatever imagination has to do with knowing “sign up”.

One other time, Firefox crapped out and she refused to use Safari. Saying she only likes Firefox, the orange colored thingee. Yes, thingee. Nothing else.

Yet another time, madam was installing adobe plugin. When I happened to see it and asked what in the world she was doing, she says that the video will not come unless she does it. She just has to keep clicking the second button on the right and it will work after that.


Which brings me to these points to ponder. Are my kids getting more than the needed dosage of computer time? Have we unconsciously s u b s t i t u t e d computer time for TV time. If yes, is that a good or a bad thing? Should we continue without the TV, or should we get one for the heck of it. If we get one, with our ever increasing demand for time, will we be disciplined enough to restrict the timings? Will my kids feel left out when their friends discuss some popular TV character? Is that something to even care for?

It is not that we are completely deprived of movies and we plonk ourselves in front of the computer the minute we wake up. D hardly gets half an hour of computer time, 2 – 3 times a week. Every now and then, we get the projector from our office(thanks to owning office assets ), dvd’s and project the movie on the h.u.g.e wall we have in the living room. Spice it up with ice cream or popcorn, the kids have a blast. Idea is to make it a special once in a while event instead of a routine.

I don’t have answers, but I do believe that my kids would have sooner or later got into the internet/computer world, just based on the nature of our job. Based on them being exposed to a home office server, 3 laptops, big screen monitor and the likes. Based on us preferring the computer(internet) to communicate long distance. Based on them watching us running to google baba for anything and everything. (Seeing us printing maps, looking up directions before going out. Checking out restaurant reviews. The other day she asked me something , I said I am not sure. She says, type it in google, it will tell you).

So, are we going to acquire the idiot box or not? The dilemma continues!

My 12 year old niece sends me a message on skype asking me to sign up on Toondoo. When I ask her what this site is about, she says it’s a social networking site to create, share and discus comic strips. Create? Share? Discuss? At 12 years of age? I was tempted to lecture her on how dangerous the internet is.. and that she should not be signing up anywhere and everywhere.. Even before I could collect my thoughts, she points to few other sites. One that I remember is Doof, which apparently she and my nephew, who is of the same age, use to play chess from 2 different laptops and 2 different physical locations. They call it a social gaming site.

I took one look at Toondoo and must say I was mighty impressed. Though I am still not sure it is appropriate for a 12 year old, as they don’t seem to have any screening on the content published. The cartoon creator interface is very intuitive. I let D sit on the Create Your Own Cartoon interface for few minutes, was taken aback to see how the kids mind works. Within few minutes, she was dragging the images into the work area. Which created the background. She then dragged 2 humans and a monster-lookalike-something into the work area. She even had a story to tell. I resentfully refuse to go into further details..

Not too long ago, I had written a post on my daughters fascination with laptop. I must have become more tolerant and more accepting since then. I have come to accept that internet is going to be an intrinsic part of our life. Especially with families like ours, where we cannot draw a clear line on working hours. And work involves internet. More realistic approach is to let them use the internet for a certain fixed time and supervise every move of theirs. So, now she gets limited laptop time on weekends and some weekdays. I show her on the clock the time upto which she can work and I sit besides her. One day, while she was painting, Firefox crashed. She immediately clicks on the icon from the dock. The default yahoo.com opens up and the owl eyed spots an advertisement on beaches and giggles – Aunty is nangu! Another time when the browser crashed, she throws her hand up in the air and says – Laptop says times up!

D is way too young to use the internet by herself and not going to get access to any social networking site before she can spell and write Massachusetts. But, here are few tips that might be of help to parents of older kids.

- Social networking sites are much more dangerous. They let you connect with unknown others in one click, there is no accountability to what you write. Or so one might think, unless you get into trouble.

- Avoid using real names and any other details that are are give aways of residing location. Atleast until kids are of a certain age and are emotionally capable of handling trolling. Here is a good read on trolling and flaming, the link we sent to my 19 year old niece who is new and naive to the blogging world.

- Lead them to age appropriate sites and supervise every single site they visit. The biggest problem with these sites are advertisements and cross sells. That’s their ticket to monetization, no qualms on that front. But the advertisement are not always age appropriate.

- Question them on why a certain site interests them.

- Do a quick check on the site if it safe and falls under your standard of acceptable safety.

- Look at the About page. See if it is supported/backed by an established company. Established companies hire “community managers” whose sole role is to keep data clean and appropriate.

- Do a quick google search to see what everyone else says about the site. Make sure there is no negative reporting.

Kids are getting tech savvy at very early age and the average age of electronics usage has declined from 8.1 to 6.7% in the last 2 years.

“Kids are drawn to the latest and greatest digital devices just as their parents are,” said Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group. “They appear to have no fear of technology and adopt it easily and without fanfare, making these devices a part of their everyday lives.”

Talking about computers in particular, I wonder if it Is because we parents have taken the laptop to the living room. No matter what our underlying profession is, computers and internet have become an integral part of one’s life. Especially in the Western world. Work communicates via emails, word documents, excel spreadsheets, ppts. Friends prefer talking to each others via emails / google talks/ IM’s as they are more flexible and fit into their time pressed schedules. Leave alone friends, grand parents who are 60+ are internet savvy these days. A decent lot knows to email, start their web cam lusting to see their kids/grand kids, download pictures and what not. And the ever growing communities, social networking, blogging sites add spice. Its all not bad. It bridges the physical distance, long distance does not seem to hit as much, as we get to know each others whereabouts every so often. Add to it a visual moving video, the physical distance shrinks, though we might live in opposite ends of the globe. Day to day life has become more productive and efficient. Husband might have an hours time in between 2 customer meetings, asks the wife if he can finish up the weekend grocery. By the time husband reaches the grocery store, wife has made an extensive list and emailed him, which the husband looks up in his blackberry.

That said, there a conflict of interest to me, when I put kids into picture. Traces of which I am starting to see in my own household, my daughter’s[almost 3 years] growing addiction to computers. She is ready to give up her favorite candy for few minutes on the laptop. Her attraction towards laptop is understandable though undesirable at this age. It is similar to the much hated colorful TV, just much more worse and intense as it is interactive and gives them a sense of freedom and control. She is not to be blamed, its the exposure. She grew up seeing both her parents with their laptop or the blackberry almost all the time. Not that the parents are addicted or anything of that sort, its just our work. We have a turn around time of 4 hours to our customers 24 x 7. Agreed, not every other family is in our shoes, where laptop and internet are not gadgets, they are our bread and butter. But I also think I am not too far fetched to assume kids in other households are exposed to a good extent. Also, we are starting to see more and more of us taking work back home OR just working from home OR working late nights if you are involved with offshore development…

What triggered me to write this post is this
My daughter wanted to play Dora adventures. There are a few others she likes, like the barney, fisher price, pbskids.org , Thomas Train, though Dora and this princess thingee are her latest fascination. The entry into the Dora game is by typing your name. She knows to verbally spell her name and can recognise all the alphabets and letters. The surprise element was when she clicked on the input box and typed her name, all by herself. It doesn’t end here. She mixed up 2 letters from her name. I was looking from behind and told her letter x needs to come before y. She hit the delete button without even looking at the keyboard and corrected it !
She can navigate the sites effortlessly. Switching from listening to music, to picking the game she wants to play, going back and choosing another game if she does not like the one she is playing with.

Another incident which left me thinking. I type Dora OR Thomas train in the google search tool bar. The search result page appears and the intended site is the very first result. She has watched me do this a few times now. This past Saturday, she wanted to do online coloring of Thomas train. It was not laptop time [I am pretty strict about this, though husband lets her get away with it once in a while] , we were getting ready for lunch. I told her just that. However, laptop was in the living room center table. Husband was lounging behind her playing with our little 4 month old. She couldn’t resist reaching to the laptop as I was not in the vicinity and husband got curious to see her in action. This is what he notices. She types few alphabets on the google search tool bar, hits enter. It sure takes her to the google search page. She clicks on the first link and it takes her to some web site. She speaks aloud she did wrong-wrong. Hits the browser back button. clicks on the google search tool bar. Deletes the previously entered alphabets, enters a new set of random alphabets, hits Enter again. Gets to the search page again and clicks on the first link. Then claims the laptop is tottooed (broken). Its not working.
She leaves us flabbergasted with the way she uses the laptop’s inbuilt mouse. The hand co-ordination. With one finger on the click button, aother on the touch pad , how comfortably she can drag an object from the left/right panels into the working area. How she knows she has to click on the arrows to get more options OR that there is a tab on the top that will take her to different views.

All this when computers[and TV] are restricted[to her] in my household. She gets about 20 minutes in the morning and about 15 minutes in the evening any given typical day. Though on the weekends she does manage to get few additional minutes.

No, no she is no Einstein, neither are we grooming her to be one. Nor am I claiming I am happy about all this. In fact its my worry that she will lose out on the traditional methods of learning, In addition to health concerns of reduced physical activity, over stimulation and vision issues. She does her paper/pen drawing sketching activities in school and in house too. But the glow and the excitement is not remotely comparable with when she does the same with computers. She loves art, drawing, sketching. But only on the computer. She knows to write few alphabets, A, T , H the ones with straight lines and shows no interest in writing other alphabets, but she can type in anything on the keyboard. Its the exposure. And the attractiveness of today’s sophisticated softwares. The combination of bold colors, big fonts and sound.
At the same time, we don’t want to completely restrict her either. Very soon cyber world will become more of a necessity rather than a conscious choice.
She is only 3 years old, so its not a matter of concern right now, OR is it?. As long as we are able to restrict the time she spends in front of one. But, how long?

Just thoughts and questions, no answers at this point…