Put Away the iToy's or Suffer the Unintended Consequence

Be careful when you walk down the street: the young person walking towards you no doubt has their head down and is busily texting, playing a game, or using the Internet. The same is true when statistics on book reading and other intellectual pursuits are compared over the past ten years: young people today are too busy with their toys to engage in rigorous learning activities. A chapter in my new book Unintended Consequences: How to Improve our Government, our Businesses, and our Lives talks about how young people have acquired special skills that their elders do not possess - that is they traded off activities that require multitasking and short attention spans for other activities. The unintended consequence of this change is that kids today are failing when it comes to education. The 2011 National Assessment of Educational progress recently released by the US Department of Education contained some frightening statistics. Just 32% of students had strong science skills. Some people are blaming the school systems and the educational process. There's probably some truth to this. However, I think the unintended consequence of parents allowing their kids to buy every new itoy and to spend a majority of their waking hours, only because they can't use them while they're asleep, is also responsible. You have probably seen the ads about drugs and alcohol which tells parents not to have a double standard: tell kids not to use them and then turn around and have a drink. There is probably some degree of this problem taking place with itoys as well. That is, parents are spending too little time with their children and too much time playing with itoys. The responsibility of schools is expanded in this case in that they must both teach and replace the guidance parents should be providing. On that measure, are failing. Harlan Platt's blog is found at harlanplatt.com