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Journalism of Courage
Isha Vaish leads a full life. Not yet seven, her days are filled with piano and dancing classes and participating as an active member in the Little Stars Club. There are a lot of children like Isha, whose parents encourage them to showcase their talents very early on, sometimes with great success.
Today8217;s kids are growing up with an easy access to facilities and opportunities which their parents never had. They are also being bombarded with a lot of information through information technology and the electronic media. But they also have to face stiffer competition each year and the pressure to perform increases. Is this improving them socially or is it in fact serving to alienate them from parents and peers?
Channel Help, a voluntary organisation that deals typically with youth related problems gets a lot of calls from troubled youngsters. Says psychiatrist Chaula Patel of Channel Help, 8220;Today8217;s children have a lot of access to information. But knowledge has no value unless it can be applied and children do not get those many opportunities to apply it to. The media, especially the electronic media, doesn8217;t portray the whole picture. It cannot give all the views that make the whole. As a result, children are losing out on their interpersonal skills and are not learning to verbalise their emotions.8221;
In a society which stresses on achievements, children are taught to be aggressive in order to succeed and applauded when they 8220;beat the others8221; at the game. They are also exposed to a lot of activities and seldom indulge in sedentary activities like reading. 8220;A frequent complaint with children who come to me is boredom,8221; says Patel. What is so wrong with that? 8220;In fact it is abnormal to want to be mentally stimulated all the time. Sometimes even boredom can be good! Children must learn to appreciate all emotions,8221; she says.
Meena Pinto, a grandmother of two young kids, agrees. 8220;Kids today don8217;t seem to be reading books anymore and spend more time watching television,8221; she says. She also feels that children get easily influenced with what they watch on television and wishes that there were more educative programmes that children could watch. 8220;Also, today8217;s generation seems to take a lot of things for granted because so much is easily available,8221; she adds.
However, technology which is becoming easily available also lacks the human touch. Spending a lot of time in front of the idiot box or playing violent computer games can play with impressionable young minds.
Psychiatrist Suparna Telang feels that children have started getting attached to unreal things like the television and computer. 8220;With so many nuclear families today, there are fewer family members. As a result kids form fewer emotional attachments; where earlier they could find shelter and security amongst members of a big family. So children seem to look out for substitutes, and sometimes the substitute is the television or the internet,8221; she says.
The world is changing for sure. There is also no denying that children today are aware of a lot more than their parents were at their age. Possibly a breakdown in communication is only natural because of the generation gap that inadvertently comes into play? However, Preeti Varma, a mother of two young kids, disagrees. She feels that 8220;technology is making kids lose out on empathy. They are becoming increasingly concerned with what is happening with them and not with what is happening around them. They also tend to take a lot for granted, looking at things only from their point of view and not from the others,8221; she says. 8220;Maybe we were just brought up differently,8221; she adds.
Telang agrees that kids today are becoming increasingly involved with themselves. 8220;I know a mother who wanted her son to help her with the house work, at a certain time of the day. The 17-year-old son told her very casually that this time of the day was for Jenny,8221; she says. Apparently, Jenny was a friend he had made over the internet, who was having certain problems, which he was helping her with.
Still, kids are born much the same. They still continue to play and ask questions. It8217;s only now that there are a lot more new things seeking their attention. Technology and possibly parental ambition is making them smart and fast. As Manju Kamat, a grandmother, says wistfully, 8220;I wish they8217;d just go out and play8230; roll around and get dirty8230;8221;
