Parenting in era of digital technology
The development of digital technologies and the Internet provide a wonderful platform for parents and teachers to engage and interact with our children. However, this digital technology may also raise new issues.
In the book parenting in the Age of Digital Technology, the authors agree that new digital technologies such as iPods and smartphones are revolutionizing family life. Children and parents alike now have a growing stream of new technological resources at their fingertips, offering increased opportunities for engagement, entertainment, and education. But while anecdotes about families and media abound, empirical evidence on national trends is much harder to come by. In this book, the author explores how parents are incorporating new digital technologies (iPads, smartphones) as well as older media platforms (TV, video games, and computers) into their family lives and parenting practices:
- What does the family media and technology environment look like today?
- How widely have mobile media technologies been adopted? Are they making parents lives easier?
- How does the role of newer technologies compare to that of traditional platforms like television, or to other technologies such as computers and video games?
- How do parents use media and technology as a parenting tool, to help them get things done, or to educate their children?
- What role do media and technology play in family’s together time?
- How do different parenting practices and parents own levels of media and technology use affect the use patterns of children in the home?
These all issues were the same issues when many children addictive to watch television. James, a teacher and school administrator, on who has had 20 years’ experience in rendering professional service to hundreds of families, said that do not let the media win as rivals for your children’s minds and hearts. He suggested keeping television under parent discriminating control. Parent control of this powerful medium enhances your children’s perception of your own strength. Have as a rule in your house,”We will have nothing in this house that considers or treats other people as mere things no pornography (or anything like it), no gratuitous violence, no disrespect or rudeness shown to others.” We have to show our children that we will not permit any outside influences in our home that offend our conscience and undermine our lessons of right and wrong. Keeping the media under control leads to enrichment of family life. We will find much more time to converse with our children, a fundamental basis for shaping their powers of judgment. There is more time to read and do homework assignments carefully, a basis for their growth in standards of professionalism. We have more family solidarity, and family life becomes a real sporting adventure and not, as it is for too many families, an ongoing experience of pleasant sensations contrived to escape boredom.
The digital technology, Internet, and gadget are products of technology where many experts and engineers in all disciplines involved in the product development. In creating and developing the gadget and its applications, the engineer from computer engineering and information technology play a very big role. Therefore, we as engineers in informatics, we need to act to solve the negative issues in the development gadget and its applications. One of the papers that discuss about these issues is paper by Ian. In this paper describes the rationale for, and formulation of, a framework for the ethical assessment of new and emerging technologies. The authors presented the foundation of a framework for ethical assessment that can be applied to new and emerging technologies in ways that are accessible to practicing professionals. Using examples of application areas as test cases, the authors explored the possibilities and limitations of the framework in scenarios. The author said that valid and reliable assessment tools are sorely needed to better evaluate whether our students and practitioners not only have sufficient background understanding related to science and engineering ethics, but can apply this knowledge in real-world situations.
