3. REAL OR VIRTUAL?

AN EXPERIENCE. OVERLOADING THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND OF THE YOUNG?

Today, I was in a local town with my family and I noticed many people, adults and children, walking around the town looking for something with their Internet ‘phones in their hand. It was not the usual addictive behaviour that I have seen on the streets in the last few years, with people clutching a Smartphone in one hand and looking every few seconds at the screen, in the hope that someone has sent a message. On this occasion, one person would stop, creep to a specific place that had been pre-planned by the creators of some new craze about which I knew nothing and zap it. I inquired what was the purpose and was told that it is a new exciting game! Everyone will be playing it soon! I was told to check it out online! POKEMON-GO!

Yesterday I heard on the national news that a few people engaged in this new craze had walked into cars, human beings into one another, some had been using their Smartphones in public view and were robbed at gun-point, others have fallen off cliffs and a host of other accidents which the makers of this new game did not envisage when they planned it, especially the effect on young children when engaging in it, looking at both their ‘phone and the real world as they hunt out this ‘exciting’ new virtual image!

This addiction to the new craze and immersion into something the creators claim will take the young out of their bedrooms and get them walking; concerns me. What a clever way of getting humans to become addicted and make tons more money? For what? Did the makers contrive this game because they knew they would create an immediate, ‘must-have’? The world’s press and television has certainly promoted this new game, perhaps subliminally, and has promoted it throughout the world as being much better than the last available app! Is the media gaining financially from such coverage? Much of the promotion I have seen has been contrivial, and a totally one-sided example of impropriety, which is dangerous. I hold such institutions in contempt for affecting the lives of millions of children who then buy the next craze, using the hard-earned money of their parents! I also hold parents responsible for being just plain daft!

I am concerned about such new crazes of an electronic kind and the effect they have on children. Hardly a week goes by without some eminent columnist and many doctors warning of the dangers of cramming children’s minds with such things, but I have not seen prudent action taken to protect them. The modern world, and the lack of constraints on what children can experience, has a lot to answer for! Are we seeing a transformation in human beings by this overload of young children’s minds? Are children’s minds so crammed with ‘virtual life’ that they are unable to discern virtual from real? Children have moved away from reading books and have become plugged-in to computers and ‘phones and is this one of the reasons that our government’s education standards have been watered down and contrived to fit everyone!