Knobs, buttons and finger tips continued

Using a VCR is a breeze for children who were born in a digital age. But "why do the commands take so long to work?" asks one of the boys, unhappy that buttons don't produce split-second reactions from the appliance. "What is REW?" asks the other. That a tape needs rewinding produces a certain cognitive dissonance in digital-native children, but only for about half a second; new tech concepts are everyday notions for children today. New technologies appear constantly and so they adapt accordingly. For my generation the need to constantly adapt is not as easy as it is for the newer generations. I grew up with cassette and video tapes. The CD format was introduced in the early 80's and, almost 30 years later, is still an acceptable format.

Now we have to think about the next hub: the cloud. What's coming next is storing everything on something even more intangible than the "grooves" on an LP; a server somewhere lost in cyberspace. For a child who has never had to stick a pencil in the reel of a cassette tape and twirl it to rewind it, the notion of rewinding should be foreign, but in fact, it's the most logical thing on the planet. My boys have been playing with the VCR for the past three days, rewinding and fast-forwarding just like I used to a few decades ago. They visit and revisit scenes. It's nothing new, but the fascination is unparalleled. And the reason is very simple. It's tangible. A knob must be turned to rewind, released to play, turned the other way to fast-forward, and pushed to pause. A knob makes perfect sense.

Returning to the tangible is a gift for children. There's so much they can't control, so much that is out of reach, that what's tangible comes as a welcomed surprise. Every time I speak to parents who have had their children suffer on account of online bullying, I have to explain that the person who bullies is not devoid of feelings and does not have a problem with values. The difficulty lies in the online world; it's intangible. Children can't really see the effects of what they do online. The sensation of the effects of what they do online is similar to the sensation that comes from playing a video game. It's not tangible, so children feel that the consequences of their actions are real only within that world.

The world of what's tangible is of tremendous importance for children. Mobile phones, social networking, and remote controls are all interesting additions to our lives, but what children need to do before learning to use these is to learn to function within the world of what's concrete. A few ways to do this are to introduce pre-digital age activities: writing, board games, building with blocks and mechanical pieces, colouring books, yo-yo's, slinkies, or simply riding a bicycle and learning to repair one.