The modern world in which we are living and our kids and teens have opened their eyes is totally unique to the world we have lived in our childhood. Economically, socially, politically, technologically, the world we live in doesn’t have significant resemblance with the world that we have seen a few decades ago. The contemporary social media apps Facebook and tool of text messaging have not existed in our childhood, but in the lives of generation tech in particular. Moreover, we are dealing with the internet influenced the world. The thousands of changes that have been made by the modern technology and we have seen it over a decade certainly disturbing us “digital immigrants”. We don’t know what would be the world look alike in an upcoming couple of decades, but we can assume the rise and rise of the media fueled world that is recruiting our young children for social media activities would change the scenario of their upcoming generation. The modern young generation is known as generation tech that is totally influenced by the media fueled world.
The good, the bad & the ugly about media fueled world
Once a child opens his eyes in the media-fuelled world, he/she would be surrounded by the technology even at a very young age. You may have seen young adolescents and infants playing with the mobile phones of their parents. Because, when their cognition process is under developing stage they saw their parents using cell phones, gadgets and computer devices and when they come into the stage when they start recognizing the contemporary technological creatures as a smartphone, and computer machines and parents are happily made them catch in their hands. Ultimately and unwillingly without realizing the consequences, you are playing your role in the recruitment of your children to the media fueled world. Gradually, they start discovering the technology and its usage and ultimately they come to know what it is? Then parents have to buy a cell phone or computer connected to the cyberspace and then classes of the media fueled world to get started and you will do that.
“Jim Tyler in his book “raising generation tech: Preparing your children for Media Fuelled world” says, we cannot easily say that either the media fueled world is constructive or destructive! Healthy or unhealthy! Good or bad! Unless we have to see the following questions and then we can decide fully.”
Question no.1
How often your children exposed to the popular culture and engaged with the technology?
Obviously, when kids and teens play it safe! I mean they use the digital world to be in their own socks and don’t interact and use the technology and media all day long. Then they can enjoy the popular culture and as well the as the technology. However, the wired world has turned human lives into robotic one and the generation tech has caused through it fully. They just send and receive messages, shared media files such as photos and videos and Voice messages to their real-life friends and don’t use the instant messaging apps all the time using the mobile phone to interact with the strangers. They use it only for exploring the culture worldwide for the sake of knowing the people for caste culture, color, and creed. Then it would very handy for them to use the media as the source of knowledge and to explore their communication skills via social messaging apps such as Facebook, Yahoo, WhatsApp, Viber, Vine and plenty of others alike. They use cellphones for crucial and important purposes rather than to passing the whole day on it.
Question no. 2
What is the nature of the content on to which they are more likely to explore?
Content is the key point, parents have to know that what type of things or content they are more likely to explore in the media-fuelled world. Because, it happens most of the time young kids and teens using instant messengers sharing their photos and videos that are based on self–obscenity, view pornographic or carnal content and share their images in a compromised way that could have seen by the cyber predators and your kids and teens are being followed by the online predators such as stalkers, cyberbullies, sexual predators and other negative stuff that can exploit your child and they could be trapped online evil forces.
Question no. 3
How much you provide freedom and guidance for technology and the digital world?
If you are well aware of the media fueled world and the vulnerabilities out that can exploit your children such as interaction with the strangers, blind dates, and bad habits such as sexting and uncommitted sex. All these vulnerabilities can exploit your child online because your child is living with the popular culture of technology and you have not guide your kids and teens to encounter with and deal with it instantly. However, if you have acknowledged your children about the online vulnerabilities and have trained your children for the media fueled world then the media fueled world would not be been able to recruit your children at all. Because they understand what is good, the bad and the ugly about the media fueled world. So, it is important for the parents on the inside of the digital world of the children and its effects on their health and behavior.
Question no.4
How much counterbalancing exposure your kids and teens get from the positive experience?
On the other hand, if you are having well trained your children against the vulnerabilities of the media-fuelled world, then they will have counterbalancing exposure to the fullest. They will surely get to know how to deal with the predator online who are trying to approach then online? Moreover, they will not use the social media platforms all day long in the name of entertainment and fun. They will get to know how much the privacy online has its importance and what should they share and what should they not! They will not be influenced in a negative way by the media fueled world and further, they will use the popular culture and technology for positive means rather than spending time on it for negative and dangerous purposes. Furthermore, parents should “treat trauma” rather than the behavior of kids at risk or heavily recruited by the media fueled world.
Popular culture today among children due to media fueled a world
Generation tech and the popular culture or media fueled world in which we are living as “digital immigrants”, and continuous recruitment of our children has made their lives like a celebrity. They all want to be famous, appreciated all the time, and see themselves out of this world. Moreover, young teens want to have good looks at least using mobile phone filters and then post selfies on the internet regulated messengers along with the branded clothes tagging themselves as the richest person has all the facilities of the life. Moreover, they want to display their food, activities and want to have many followers who always stay ready to appreciate them every way.
The bottom line:
The recruitment of the generation tech for the most powerful force as media influenced word has found negative than positive. According to the recent surveys, three–forth parents do believe that their children have become materialistic and have got the negative influence of media-fuelled world in terms of movies, social media and music. Moreover, 86%, parents say media marketing have made children materialistic and more likely to explore sexual content in a very young age and 66% had a viewpoint that they could do a quite better job for supervising the children media fueled world through parental control or digital parenting activities.
