Given the realities of the cyber age, it’s a parent’s responsibility to keep their children online

By Nicholas Carr

I have received innumerable emails and texts from panicked parents worried that they may be failing in what has become the central challenge of modern parenting: ensuring that children grow up to be well adapted to the realtime environment. These parents are concerned – and rightly so – that their kids will be at a disadvantage in the realtime milieu in which we all increasingly live, work, love, and compete for the small bits of attention that, in the aggregate, define the success, or failure, of our days.

If maladapted to realtime existence, these parents understand, their progeny will end up socially ostracized, with few friends and even fewer followers. “Can we even be said to be alive,” one agitated young mother wrote me, “if our status updates go unread?” The answer, of course, is no. In the realtime environment, the absence of interactive stimuli, even for brief periods of “time,” may result in a state of reflective passivity indistinguishable from nonexistence.

Given modern-day reality, it’s a parent’s responsibility to keep them on the internet.

On a more practical level, a lack of realtime skills is sure to constrain a young person’s long-term job prospects. At best, he or she will be fated to spend his or her days involved in some form of manual labor, possibly even working out of doors with severely limited access to screens. At worst, he or she will have to find a non-tenure-track position in academia.

Fortunately, raising the realtime child is not difficult. The newborn human infant, after all, leads a purely realtime existence, immersed entirely in the “stream” of realtime alerts and stimuli. As long as the child is kept in the crosscurrents of the messaging stream from the moment of parturition – the biological womb replaced immediately with the wi-fi and/or 3G womb – adaptation to the realtime environment will likely be seamless and complete.

It is only when a sense that time may consist of something other than the immediate moment is allowed to impinge on the child’s consciousness that maladaption to realtime becomes a possibility. Hence, the most pressing job for the parent is to ensure that the realtime child is kept in a device-rich networked environment at all times.

It is also essential that the realtime child never be allowed to run a cognitive surplus. His or her mental accounts must always be kept in perfect balance, with each synaptical firing being immediately deployed for a well-defined chore, preferably involving the manipulation of symbols on a computer screen in a collaborative social-production exercise. If cognitive cycles are allowed to go to waste, the child may drift into an introspective “dream state” outside the flow of the realtime stream. It is wise to ensure that your iPhone is well-populated with apps suitable for children, as this will provide a useful backup should your child break, lose, or otherwise be separated from his or her own network-enabled devices.

Printed books should in general be avoided, as they also tend to promote an introspective dream state, though multifunctional devices that include e-reading apps, such as Apple’s forthcoming iPad, are permissible.

The out-of-doors poses particular problems for the realtime child, as nature has in the past earned a reputation for inspiring states of introspectiveness and even contemplativeness in impressionable young people. (Some psychologists even suggest that looking out a window may be dangerous to the mental health of the realtime child.) Sometimes it is simply impractical to keep a child from interacting with the natural world. At these moments, it is all the more important that a child be outfitted with portable electronic devices, including music players, smartphones, and gaming instruments, in order to ensure no break in the digital stream. If you are not able to physically accompany your child on expeditions into the natural world, it is a good idea to send text messages to your child every few minutes just to be on the safe side. The establishment of Twitter accounts for children is also highly recommended.

The challenges of keeping your child in a realtime environment can be trying, but remember: history is on your side. The realtime environment becomes increasingly ubiquitous with each passing day. It is also important to remember that one of the great joys of modern parenthood is documenting your realtime infant’s or toddler’s special moments through texts, tweets, posts, uploaded photos, and YouTube clips. The realtime child presents ideal messaging-fodder for the realtime parent.

Realtime is a journey that you and your child take together. Every moment is unique because every moment is disconnected from both the one that precedes it and the one that follows it. Realtime is a state of perpetual renewal and unending and undifferentiated stimulus. The joy of infancy continues forever.
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Nicholas Carr is a U.S. author who examines the effects of technology, especially the internet, on society. His books include The Glass Cage: Automation and Us and The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.

Credit: Rough Type, www.roughtype.com