I RECENTLY HAD a holiday in Vietnam,
which meant getting to play the role of
‘cool uncle’ to my niece and nephew, aged
3¾ and 2½ respectively. Whenever an
opportunity to see them crops up I’m sure
to take along an age-appropriate gift, but I
also get requests from my sister for things
to take over from the UK.
This time, I was asked to bring a tablet.
Not for my sister, but for the kids. This was
something I objected to. Quite vehemently.
Not just because it suddenly made my gifts
of a children’s pop-up tent, some soft toys,
a basketball complete with hoop and some
Lego Duplo suddenly look a bit rubbish, but
because I don’t believe children this young
should be using tablet computers.
Not to sound too much like an old
grouch, but at their age I would have been
happy with an empty cardboard box and
my imagination. In my (non-parental)
opinion, kids already spend far too much
time with technology instead of playing
outside or socialising with their peers.
And this is coming from someone who
started using a computer from an early age
Maybe I’m out of touch. Look around
and you see children as young as my niece
and nephew playing on parents’ tablets and
smartphones. I’m sure when I was a toddler
I wouldn’t have been trusted with anything
costing hundreds of pounds, but now the
likes of Amazon produces rugged tablets
aimed specifically at children, there’s nothing
to stop you handing your child a screen.
So now we’ve got our kids staring at an
LCD all day, where do we go? A tablet at
three, a laptop at five, a drone at eight, a
driverless car at 10? There’s no room for
wooden blocks or a cup and ball any more.
I did learn an important lesson from this
whole experience, though. You should never
question someone’s parenting unless you’re
prepared for a heated debate. I ended up
buying the tablet.
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