teens and technology

Teens and technology
From the clay slate of our forefathers to the inter-active interfaces of the next gen-x; technology has taken a giant leap. Mankind all over the planet is facing problems of concern whether they maybe environment pollution, global warming, water shortage, insufficient crop production or erratic weather patterns, to name it a few. What is encouraging is that the next generation... the teens of today and the adults of tomorrow all are optimistic they know and believe that a greener solution is attainable and possible via technology. The plunging temperatures of 2010, rising temperatures in the summer, with glacial melt-downs all will be a thing of the distant past. Powered by technology and fuelled by creativity, fundamental change is about to emerge in the electronically connected world they inhabit. Gasoline powered automobiles, compact discs; desk-tops are headed for the technology scrap yard or the graveyard! The next-gen feels that their i-pods, lap-tops, cell phones are entry level tools that combined with education and creativity will lead to changes that improve the world.
Gurmehar Sangha , class twelfth student home form Sanawar aims to be a automobile engineer and his dream is to design a fuel – efficient car on the line of the new Mercedes engine , but as he says his would have zero emissions !! You will probably read this and say tall claims but, no that’s what not they perceive. The fierce determination and the steely look in the eyes say it all. Acc. to a survey, 33% of the young adults say that gasoline powered cars will be obsolete by 2015. The tech-savvy teen with the phones which are smart, which lets them access the web, text, download tunes a flash drive which is their real wealth. They seem to be incomplete without them; they can’t even begin to comprehend life without their external organs…Teens believe that global issues have solutions which can be solved collectively by working together to apply new technologies and innovative thinking to concerns which affect the world. The advantage which these kids have is that they are not bound by boundaries which have been created by the so- called custodians of Earth: the politicians. They have not been jaded, or haven’t become cynical to life or the challenges thrown by it.
Using cell –phones to download music, to search, face book to keep in touch globally and to blog communicating ideas is fun but the teens of India are optimistic that creativity is unleashed by computers and modern technology can help solve global issues like clean water. Pune, students top the list in the country in blogging and researching. 91% think that technology will help and 89% think that hunger can be eradicated by the end of 2015. Disease eradication (88%) , pollution will be down and energy conservation are within the realm of our reach.
These electronically connected teens will develop better solutions which seem un surmountable. The teens, the actual wealth of ours have hopes of changing destiny and the actual tryst with history will begin (to paraphrase Nehruji’s speech)! Today’s teen is more comfortable with technology. It is their domain, the comfort zone, the security blanket without which they seem rudderless. A mother of teen age boys says that they know more what to do, how to restore or work the computer more than her. It seems times have changes where smart was a compliment attributing to the person’s appearance or his overall bearing now it has a different meaning. Smart is used for the smart phone you carry! One which handles everything of your life to the time you get up, to the notes you need to text email, book transportation pay bills, withdraw money. The only thing Mr. Jobs hasn’t figured out is the substitute for love, but there are reports he is working on it, after all it is a chemical reaction, as the teens say!
The positive trend is that teenagers feel that learning computers has opened horizons which were not available or were not know n before to them. Onkar Sangha , who has just finished his boards from Sanawar hopes to become a doctor but wants to study robotics at the same time to use robots to perform surgery in the future. This idea he says all came from browsing the net. Just, imagine the fertile mind which is given fodder by the internet or the wide platform available to them. Of course, there is the downside as always there is, technology is used by kids where bullying is not on the school playing fields but cyber space. 25% of the kids felt threatened at one point of time by peers or by their friends who resorted to intimitadation via the next frontier.Students are bullied in the first year for over a period of one month and the forms include verbal bullying, exclusion socially, in some cases sexual insult and the worst one of all spreading of rumors. Mrs Sandhu, found out that her daughter was being targeted after she found her sullen ad depressed after she had joined a new school Girls are targeted more, when they are online. The pressure to fit in to an all girl’s school to be in the ‘group’ made her vulnerable, she says. The comments are nasty and also physical; she had to tell the principal who pulled up the girls this happened in an elite convent all –girls’ school of Chandigarh.
Another aspect of technology is sexting which is gaining grounds in today’s world, where teenagers are resorting to sexual virtual foreplay mixed with today’s technology. This is gaining ground and is giving vent to the raging hormones which start rearing their head. Some kids however are against it and want to wait for the real thing. The chat/ texting take sexual connotations as a substitute to the parental controls. It is an easier way to circumvent the parental control.
Putting aside the couple of problems which we as parents face, it is a positive note which ushers in 2011 where our next generation is upbeat and optimistic to tackle the problems of the society on a smaller scale and humanity at large
Ravneet Sangha