The Parent Compass by Cynthia Clumeck Muchnick

Author:Cynthia Clumeck Muchnick
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781641704366
Publisher: Familius
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

It’s Hard to Leave the School Day Behind

In Chapter 2, we challenged you to recall the details of your childhood. And now, in a much more abbreviated exercise, we ask you to add technology use at that time into the mix. After the school bell rang when you were a tween or teen, you probably hopped on your bike or walked or maybe squeezed into the smelly back seat of a carpool—likely heading directly home or perhaps to the park. Your after-school “screen time” might have involved watching a TV show or an after-school special for a bit before you did a little homework, then you took a break when you were called in for dinner, and then maybe you finished your homework. More “technology” use could have meant talking on the landline phone with friends, listening to the radio or a CD, or watching a TV show. Communication during school (and in class) meant whispering when the teacher’s back was turned; passing handwritten notes; or chatting at lunch, recess, in the hallways between classes, or in the bathroom. But,

now, the digital age has made it impossible to leave school and friends behind, even

when our kids are home from school.

One high school social science teacher observes the overwhelming impact of technology on teens:

I feel the countless effects of technology on all of us, but especially on the lives of children and teens. I admit that these impacts are both positive and negative, and some more obvious than others, but in many cases I am not sure that adults and professionals have all the answers yet to the problems that are caused by our rapidly changing technological and digital world . . . [Our generation] came from a world that was not so dominated by digital culture and social media, leading to, at worst, ignorance to the role and impact of technology and, at best, an understanding that is limited by generational experience. Technology creates . . . an incredibly powerful tool of comparison that is seemingly unhealthy for human life. This tends to be exacerbated in high school students who are at the peak point of comparison in their lives . . . Social media has put that phenomenon of comparison on steroids, and for students who are trying to figure themselves out in real time while at the same time attempting to fit in and be accepted by their peers, it creates tremendous pressures. The students who seem to have the most success academically and socially really do seem to balance their technological use, beyond simply limiting the distraction of a cell phone during class hours.17

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