I remember when I was younger, watching a 2year old get on her dad's computer, start it up, go into windows, load the game she was after and start playing. I was pretty impressed with her computer skills at such a young age and I always thought that I'd like my children to be very computer literate. Both of my children have shown very little interest in the computer until recently and now, they can pilot it even in ways I've never shown them. They just learn things so quickly. But how young is too young to be teaching them?
A little over a year ago now, a friend of mine had to replace his PC after his precious daughter stood on it and broke it. Oh wait, I forgot to mention, while standing on it, she peed
This added liquid to his system, fried the motherboard and I'm fairly certain, the dual 8800 video cards inside.
After telling my 4yr old boy to get off the computer yesterday afternoon because he had been on there long enough (and besides, I wanted a turn
) I jumped on, pulled the microphone to my lips and felt the saturated foam cover around the mouth piece. After a small interrogation, I discovered my precious boy decided it would be fun to sit there and suck on my mic for the past hour. *
But apart from the obvious things that children do that simply makes them children and not eligible to be trusted with a computer, are there hidden or unknown side effects of allowing our kids on the computer at a young age? And I'm not talking about "predators" or adult sites or even gaming / computer addiction. I'm talking about the known benefits of teaching them to kick and catch a ball or run around in the park that the time spent on a computer is obviously taking away from them.
I'm by no means naive, I understand we live in a world made up of computers. I work in the industry and realise the value of knowing how to use a computer competently. So I think teaching children how to use a computer is extremely important. But my question is;
Should we wait for our children to reach a certain age before introducing them to the world of computers?
* At last testing, the mic was still not working. I'm hoping that after drying out some more, it will be ok
Ty. (aka Rage)
