Parenting today is a completely different ball game to parenting 20 years ago. Today we have the advance of the technological era in the mix: Snap chatting, Instagram, Musical.ly, Facebook and many more social media influences in our children’s lives that are literally there and accessible 24/7, with messages popping up every few minutes tempting them to engage.
I am a mother and teacher. In the last few years and progressively more today, I can see and feel the pressures and imposition of technology and the way it is being used by our next generation.
Yes, children need to move with the times and keep up with their education, be computer savvy, know how to update, research and produce assessments, however, this does not mean that they should lose their playfulness, lightness, ability to have a real face to face conversation and know they are a gem of a child. I see the loss of all of the above happening across the board with children because of their absorption into the social media world.
I remember in university how one educator shared the idea of the ‘television’ being the uninvited guest into our homes, and how our lounge rooms all faced towards this one uninvited guest. This point stayed with me and I began to realise the intrusiveness of this set-up and what we were inviting into our living rooms.
So from this presented point, I have since designed my living areas to not face the TV, but to face each other. The point of my sharing this with you is that back then it was a shock to me that I had chosen to be part of inviting this uninvited guest into my home each day, just through the way I set the furniture around, setting people up to face the TV and not each other… so you can imagine the shock when I became aware of just how disconnected our young are through the way they are engaging in technology and social media. It is filtering into every facet of their lives and is sold to them as the ‘way of connecting’.
Is the social media world today a reflection of our disconnection within humanity or is our disconnection in humanity a reflection of the much reduced level of connection we are accepting today from our participation in the social media world?
As a parent and teacher, I see and feel…
- Children (as young as 8 through to teens) learning that connecting with people is through typing on a phone or on social media. No longer are many kids confident to have chats together and connect through play, call each other up, or meet up just to be around each other.
- Children relying on their phones like they are a safety blanket. It is disturbing to speak to children and hear how anxious they feel without their phone or how it feels like a family member has left them when they don’t have it.
- Children being ‘acceptably’ bullied by other children and even accessed inappropriately by unknown people through social media sites… and the children, or their parents, not doing anything about it because the children want to be part of that communication and don’t want to lose what they think is connection.
- Children being sold the belief that they will be out of the social circles at school or in their friendship groups if they haven’t kept up with the chats that have gone on during the evenings.
- Children spending more time on devices rather than just being allowed to be children or being lovingly interacted with. Children being given phones, iPads, Xboxes etc. to play on in their bedrooms, in their lounge rooms, in the car, when mum or dad need quiet or space or are busy. Is it any wonder that when they become pre-teen or teens that their devices and social media become their world and their attitude towards the adults around them is then a reflection of the previous years of lack of true connection?
- Children without their natural confidence and truly joyful smiles and laughs on their faces.
In a nutshell, a lot of children are becoming more familiar with the virtual or social media world and are losing their beautiful way of naturally engaging and relating to others.
We all, each and every adult on this planet, have a responsibility to connect fully to children so they know what true connection is, so they can then bring that to the social media sites if they so choose, but not because they need to or feel less without it.
Parenting for me today is about connecting to, living from and parenting from my deep inner wisdom.
It is with deep thanks and appreciation to Serge Benhayon, the presentations of Universal Medicine and my being willing and open, that I have over the years implemented self-care tools that today allow me to stand in and live, without perfection, the wisdom within. Meaning, I know I have all the answers inside of me; I just need to take the responsibility to remain with the clarity of my heart by purposefully caring for my body and from here, parenting becomes simple, even in a world of out-of-control technology and social media stimulations.
Parenting and teaching from my inner-wisdom allows me:
- To confirm the gem and grandness of children to them, highlighting who they truly are instead of it being about what they do.
- To express fully to children, like yesterday sharing with a gorgeous relative of mine how magical it was to watch her dance and play in the shallow waves at the beach as if no one was looking and to appreciate the playfulness that is there.
- To make sitting, chatting, holding, engaging with our eyes part of our everyday communications with each other – and providing the space for children to feel that this is true communication so that it becomes a marker in their body, allowing them to know without doubt when they are, or are not met, with that level of connection. From here they are supported to bring that connection to others.
- To have open and honest chats that explore things, like how certain food makes us feel, certain environments etc., or when we notice if someone in our family is acting different and then to be a supportive enquirer.
- To educate and speak about everything in life, and support children to trust their feelings to equip them with the ability to choose and know that there is a way to honour these feelings.
- To feel comfortable not being the most popular parent or teacher when you feel from the depths of your body that a particular App, or even having a screen phone, is not supportive at the moment. Saying a loving ‘No’ is parenting which can support children to grow up with a deep connection to themselves and others.
- To be the loving listening ear when things come up that need discussing or to be shared. Believe me, a lot happens for 10 -13 year olds, much more than when I was that age. Growing up is tough today and when you grow up with engagement and connection, you also see and feel the lack of it around you… and that can be tricky at times.
- To allow kids to practise having responsibility, physically, through household chores, but also with taking responsibility for their actions or way of communicating… and that means that consequences need to be felt and not watered down or glossed over.
- To support children to see and feel that sometimes, if someone doesn’t accept you because you are not participating in the thing they are doing, it is not you they are rejecting, but the fact you are not enjoining them in that unsupportive activity.
- To treat kids as equal, wise, gorgeous, precious and divine beings, knowing that even though our activities or responsibilities may differ, we all bring our own unique flavors and qualities.
- To live and reflect a living way that is true love and true religion in itself, with children being brought up knowing that they are equal Sons of God who can equally keep their light shining bright.
All children grow up. They become our next teachers, doctors, construction workers, health workers, lawyers, social workers and so on… and it is well worth supporting them to be able to truly and comfortably relate to, and care about people, for our future generations are one day going to look up to them for guidance. And if we are open to the divine cycles of reincarnation, it will be us returning to be guided by them.
So what light are we leaving behind for us to return to? Perhaps this is the grander question to consider.
By Johanna Smith, Bachelor of Education (Major Special Needs, Minor Psychology), Certificate of Early Childhood Education, Complementary Health – Esoteric Practitioner, Student of Counselling Diploma
Further Reading:
Do Our Kids Want a ‘Better Life’ or a ‘Connected Life’?
Technology: Are you Connected?
Pornography: Time to Say ENOUGH!
424 Comments
To me it feels like this is just a continuation of living life through distraction. First we had one television and then we had one for the children or for each of the children, then we had a computer and then one for each person in the home and the same with mobile phones etc. now we have all the technology at our fingertips no matter whether we are at home or away from home. Is it all an avoidance to not communicate or truly express with each other? It makes me wonder how advanced humanity truly is when we give our lives and our children’s over to relying on technology to fulfil us and how does this truly serve humanity. I appreciate your points of what true parenting and teaching can be Johanna and feel how vital they are for us to relate and support our children in these ways. “To make sitting, chatting, holding, engaging with our eyes part of our everyday communications with each other – and providing the space for children to feel this is true communication so that it becomes a marker in their body.”
Everything in the macro situation is a reflection of what is in the micro situation. Children are much more in their fullness when parents are also living that, and therefore parents are respected and children are equally respected in opening up conversations such as the above. This is the foundation towards any true change.
I recently watched a clip from a comedian about iPads being these amazing things to shut children up – while in a way funny, more so for me it was a painfully true account of how much we are currently giving over the raising of our children to technology
Anything we watch on a screen can be such a distraction when we allow ourselves to get caught in the virtual reality at the expense of the reality of our daily practical lives and responsibilities.
I really love your blog- every teacher should read this- this is true education!…. Children need true role models. Lets start being one.
This article is a road map for any parent. Connection, being aware of our children and innately aware of their being-ness, and when they loose connection with themselves in the harrows of every day life is the only thing we need to focus on as parents. Keeping in our mind that the only thing that matters is that our children grow up in todays world knowing who they are.
The technological age is something so different in our lives to before and parenting with this is very important for children to know real connection and love . This is our responsibility as adults to show this and live it for ourselves also.
Social media and use of technology reduces quality of connection… it does not enhance it. The amount, of hours that we as adults spend on our devices is something like 10 hours a day and for children approx. 6 hours… that’s a whole lot of communication time lost interacting with others.
Technology is having such an impact on parenting and most are not keeping up with what their children are doing, but it’s not an absolute in parenting, the only absolute is love, and love does often mean saying no.
It feels like life today is so much more intense for a lot of people than previous eras, but that may be an illusion, because for anyone open to feeling and understanding what is truly happening, life is so much simpler. It is our choices all the time that will make us shut down with all the distractions on offer or open up and return to our true connection, for others to feel it too.
I agree that the TV is like a drug that we all to often have come to see as acceptable in every home, arguably making it more dangerous than most, used more than most to numb out, and showing no signs of reduction for most people.
I agree with the teacher who said that the TV was an uninvited guest into the home, and unfortunately that guest can be demanding with how much attention it gets. It doesn’t bear to dwell on how many hours are spent wasted and numbing ourselves per week, and we talk about the effects of class A drugs, surely the TV should be at the top of this list.
The Soul, not ‘the screen’, is the true parent. Too often we hand our children over to technology without first laying a solid foundation of love, care, connection and truth which serves to guide them as they navigate their way through life.
This calls to mind getting on an airplane where it is assumed we all want to look at a screen to baby sit us all the way there and back again. What I find challenging is that I really would choose not to use any screens at all, and I feel great the less I do, but emails and writing on a PC are a way of the world today and important to our expression, so discernment I guess is the key.
I agree that these days the computer games console or the tablet or smart phone has become the ‘disruptive guest’ into homes the same as TV was and still is. However what this blog illustrates is that this guest is not exactly uninvited as we do have a choice to allow these things to dominate our homes or not.
I manage large groups of people and often staff are sick or not able to get to work and replacing someone last minute becomes imperative that I solve the issue and that requires phone use and computer use. When I call my daughter to account about spending too much time on her phone, I feel this smugness that comes as a “like you can talk, you are in your phone all the time”
I am trying to educate her that, yes, I am on my phone a bit but it carries a necessary purpose but to her,she argues that her conversations are equally important and purposeful.
It is a whole new social world they are living in; the same things go on as when I was young but they are on different platforms. It is very interesting to observe all of this. My daughter in not allowed on certain platforms, such as Musically, Facebook or Snap chat due to a feeling my husband and I have about them. I am not claiming to have the answers but I am trying to figure out my own boundaries with my phone use, in order to become more of a positive role model for my daughter.
It is pretty scary to consider the way the world is going as a world we are going to return to. Just within the 50 years of my life I have seen such changes as outlined here in the way our children are being sucked in to more and more damaging ways to spend their time at the expense of true human relationships. This is such an important topic.
How often, is it said that one of the most expensive items we will ever have is children and doesn’t even come with instructions? What if your list Johanna, on the parenting and teaching from our inner-wisdom, was issued with every new child in their care an well-being?
Every thing is always a reflection of our connection to the all or our disconnection, where have we have reinterpreted or separated in order to reinforce our individualism.
Most of us get messed up because we have not been truly met by our parents or adults in general, so in these times when parents find it so much easier to allow their kids so much screen time, we are looking at having some pretty messed adults in the future unless we have a massive turn around and return to truly connecting with our kids instead of fobbing them off with the telly or iPad.
It is so great to be discussing our concerns about the impact of the digital age, as there are measures we can take now to encourage the younger generations look up from their iPhones and connect to themselves, each other and the beauty of life around them. In an experiment I read about where young people were taken on a residential trip steeped in nature and without technology, they protested for the first day and then thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
‘Is the social media world today a reflection of our disconnection within humanity or is our disconnection in humanity a reflection of the much reduced level of connection we are accepting today from our participation in the social media world?’ – it’s the chicken and the egg question, it’s both, one feeds the other. Now more than ever, it’s up to each and every one of us to live and reflect the power and beauty in true connection with each other.
The grandness of what is offered here is enormous and something much needed to be brought to our attention and to see the bigger picture and our responsibility wth it. A brilliant sharing bringing so much wisdom and insight to our children our lives and our future in the world today and where this is all heading if we do not recognise what is happening and offer true connection with our children and each other.
I feel how much children want to be listened to and how much we miss out on this communication in the fast paced distracted world we are currently living. Learning alongside children is very humbling when I can be honest about those moments I do not give them my full care and attention.
To me, this is one of the most pressing challenges we face as parents, teachers and anybody for that matter. As long as we continue thinking that we can just give our children a video screen to act as a surrogate parent so we can have our ‘free space’ we are destined to create multiple generations of kids that become adults who have no idea how to connect truly to themselves and everyone else. This will inevitably lead to many different mental illnesses due to the lack of connection and self-care skills that should have been fostered early in their lives.
This is so much about connection and founding that as a known in our children before they make their own choices because then they will set a standard that will support themselves and others for future generations. Hopefully one I can come back into!!
“this does not mean that they should lose their playfulness, lightness, ability to have a real face to face conversation and know they are a gem of a child.” This sort of gets lost in the needs and do’s of parenting and growing up yet when I read it I could feel the joy of pockets of my own childhood and how good those times felt in my body. Thank you for this reminder and I thank my upbringing and the reflections I had around me for those pockets that have held me so strongly as an adult now.
Johanna what you wrote regarding the statement about the breakdown in homes due to the television being introduced was a very accurate prediction. I was not born in a time that didn’t involve a television being part of the main family area. But the prediction from this man made me wonder if families used to interact more in the evening before televisions were introduced because I know it is now very common for family’s to sit together in zombie state in front of the television of an evening rather than interact and connect…. so I can only imagine how much more disconnection will occur in the technology age children start having kids.
I don’t feel the internet is a safe environment for children, I was listening to a mother describing to me the rules she had set down for her son to go onto a site where there are lots of children playing a particular game. He wasn’t allowed to put his real name or age or where he lived etc. They put these rules in place because of the fear of internet grooming where someone can say they are 8 years old and it may not be the case in reality. ‘Social grooming’ I’m told takes place on these sites.They didn’t really want him to play this particular game but relented under pressure because all his school friends were playing it and he didn’t want to be left out. Surely there needs to be much more policing of these systems, so that if a child wants to go onto these sites to play they can without fear, but it seems to me that currently we lack the will power to clean them up.
Good call Johanna, it is our responsibility as adults to reflect to our children a true way of being, one that is based on connection to self for everything in life flows with the natural rhythms of the universe when we live life form our bodies and not our brains.
No matter how much things are changing, there are somethings that remain the same – children need boundaries and consequences, and they need to have the trust in the adults around them to open up and talk about things. Children need to be talked to and education about the world to name just a few principles – and now more than ever these principles are the key to ensuring that the escalating issues of cyber abuse and lack of communication skills don’t continue to rise.
I know this is slightly off topic, but an article in the news today announced that online watching of child sexual abuse has gone up by 258% in a year. What are we setting ourselves up for, by continuing to ignore the negative impact of the internet and social media?
That is a pretty shocking state that is an alarming indicator of the degradation of basic respect and decency that the internet is exacerbating. We need to pay attention.
Woah, that is a huge increase. I think even if it hadn’t increased at all it is something we all need to be aware of and to consider what is going on in our society and relationships that even just one person would want to watch something like that…
Johanna what I have noticed recently is just how much teenagers are speaking up about the pressures they are facing by trying to fit in with their social groups in and out of school. I see this as a step in the right direction. That we as a society are at last starting to have these conversations as they are long over due and frankly much needed, if we are to arrest the appalling suicide figures amongst teenagers.
In many ways the television set was the precursor to the untold number of screens that now abound. Television set the tone for turning away from each other and looking at an inanimate object that dominates most living rooms – to the detriment of the connection to another human being.
Well said Gabriele. The same fallacy of ‘bringing people together from all over the world through the transmission of TV signals is still running full speed ahead today with the massive use of smartphones all over the world, even in third world countries that don’t even have clean drinking water or other basic human support systems. This shows how much we have turned to look outside of ourselves for connection rather than feeling the connection that is waiting inside all along. As adults and the role models for kids, we need to look at our own behaviours and addictive use of various electronic devices and social media first in order to show our children how we can live in a different way without relying so heavily on them and only after we have built that connection to ourself first.
I read an article recently which showed survey graphs of young people’s interactions with friends, dating, sense of loneliness and quality of sleep over the past 30 years. There is a dramatic downturn at the point of 2007, which is when the iPhone was introduced. We are yet to see the full implications of this significant contributing factor to the state of mental well-being in young people.
Parenting today requires a lot of navigation of social media and other screen-based entertainment. Gone are the days where innocent play with the simplest of games and objects forms the centrepiece of childhood. Some great insight here Johanna for us all to be aware of, regardless of whether we have children currently or not.
‘ I see the loss of all of the above happening across the board with children because of their absorption into the social media world.’I agree and ask myself why shouldn’t we be more alarmed? So often I hear people discount the obvious social insecurity being displayed with our young. I was very shy growing up when outside the family home and would describe myself now as vulnerable to influence by what didn’t have my best interests at heart. I am so glad I didn’t have social media in my day.
Social media doesn’t have its users best interests at heart and we ignore this at our peril. It is there to sell, sell products, fashions, ideas, glamour, illusion etc. It has no true care. Yes, it is made up of people using it but what comes through them is often ugly – whether it’s someone’s insecurities, wanting recognition and attention or direct cyber abuse. There is a lot of deception and deceit, wolves in sheep’s clothing. All so much to be navigated by young people and children. No wonder playfulness, trust and connection is being lost.
When I look back at my childhood I can really see how watching horror movies, music videos and TV programmes influenced me and left an impression that I had to work hard to drop.
Nowadays we have this much imposed on us plus all the social media, it really is just too much for a growing being, we are always best nurtured in a environment away from imposing influential media.
We certainly do look to others for role models, for a reflection of how to be in life… And this is really needed for kids to support them to know and respect themselves and others truly and not get swept up in the many ill currents that are found on social media, the media, gaming and the internet.
So this is an invitation (aka urgent call) for us all to take responsibility for the way we behave online, setting standards that are inspiring for our young people as they navigate their way through the ever changing pressures of online life.
‘In the last few years and progressively more today, I can see and feel the pressures and imposition of technology and the way it is being used by our next generation.’ As technology invents more ways to impress with bigger, better, brighter screens with the artificial, false light and all the bells and whistles that go with them, we as a humanity start to feel less. But we are simply handing ourselves over to a virtual world of illusion, and forgetting to appreciate the brightest light of all that is alive in us all – our divine inner essence that truly connects us, to each other and God.
Yes, we are so being sucked into the bells, whistles, bright lights as a distraction from appreciating the divinity of nature and each other. If we can start to see the game and call it out we can bring more awareness and where there is awareness there is freedom to choose once again.