A Rocha USA Blog

Unfortunetly we are a bunch of frogs in hot water. We don't know what we are doing to ourselves with all the technology being thrown at us. We can't even have a conversation face to face anymore because we are answering a text while talking to someone else.
Thanks for your thoughts on this.
To some extent we need to embrace this technology to be relateable to our children and peers but I am fighting as best I can to go backwards. DIY Do it yourself, have a hobby where you make something, get outside, if I am talking with someone let the message go through and read it later, look into the eyes of the person you are talking to, read a paper booked bible and write in it, realize that whatever tech we think we need probably wasn't invented a year ago and did I suffer then with out it, and realize that people are way more important than how we connect with them.
God help us!
Todd

Tom, I encourage you to take some bold Luddite steps in your life. There are many Christian communities we can learn from in this respect, like the Amish, the Bruderhof folks and many Mennonites. We have never regretted not having a microwave oven and a TV and there are no electronic games for our kids. We do rent the occasional movie and play it on an old computer monitor attached to a DVD player. We are avid NPR listeners. Yes, our 17 year old has an old iMac to write her HS papers and now college essays on, but no need for her personal web-access computer, we felt. She did by her own cell phone with e-mail eventually and discovered how that hits her budget. It is great to take the kids outside and we should do more of it. Your post has also encouraged me to offer at least one or two more field trip outings to my 76 "Wildlife Conservation" students this semester.
It's good to swim against the stream with some of these tech trends and come up with creative - and sometimes old-fashioned - alternatives. Greetings from VT, Jan

Fantastic Tom! I read this on my smartphone and am responding on my macbook. I think I will go outside and work in the garden.

I think it's a bit ironic that you question our use of technology and then use technology to contact me via a blog. How would I have know your thoughts except through this medium. Currently, I'm writing you from a hotel room in Alabama while you have written me from Texas. This "technology" has allowed us to communicate yet we have not even met.
I'm on the road about 160 to 190 days a year and it's technology that allows me to keep in touch with individuals all over the world and at no cost.
Sure we need to control our time locked in front of a monitor. Some times I wonder if people have one implanted in the palm of their hand! But, this technology can be used to the benefit of sharing the gospel story and helpful in communicating the call to creation care.
It will be our children who use this technology in the mission of God. So, let's do both: encourage them to learn all they can about this "e-world" and teach them about God's creation and its care.

Technology gives and Technology takes away blessed or cursed be It's name. Indeed, one of the fundamental challenges of our day is avoiding the curse (by self denial) and utilizing the blessing (again by self denial).

Thank you for this essay. I work at an Audubon Sanctuary and over the past decade the negative impact of children's increasing screen time has been dramatic. It is also evident at younger ages than a decade ago. We are able to bring out a sense of wonder in many but not all children. Some just want to be inside "where the plugs are" (from Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv - a book I try to give everyone I know who is expecting a child).

I recently heard that the current young generation is going to be the first generation that is less educated than the generation before them. People are blaming the schools. Why is no one considering the negative impact of our "wonderful" gadgets which have not only replaced reading and time outside, but also impoverished writing.

Great topic!

Are we surprised? All kids hear is that people are nature's enemy. We're told to stay out of nature. Spend tax dollars so professionals can preserve it, and keep it pristine and people-free. Visit a nature preserve, sure, but stay behind the ropes. Kids go to school and hear that the vehicles that brought them and the electricity in the lights over their heads are killing polar bears. They go to the zoo, as close to nature as many urban kids get, and hear that every trip to Wal-Mart destroys rain forests.

So why are we surprised when they tune nature out? They'll find other stuff to do, either to avoid harming it or to escape the constant drum-beat that it would really have been better had they not been born. At least the carbon footprint of their virtual world is smaller than their real one.

The kids most likely to spend time enjoying nature these days are Boy Scouts or dirtbike riders or hunters or fishermen or a bunch of junior high youth group kids taking a hike in the woods or singing campfire songs. When did we lose that?

I agree with Ed about the disconnect, along with chuckling with him over the irony that we're using the internet to save the planet. But I don't agree with your solution.

The problem is not preaching stewardship. What we should be preaching is that we have a God-given inheritance to be relished and enjoyed, and for which we should be thankful. We should encourage our kids to take ownership of creation (Psalm 8:3-8) more seriously. Instead, we treat our church family like Christian sharecroppers, hired hands tending to the planet rather the adopted sons and daughters of God.

I wish there was more of this in Christian ecology and theology today. Maybe we'd get more folks out from behind their gadgets if we did.

My two cents.