Technology; Friend or Foe?

I am almost 20 years old by the end of June, and somehow remembering my age rings the bell of my past when I was a child back then. When I was a child, there were many traditional games played by children such as galah asin, petak umpet, ucing-ucingan, oray-orayan, perepet jengkol ,congklak, gasing, langlayangan (playing kite) etc . My favorite games were galah asin and petak umpet (hide and seek).

“There were many traditional games played by children”

Yes, I said they were many traditional games played by children because we can see that nowadays, in the globalization era, when technology is the king, children rarely play traditional games. The nature of children is playing, and of course on that age they will tend to use much time for playing. So, if I say that traditional games were played by children, what games do children play nowadays? Children nowadays tend to prefer monitor, keyboard, and mouse to be their playing partners rather than their peers, that is the negative effect of the development of technology.

 

There are some values lost by the time modern games bolstered by the development of technology replaces the traditional games.

The value of socialization is the first thing which is lost. Here is the thing, when you want to play traditional games what thing you have to do first? Of course you have to gather with your peers, and how about when you want to play internet games? Just turns on the computer or go to warnet I guess. Traditional games trigger children to socialize with the others, they build togetherness among children and of course the effect for the growth of the children will be beneficial, because they will get used to doing activities in group. On the other hand, internet games make children be exclusive and individual because they will only need computer as their friends.

 The second thing is that the degradation of healthy level of the children. Whoa ! it sounds scientific but actually I cannot proof how far the degradation of healthy level of the children happened when they leave the
traditional games, but I bet running in the field playing galah asin, petak umpet, or chasing an off kite is much healthier than spend much time in front of LCD radiating our eyes without moving our muscles.

The last thing happened because of the replacement of traditional games by technology are the degradation of emotion/temper control and the language usage of the children. I haven’t got psycolinguistic class but I believe that our language usages are influenced by our psychological states. Internet games are not our peers who can understand our conditions and can act depend on our conditions. When children are playing internet games and get angry, they tend to speak rude language to nobody but the monitor and of course the monitor will not give any response. 

   

So, the question is: is the technology our friends or foes? That will depend on how we deal with technology itself.

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