Front Line: Digital Nation Part Two

Watching Digital Nation was an informative and eye-opening experience. I wasn't surprised to see the woman commentator's family, all wrapped up in their technologies, whether it was the father and son on their laptops at the kitchen table or the two young children playing around taking pictures on the mac. However, the effects that this technological revolution are having overseas in Asian countries were until now unknown to me. I was familiar with the video game craze over there, but to hear that there are actual giant rooms where you can go and play video games all day long was surprising. Most of all, the fact that someone died doing so because lack of food and water was pretty disturbing. The intervention camps for children showed how addicted these kids really are! The disconnect from the real world is crazy.

Furthermore, the U.S. army recruitment took me by surprise as well. Of course most children playing know that the game is not real, but being present in that environment and receiving praise for how well they play could subconsciously influence some of the young minds to believe this is their calling or spark an interest in the army. I don't find this to be moral or ethical in any way. As seen in another segment of the video, if some kids can come to believe they actually swam with whales due to a virtual simulation, how can we contradict ourselves and say that the virtual war simulations aren't having some effect of those who play.

Finally, I found the U.S. all digital schools to be really interesting. It was really weird to me that the assistant principle could tap into all of the kids' computers and watch what they did, even if they were using their camera as a mirror or taking pictures. Kind of creepy actually. I think that integrating computers into the younger generations' educational lives as a learning tool is a good idea, however there should be some separation from the computer otherwise all childhood activities such as playing around outside with other kids will be lost to technology.