R' Amichai Gordin
The following is from an interview with Tamir Lion, a famous anthropologist. It describes a harsh reality, and it requires us all to engage in some very deep thought.
* * * * * *
The fate of youth today is to reach maturity in the middle of the fastest technological revolution in all of history. Their parents do not begin to understand the world in which the youths live. They also do not spend enough time at home in order to have an understanding of what is going on. The youths stand exposed, in the eye at the middle of the storm.
I am amazed anew each time that I see how little the parents understand what is happening. The most serious cases of violence, sexual violence, evil, and exploitation that I have ever encountered take place in established cities, among a population with a high socioeconomic level and very good educational services.
I spoke to the youth investigator who questioned fourteen-year-old children who abused an adult who was mentally and physically challenged. Do you know what they said to her? "His crying made us laugh." I see and hear such statements everyplace, from Savion to Shiloh. A teacher in the eighth grade in Shiloh told me that two boys burned the hand of a third boy, and they laugh about it. He was the homeroom teacher of these boys and their older brothers, and he does not understand how this could happen.
The borders are becoming blurred for children who spend all their time in youtube. When I was a child, I would watch Bruce Lee movies with my friends, and then we might make one or two Kong Fu gestures, but we were aware all the time the Bruce Lee was just a movie. Today's children are no longer sure about this. What difference does it make what you say to a child if he sits with a telephone in his lap for five hours every day and hears a completely different message?
[Summarized from an interview in Haaretz.]
* * * * * *
"A comprehensive study was performed in Michigan University, and it showed that students today are about 40% less empathetic than the students were a decade ago, and a decade before that. If empathy is a measure of compassion, then today's children are less humane than we are. They are different.
The "new" youths, contrary to what is commonly believed, are not smarter than before. For many years, the results of the Wexler test of IQ were constantly increasing. Every ten years the average IQ went up by a few points. In the last decade the increase has stopped, and the average has started to decline.
The smartphone has destroyed the division between the house and the outside. The young people no longer have any option of stopping, running away, or pausing for a breath of air. They live in constant fear that something is happening without them taking part. Every minute they must run to the screen to make sure that they have not missed something important.
Today the "neighborhood" no longer exists. When we look around outside in the afternoon, we no longer see young people on the streets. They are all at home with their smartphones. Israeli youth lead the rest of the world in hours spent in front of a screen. There is talk of up to nine screen hours a day. I think it is much more. In the number of hours spent in front of a television screen, we are in second place in the world.
We see more and more cases of harsh violence. One youth injures another one not because he is evil but because he does not feel that he is hurting him. He does not understand that he is hurting him. As of last year, half of the first grade pupils in Israel already have a smartphone. The age of earliest exposure to pornography in Israel is nine years. And they watch a lot of pornography. What I hear from children and from those who treat youths and their advisors in the realm of sex is that there too, in their most intimate relationships, they feel as if they are living in a movie.
[Ibid].
* * * * * *
What can be done about the revolution of the screens? Actually, quite a bit can be done.
(1) Children in the first grade do not need a smartphone. Actually, neither do children in the eighth grade. And in general there is no reason to allow smartphones to be brought into elementary schools.
(2) Even children who "must" have a smartphone (for WhatsApp, for example) do not need any ability to surf the internet. There are blocking programs like "netspark" (and I would guess that there are others on the market too) which work on most smartphones (except for i-phone) and block all internet access. And no, I am not connected at all to any of these companies.
(3) Even for older children, who evidently should be allowed to surf the net, it is imperative to install some blocking program (such as "netspark"). And it is just as important to install a time limiting program (which is also included in "netspark"). The problem is not only the content but also becoming addicted to the screen. When you think about the matter in a cool and controlled way – there is no reason for a child to sit at the internet for more than an hour a day.
(4) And there is something that is just as important as what is written above: Paragraph (3) above is just as relevant for us, the adults. We are also human beings. For children addiction to the screen and to problematic content can cause greater immediate damage, but adults need to limit their activities too.
