The Concord Monitor (N.H.), Feb. 26:
Imagine your life without a smart phone.
You are at the grocery store and can’t remember whether you were supposed to pick up chicken breasts or thighs for your spouse’s Crock-Pot recipe. A text message would provide an answer within a matter of seconds, but that’s not an option. So do you flip a coin or buy both? Or neither?
There are dozens of such scenarios where the absence of a smart phone makes life more complicated. But there’s a beneficial flip side, too. That call from work that would have made your blood boil goes unanswered. Instead of reading emails while the kids play on the floor, you actually interact with them and they are beyond thrilled with the attention.
That’s the way it is with technology. People embrace the convenience but are blind to the price beyond the price tag. Worst of all, that blindness is passed along to children.
The Fitbit craze is a good example .
Worn like a watch or wristband, a Fitbit tracks physical activity throughout the day. If you reach the Fitbit goal of 10,000 steps in a day, the little digital display rewards you with a virtual celebration. The devices can also track heart rate, calories burned – even the quality of your sleep. Collecting the data can become an addictive game, so of course it was only a matter of time before the trackers would find their way onto younger wrists.
Any device that encourages kids to exercise seems like a great idea. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one-third of children are overweight or obese and the problem isn’t going away. If reading a copy of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is no longer powerful enough to get them roaming the woods, climbing trees, digging for treasure and building a raft, maybe a digital display will do the trick. Ten thousand steps is 10,000 steps, right?
Maybe, but maybe not.
Every parent (or former child) knows that kids grow tired of the same old games, especially when the game comes with batteries. It’s only a matter of time before that beloved Fitbit is thrown in the back of a drawer to await the “Oh my God, remember this?” exclamation as she packs for college. The question is, will all that activity spurred by the device be tossed aside, too? If a kid is taking 10,000 steps not for the fun of the steps but to see the little digital display light up, what will her incentive be once the counting stops?
There is also the question of whether activity trackers feed into body image issues. For some girls and boys, a Fitbit encourages fun and exercise – nothing more, nothing less. But for others, too great a focus on the target numbers can quickly become an unhealthy obsession with end results. In a study titled “The Hidden Cost of Personal Quantification,” Jordan Etkin of Duke University found that while activity trackers increase the amount of exercise people do, “enjoyable activities can became almost like a job by focusing on the outcomes of things that used to be fun.” It’s a short journey from that mindset to self-destructive behavior such as bad diets, depression and eating disorders.
For everything technology gives the world, it seems to take something away. The job of parents in this age of iPads, Fitbits and virtual reality is to help kids maximize the educational and physical benefits of the technology while pointing out the pitfalls. And it’s not a bad idea to look to Tom Sawyer for a little guidance now and then.
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