Fear of Technology

The fear of technology is a fear shared by many adults but one that most young children have yet to learn.  Years ago while working for a company that was heavily invested in Mac’s and I would often bring one home on weekends. This was in the days of IBM PC’s and DOS, before Windows when Macs were unique. They had what were at the time advanced applications (compared to the DOS apps) for drawing, graphing and desktop publishing.  Being the dutiful father I wanted to familiarize my children and their cousins with computers and there uses.  Somehow the fact that they were only just learning to read and that their math skill levels were ‘counting and taking away’ with beans never occurred to me.

They like the computer just fine, but strangely enough were not impressed or interested in making colorful graphs using spread sheets.  After realizing that I was not needed and leaving them alone, they went on to discover all they needed to know to use the computer.  Within hours they found an application that would pronounce (in a metallic sounding robotic voice) any words that you typed into it.  I am sure that you can guess the words that most five and six year olds would type in.  Soon they had the computer saying all sorts of words, fully confident that they would not get into ‘trouble’ because it was the computer that said the bad word, not them. In time they learned that including additional letters changed the pronunciation and for some reason this never failed to cause peals of laughter.

The point of this story is not my poor parenting skills but rather highlighting the different approach to technology between young children and adults.  Because they are not afraid of ‘breaking’ a computer, children can go on to do amazing things with technology and along the way learn how to use it.  In my case, since my children could not read, the message ‘do you really want to delete this file’ invoked no fear or sudden paralysis. It did not limit or hinder their natural curiosity and they were able to go forward and learn how make the computer do the things that they wanted it to. 

In many cases, if not exposed to technology this fear takes hold and starts to grow in people.  When this happens, for some it expresses itself as a fear or dislike of technology or an apparent inability to understand basic functionality or perform simple operations. With others it may be a dislike or disdain for any proposals that include changes in methodology involving or implementing technology. With the passing of time this disability can become harder and harder to overcome and in our increasing technology dependent society become a limiting factor in growth and development.