Bill Gates' children had their screen time restricted to encourage creativity. Photo: Daniel Acker
Many years ago, I read an article about the plight of elderly widowers who, without a wife to cook for them, slowly starved to death. Having been fed by capable women all their lives, they had never learnt such basic survival skills as how to boil an egg or peel the cellophane off a ready meal.
I’m an epic fail as a parent: my children are digitally illiterate
by Jemima Lewis
When the end times come, and the robots enslave us all, what use will it be to know how to boil an egg?
Many years ago, I read an article about the plight of elderly widowers who, without a wife to cook for them, slowly starved to death. Having been fed by capable women all their lives, they had never learnt such basic survival skills as how to boil an egg or peel the cellophane off a ready meal.
That article still haunts me because I, too,
could not survive on my own. If my husband died, I would lose not only
the love of my life, but also my internet connection. I could feed
myself all right, but who would run my software updates? Who would check
the server configuration, or rummage in my operating system to fix a
bug? And – assuming that by then we'll all be surrounded by the Internet
of Things – who will re-program my smart-fridge if it tries to make me
drink semi-skimmed milk, or teach my washing machine never to mix the
whites with the coloureds?
The obvious answer should be: my
children. According to a new survey, about half of First World parents
now pay their children to do "digital chores". Traditional household
jobs, such as mowing the lawn or doing the washing-up, have been
replaced by high-tech tasks such as setting up a new mobile phone,
downloading photographs or recording TV shows. Parents are willing to
pay as much as $50 a go for such valuable work, and a third of children
earn extra cash by helping their grandparents with bewildering
technology.
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