The Tablet (iPad) Generation

     On the September long weekend this Grandma and Grandpa enjoyed a wonderful day with our two grandgirls (ages 12 & 7) and their two girlfriends (age 10 & 6) while their parents, my son and his wife and their friends, took a canoe trip down the Athabasca River. Wow, were those little gals busy!

    The main focus of all four girls was our tire swing, seemed like it was occupied a good portion of the time, but many other activities filled the day. First the older girls and Grandma made a movie. My granddaughter has a good camera, a tripod, and a vivid imagination. We were all told our lines, ran through them once, the camera was set up and we'd do a scene. Then on to the next and the next until she felt she had enough footage to edit and format on her iPad. This work she does at home, adding credits, music, and editing. I've seen previous movies (app is called iMovie) she's made and they are very professional looking.  Other activities were Yatzee, bingo, rock painting, cleaning and rearranging the yurt so it looked pretty (all 8 slept in the yurt), choreographing and performing a dance to a favourite iTune, archery, and yes, before bed they watched a movie.

     These little gals are what us country folk call townies. They think a few things are scary or creepy or yucky (hornets, grasshoppers, sheep poop on the lawn), they love dogs, were a bit afraid at night when their parents were in the house visiting and they were in the yurt listening to the coyotes howl, but on the whole laughed and played like the free spirits that they are. They are children growing up in the Tablet (iPad) generation. They have had electronic gizmos in their hands pretty much their whole lives. If I need help with my computer or TV system I ask them, even the 7 year old! So I would like to debunk the idea or attempt to allay the fears of the older folks that have come to think that today's children are inactive and don't use or are not developing their imaginations, that they aren't learning much of anything in school because their computers do it all for them, that their noses are stuck in a phone so much that they have no clue as to what's going on around them and they are becoming anti-social.

     Whoa! Let's start with imaginations. I already mentioned the movies. Then there's the games like Minecraft and Farmville, Paradise Bay. These are little worlds that you build from the ground up, and, unlike a doll house, you have to build the scene, you have to chop the trees, build the homes brick by brick, grow your food, sell your wares, feed yourself, take time to sleep... Is this not using imagination? And these games can be played with others, they need not be a solitary endeavor. You can (at least on Minecraft) actually see your playing partner on the screen!

     I asked my granddaughter what games were fun. She said 2028, Dubsmash, 1010, Barbie Makeover, Fashion Story to name a few.  I tried Dubsmash, you need to know songs etc. and you lip-sync to them, creating short often quite funny sound bites. You can do this with a friend. Barbie make-over uses the internal camera so that you are applying different colours of lipstick, hair, hats etc. right onto your own face.  When you have an old grandma face like mine this can turn out quite hilarious. Fashion apps, I assume, are a lot like the paper cut-out dolls we used to play with, the clothing had little tabs you bent back to hang the outfits on the models. Today's kids can do it using computer technology. Really, no less active or less imaginative than what we did, just a different way of doing it (less messy too).

     So kids do use their phones a lot, texting each other in a language nearly impossible for me to read but I'm learning.  And maybe they do use them a bit too much. But that isn't to say that they are not active or that they are anti-social.  My grandgirls have school dances, plays, dance recitals, piano recitals, birthday parties, swimming lessons. They both have bows and are pretty good archers, they go sailing with their dad, have ridden on a dog sled, go skateboarding, biking, and of course, shopping.

     Well, you may say, they're 7 and 12, wait till they're teenagers! If I'm still blogging when they are I may visit this subject again.

     I asked (messaged her on her iPad) my 12 year old granddaughter about computer use in the school, also about smart boards. Here's the answer she messaged to me. "We are not aloud (allowed) to use phones/technology unless the teacher asks you. we use iPads like computers, there are school iPads we use. No we can not use a calculator in class! A smart board is a screen that connects to your computer and is like a giant tablet on a wall you can click with your finger and draw on it with digital markers. Yes I have them in my school and we use them a lot so the teacher can show us things like documents from her computer."

     Computers are a tooI for learning, not a detriment to learning. iPhones are mini-computers. Maybe texting is taking over some social interactions, maybe they're just another kind of social interaction.  I think parenting plays a huge role in establishing a balance between real life and life on the net.  Some controls need to be applied; family discussions are needed to help young minds understand possible outcomes of social media. It's a new world with new parenting challenges, ones we never had to contend with. I believe computers provide many positive aspects in today's world, and I have high hopes that technology, in the hands of the current computer savvy generation,
will be an aid to a better future.