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| Martha on holiday-with the phone of course! |
Why does my 16 year old lad, who has to be nagged to death to go to bed, spasmodically from 10.30-11.30pm each night suddenly develop such a love for his sleep he rushes to get ready at 10 pm?
I did some investigating.
It wasn't rocket science.
He has a new ipod touch.
I work with the internet on till 1am at least every night.
Have you done the maths yet?
His twitter's last statement was 12.57 am.
Busted or what!
Maybe he will read this before he gets home, giving him ample time for some elaborate explanation, maybe not.
I think the girls are more subversive and subtle about what they post and when. Maybe.........
I have an iphone. It took me two years to save for it, so I could buy it outright and not be stung for huge monthly charges (gotta love Martin Lewis's site!)
It has certainly revolutionised my life and I can now manage my time better, as the charity is run through facebook and this can be updated and emails replied to whilst I sit waiting for endless activities to cease each night.
It took me a while to master facebook, the charity has a twitter account that I just cannot understand, the only games I have on it are Dora the Explorer for when the 6 year old gets bored, however I have developed a love for Instagram and other's photographs.
Way back in the dark ages when I was a child (or so my children appear to think) the only way to contact my best friend was to persuade my mother I HAD to speak to her about some pressing homework assignment and ring her on the very public house dial up phone in the hallway with my mother hovering in the kitchen 'cleaning'. After 5 or so minutes I was told to put it down. We did try to yogurt-pots-and-string communication from our bedrooms but the distance was too far and we failed miserably. If I had the technology my children have I am sure I would have done the same as them, apart from the fact my mother would have switched the internet off!!!
It is an amazing spectacle in the recent holidays, you can shout and shout people to come and help for ages and get really cross, OR you can simply switch off the internet and by some miracle within roughly three minutes they all appear mournfully asking why the internet doesn't work suddenly!
As part of my Masters we will look more deeply at Children and Technology as well as the influences of consumerism on children. I cannot wait. another chance to leap onto my soap box! It is good to be able to keep in touch with all the children easily by phone (apart from the fact that the majority of the time they cannot phone because they have used their credit or their phones mysteriously have no signal when I try to find out where they are!) however by and large I do not like such gadgets for my teenagers. They are a complete distraction to any form of work and study (son had all his taken off him from his G.C.S.E mocks in January until his exams had finished in June!-so he would revise!) and unless you are a very disciplined teenager, they are addictive . I do feel, however that neither do I wish to isolate them from the same technology that everyone else has, therefore some rules over the years have evolved.
- No TV's or laptops in bedrooms.
- No phones at mealtimes.
- If we are watching a family film, we are watching it, not on phones.
- Misuse means technology is taken off you at bedtimes!
- Great misuse means technology is taken off you for a period of time altogether.
- No mobiles until they need one (around year 7/8/9) and then a cheap one!
- No laptop until they are 18 (until then they use ours)
- No facebook until 16 (mainly due to what I have to deal with in school)
- Facebook / twitter etc has to have us added to supervise at times.
These may appear lenient to some of you, and too harsh to others, but this is what works for us, and keeps technology at a purposeful arms length. Maybe when I have completed my modules and read endless research papers my views will have changed?
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