{"id":777,"date":"2011-10-24T12:02:17","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T16:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/?p=777"},"modified":"2011-10-24T12:02:17","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T16:02:17","slug":"technology-a-boy-on-the-brink-of-adulthood-some-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/technology-a-boy-on-the-brink-of-adulthood-some-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology, a boy on the brink of adulthood, some questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My son Jack and I spent most of last Sunday in the kitchen together. Although he has a desk upstairs in his bedroom, and I have one in my office, the kitchen is the place in this house where most of the creative work gets done, whether it\u2019s putting together a pot of soup, writing a blog post, reading manuscripts, or composing a college application essay.<\/p>\n

Jack sat on the sofa, tackling one short essay after another on the Common App and various college supplements, while I perched at the table, reading on-line submissions for a panel I\u2019m on next week. Between essays, he would chat with me about possible angles he might take, and then he\u2019d go outside to shoot hoops in the driveway for ten minutes and think things through.<\/p>\n

Essentially, Jack’s challenge was the same one every other high school senior we know is wrestling with at the moment: How to present himself in words to complete strangers who will then all-too-briefly compare him to thousands of other unique, gifted kids competing for the same spots in next year\u2019s incoming freshman class. Of course, I have no one with whom to compare my son; I\u2019m reading just one college application, not a thousand. And, as his mother, I\u2019m about as far from an objective judge as I could be. But I was struck, nevertheless, by the depth of his thinking and the range of experiences that have contributed to the construction of his eighteen-year-old self.<\/p>\n

By late that night, he\u2019d answered one question with a sonnet, written an honest, thoughtful essay about the difficult but valuable lessons he learned from getting suspended from high school, tried to compress two summers of work he\u2019s passionate about into a thousand characters, and described how his environment growing up has influenced the person he is today.<\/p>\n

As Jack emailed his work from his computer across the room to mine, and we zapped edited versions back and forth, I couldn\u2019t help but marvel at \u00a0the ease and efficiency of the process. Thanks to the wonders of the digital age, we could work independently yet side by side in the coziest, most companionable room in the house. At the same time, I found myself thinking of the role that technology has — and has not — played in shaping the multi-faceted picture of my son that emerged from his day of writing and reflection.<\/p>\n

The next day, an article in the Boston Globe, titled \u201cTrying to Gauge the Effects of Growing up Digital\u201d<\/a> caught my eye. \u201cA few clicks, a couple of swipes,\u201d it begins, \u201cand Bridget Colvin\u2019s four- and-a half year old son, August, was tapping away on an iPad smudged with tiny fingerprints.\u201d The author goes on to point out that \u201cthere is little doubt we are seeing only the early stages of a hyper-connected world that is changing childhood.\u201d The images brought the point home: toddlers swiping fingers across board books, expecting the characters to come to \u201clife;\u201d parents handing their iPhones to fussy babies to quiet them; one-year-olds adeptly playing \u201cBaby Birds,\u201d a version of \u201cAngry Birds\u201d for the Pre-K set; three-year-olds skillfully surfing for videos on YouTube; a description of Fisher-Price\u2019s hot new toy, the $15 Laugh & Learn Apptivity Case, an \u201coversize iPhone case that doubles as a baby rattle.\u201d Since the toy was released last month, Amazon has been unable to keep it in stock; the most popular app for the case, \u201cWhere\u2019s Puppy\u2019s Nose,\u201d has been downloaded more than 700,000 times.<\/p>\n

My son Jack never was never an \u201ceasy\u201d child; active, curious, sensitive, bright, he struggled to find his place in a world that often seemed too overwhelming. Learning how to be at ease in this world, physically and emotionally, and how to live in it fully, has always been his greatest challenge. Confronting that challenge through all the years of his childhood and adolescence, he has suffered, matured, and, in the end, blossomed.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help but wonder what kind of young adult Jack would be today had he been offered an early escape route from his complicated feelings. How would he have developed had he been able to lose himself in an app at age three or four, instead of having to negotiate the complex emotional and tactile stimulation that life continually threw at him? Would he have learned resilience if he\u2019d been able to tune out the intensity of real experience by tuning in to an animated wonderland instead? What would feel important to him now, if he had spent the hours of his early childhood having interactive adventures in front of computer screens, instead of getting into mischief and experiencing the painful consequences? Who would he be, if he hadn’t been a boy who grew up playing in the backyard with his friends, laying on the couch under an afghan sounding out the words to \u201cFrog and Toad,\u201d learning to do math by collecting a hundred acorns during an autumn walk, and then adding and subtracting them into piles?<\/p>\n

I got a disturbing glimpse of the answer to some of those questions a couple of years ago, when Jack became so enamored with video games for a while — and then so good at them \u2013 that he eschewed the real world of relationships and heartache and expectations, for a virtual one that he could create and control at will. It seemed like a perfect match up \u2013 his lightening quick brain and extraordinary hand-eye coordination made him really, really great at video games. But the more hours he put in in front of the screen, progressing through increasingly difficult levels of exceedingly complicated games, the more his ability and willingness to engage in the challenges of the real world atrophied. He lost the concentration necessary to read deeply, lost interest in homework, quit sports, pulled back from school and friends. For the better part of a difficult year, he was physically home but emotionally absent.<\/p>\n

For Jack, making the hard choice to endure the emotional ups and downs of reality rather than escape into an alluring alternative universe, has turned out to be a formative, life-altering experience. He had to figure out how to use technology constructively, of course, as a tool with which to work, rather than as a substitute for life. But, just as important, he also had to figure out how to build a sustaining, meaningful friendship with himself — at the very moment of adolescence when we humans are often most desperate to escape from ourselves. And, because we had moved from the suburbs, where he was surrounded by friends and neighbors, to the relative isolation of the country, that friendship with himself has had to sustain him through many long, solitary hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife in rural New Hampshire was as lonely as I predicted,\u201d <\/em> Jack wrote in one essay (I quote with his permission). <\/em><\/em> \u201cThe driveway was dirt and undribble-able and while the lawn was big enough for a complete baseball diamond, there weren’t any players around. Being alone with my thoughts was uncomfortable; I’d never had to be alone in my life. But in the midst of my sadness, I began to grow up. I became more creative with the ways that I entertained myself. I spent time drawing, reading, inventing card games and playing the guitar, as well as just sitting and thinking.<\/em><\/p>\n

In my pensive misery as a twelve-year-old it dawned on me that I would never become the self- sufficient, creative person I wanted to be if I couldn’t even enjoy my own company. I would continue to distract myself with all of the problems around me and never face my own. Although I’m a social person by nature and love spending time with good friends, I owe the security I have in myself to learning how to become my own best friend, in the quiet countryside of New Hampshire.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em>Jack and I talked about all this as I drove him back to school last week, where he\u2019s taking a demanding senior-year course load and has decided to try out for the varsity basketball team \u2013 despite the fact that he\u2019s spent the last two winter seasons playing squash. He\u2019s been playing basketball for hours a day all fall, just for the fun of it. So, he started working out, lifting weights, running, practicing his jump shot, as a challenge to himself; whether or not he actually makes the team is less important to him than the pleasure he\u2019s found in the discipline of trying.<\/p>\n

As Jack would be the first to admit, just a couple of years ago, in the midst of his video-game obsession, he wouldn\u2019t have taken on the challenge of making the team, nor would he have risked the disappointment of rejection. Now, having come to understand himself more fully, he\u2019s realized that it\u2019s by actively engaging in the physical world that he connects with his happiest, best self. Fortunately, when he decided he\u2019d had his fill of video games, he had<\/strong><\/em> a \u201cself\u201d to return to, a work-in-progress self to be sure, but one that had been shaped by an early childhood without much access to TV or movies or computers.<\/p>\n

Having spent his formative years with no choice but to learn to live in his own body and be entertained by his own imagination, he had plenty of \u201creal world\u201d experiences and skills to build on, some familiarity with the pleasure of making things, getting lost in a book, or climbing a mountain. Thinking about this, putting it into words on a form on his computer, he couldn\u2019t help but wonder what life, and adolescence, might be like for a boy of his temperament coming of age in this next generation.<\/p>\n

Having watched Jack\u2019s journey these last eighteen years, I wonder, too. If you grow up with a gadget in the palm of your hand, do you ever develop an inner life? If large portions of your first years on earth are spent online, will you ever make contact with that sacred entity within that guides you toward your full potential as a human being? If you\u2019re an expert at surfing the web by age three, will you ever discover the pleasure of crocheting a hat, building a snow fort, or laying on the grass and staring up at the sky? If there is no silence in your mind, no quiet place in your heart, no true solitude in your soul, do you ever hear the voice within?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have the answers to these questions; they will be revealed by the next generation of children, the ones who are happily tapping away at iPhones in their car seats. But I think it\u2019s interesting that my eighteen-year-old son, who is a self-taught whiz on the computer, is worried about those kids. And I\u2019m glad to hear him say that he\u2019s grateful now for the low-tech early childhood he had \u2013 even the loneliness, even the boredom, even the hard parts.<\/p>\n

Jack has one more essay to write, and he\u2019s chosen the topic: mastery for the sake of mastery. In it he wants to write about the pleasure he\u2019s found over the years in teaching himself all kinds of random, mostly useless but deeply satisfying skills: how to do the Rubik\u2019s cube, skip stones across a pond, flip an omelet, climb rocks, hit a wicket shot in tennis, recite Hamlet\u2019s soliloquy, juggle five balls at a time, play \u201cPurple Haze\u201d on the guitar.<\/p>\n

Like I said, I\u2019m not a very objective judge, but I think he’s ready for college.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Further reading: a related and fascinating article on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, about the growth of low-tech Waldorf schools<\/a> in the high-tech epicenter, Silicon Valley. Also, a recent piece in, of all places, Fast Company<\/a>, about the disappearance of down-time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My son Jack and I spent most of last Sunday in the kitchen together. Although he has a desk upstairs in his bedroom, and I have one in my office, the kitchen is the place in this house where most of the creative work gets done, whether it\u2019s putting together a pot of soup, writing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,35,8,9,10],"tags":[126,412],"class_list":{"0":"post-777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-family-life","8":"category-letting-go","9":"category-parenting","10":"category-parenting-boys-parenting","11":"category-parenting-teens","12":"tag-college-applications","13":"tag-technology","14":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}