Techno-parenting: The New Buzzword

Technology may have made our lives easier, but it has also added some new-age difficulties!

An entire generation of students are now being brought up under the watchful gaze and overpowering influence of technology. The buzzword abroad is ‘techno-parenting’. “Techno-parenting can help monitor your child’s life, but also spoil the parent-child relationship,” says an article on the subject. Techno-parenting is about using high-tech gadgets to micro-manage and keep a tab on what your child is doing. Cellphones help you keep track of your child who is lost, at the bus-stop. Software is there to track down your child’s use of Internet (mis)use and e-mail.

Technology is transforming the way we use gadgets and why. A mobile phone today is more than mobile. It is a handheld Internet surfer, text message centre and a camera. Students in Universities in US and other developed countries, instantly send their parents grades, a syllabus, dormitory photos and talk in text message, when they don’t feel like really talking! Parents too do likewise; they check their children’s progress on the school’s Web site – for info on report cards, attendance, and general performance.

But if you think that this hyperawareness, and all this micro-managing has improved the parent-child relationship, you have a thought coming. According to some child experts, it has actually worsened the relationship. It has robbed the kids of critical opportunities to fail, and to learn from those mistakes. It is leading to teenage depression and is inhibiting independent growth in a child, experts say.

So where lies the solution? The key, say clinical psychologists, is to maintain a balance and engage kids, talk to them, and establish a special and continuing rapport with them. Clearly, technology may have made our lives easier, but it has also added some new-age difficulties!

Already, such a thing is already being experienced in some affluent Indian families. So you are forewarned. Remember, it’s okay to break the rules, but keep the law.