Let’s be honest, I’m not as young as I used to be. This point is driven home by the fact that I seem to have no idea what is going on with technology these days. I’m not talking about technology like the good old days of setting the VCR. I’m talking about the Insta-everything, monitoring, helicopter parent-assisting technology that overlays everyday life.
I suppose I should rejoice in the fact that I can track my child, monitor his breathing while he sleeps, and basically spend every moment ensuring his well-being. I can also shout from the proverbial roof tops that he can spell his name, knows his address, and ate his whole sandwich today at lunch.
All of these things, however, fill me with panic. Because I can access these technologies, should I?
If I can afford a baby monitor that tells me if my baby is breathing, do I have to buy it? If I don’t buy it and something awful happens, am I more at fault? Am I creating an environment of anxiety if I’m constantly checking in, tracking, hovering? And down the rabbit hole I go.
To add to my fear and anxiety of technology is social media. Will my children think I’m not proud of them if I’m not posting cute photos and publicly celebrating their triumphs? If I decide to post a picture, will they be angry or embarrassed as they grow up? Who has the right to post their photo? I don’t think I’ll ever find my way out of the rabbit hole at this point.
Thankfully, my husband and I share a similar apprehension of technology when it comes to our children. We spend a lot of time considering the technology we use in our home. We chose not to have an internet video baby monitor to limit remote video access of our home. We removed Alexa from our home when we saw our two year old speaking to her and realized ‘she’ was always listening to us. We rarely post photos of our children online and we do our best to prevent others from doing so as well.
I don’t have answers to many of my questions. Not firm answers anyway. My feelings on them change almost as quickly as technology itself. I know my questions will only become more complicated, but there are resources out there to help me along my way. I’m still hopeful eventually someone will develop an app for that!
