My Bro and His Screen

I spent several days thinking about what to write for the first entry of this journal project. Mr. English Teacher said that we can write about anything important going on in the world. But to what level of importance is important? Should it be important internationally or personally? One of my classmates showed her blog to me as an example to me. She wrote about a teenage actress going gaga. Ok.

I decided to write my opinion on something I think is important personally and occasionally, international important stuff. Or both.

For the first entry, I will have to write about my baby brother. He's 2 years 5 months now, and he loves his Galaxy Tab 2 a lot. He watches the serial Shaun the Sheep and shorts that I downloaded and screened myself. He even can play several games like jigsaw puzzles, Angry Birds and Where's My Water?.

So I read this article in New York Times about exposure of electronic gadgets to kids several days ago. It's written that people that spend much of their time for technology “could hinder the development of certain communications skills.” They are totally talking about me behind my back. The article said that it applies to coloring books and puzzles alike. People have to be engaged in a conversation to gain their communication skill.

Reading the article changes a bit of my schedule. Written is that kids that are exposed to more than 3 hours of TV a day will “had a higher chance of conduct problems, emotional symptoms and relationship problems by the time they were 7 than children who did not”, or so the experiment say. Not cool. My brother is already a walking trouble himself and I don't want more trouble. In response to this, I started to monitor his playtime and interact more with him.

Another scary thing that I notice is how my brother is too dependent on my mother. There is a line by Sherry Turkle, a professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of the book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.” that said “Learning about solitude and being alone is the bedrock of early development, and you don't want your kids to miss out on that because you're pacifying them with a device.” My brother really cried when we left him alone. He panics and brawls around, throwing tantrums and stuffs around. This is quite an issue in my family since we couldn't monitor him 24/7 as we are also busy. I really need to teach him solitude.

So this is the first entry to the journal project. I manage to fuse internationally and personally important stuff on the first job. Banzai!