I love when my son has a playdate or a sleepover. I'm even the queen of hosting them, giving other parents a night or a few hours off. When my son was pre-school and kindergarten-age it was wonderful to watch him and his friends play with their Thomas the Tank engine trains in that side-by-side fashion of very young kids and later in that hierarchal style of kids just beginning to chart a separate identity.
But now he's 9 and he and his friends consider it a rocking, roaring time to be in the same stuffy room, surrounded by toys, books and the like playing their Nintendo DS. The closest they get to playing together is if one kid forgot his or doesn't own one and must sit very close to a kid with one, pointed end of their chin resting on the other person's shoulders, eyes taking in every movement of the video game.
When parents climb into bed each with their own laptop or Kindle in hand, am I surprised that kids now consider socializing to be in the same space staring at separate screens? This New York Times piece caught my eye because obviously I'm not the only one wondering this.
This graph caught my eye: Much of the concern over all this use of technology has been focused on the implications for kids’ intellectual development. Worry about the social repercussions has centered on the darker side of online interactions, like cyber-bullying or texting sexually explicit messages. But psychologists and other experts are starting to take a look at a less-sensational but potentially more profound phenomenon: whether technology may be changing the very nature of kids’ friendships.
Some change is part of the evolution of human behavior and interaction. Some may be potentially worrisome, like when families shifted from taking the majority of their meals at home around the kitchen table to eating in the car. What's your take?
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