Raised by Google

Is Search Engine Parenting Destroying or Saving America?

I called my dad up with a serious question. “Hey, dad. What should I be looking for in a woman?”

“Well, son… looks aren’t as important as what’s on the inside…”

“Nevermind, dad. I’ll just Google it.”

We laughed and he dove into what he thought and why he thought it and what it means to find a life partner; he talked about values and beliefs and wanting things from life. It was a good talk, the kind of talk fathers and sons should have from time to time. I had to think, though, how many people got to #Google to try to find life’s answers.

Look It Up

Growing up my mom liked to use big words. Words like circumlocution, lexicon, and her favorite was tintinnabulation. My siblings and I would ask, “mom, what does that mean?” She would always smile a big, grinch-like grin and hand us the dictionary and say, “Look it up!” I did. I flipped through that 85-pound 2nd edition Merriam Webster that pre-dated the Revolutionary War, dust flying into my eyes, until I found the word I didn’t know. Then, I’d look at the words around it, and look up the words in the definitions that I didn’t understand.

My youngest sister, she just Googles what she doesn’t know. It gets her the answer, but it fails to ignite her curiosity.

Sing Us a Song, You’re the Gender Non-Specific Listening Device

“Alexa, play me a song.” Billy Joel starts with his harmonica and serenades me in studio quality high definition, walls reverberating all around me as it blasts in the three rooms I have the Alexa devices.

My mom used to sing to me growing up. She sang to all of her kids. She sang happy songs, sad songs, songs in Italian, songs about sunshine and piggies at market or home and some guy named John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. She would sing to us before bed, or while she cooked, or while she took our temperature or changed a bandage. The thing about my mom was that she always knew what to sing. She sang songs that made us feel happy and safe and loved.

I wonder whether moms today sing to their kids. And if they do, will they still in 20 years?

I was at a restaurant...

Old people love to tell stories. Most of their stories lately begin the same way. End the same way, too. They’re the same story.

“I was at a restaurant the other night and there was a young family. The kid started crying and the mom took out her phone and handed it to the kid. The kid stopped crying. Didn’t hear a thing the rest of the night. The kid didn’t take his eyes off the phone. What is this world coming to?”

Parenting is hard, no doubt. I am not here to cast judgement on that style of parenting. I will warn against it, however. As a moderately well adjusted millennial who sees people with zero social intelligence everyday, I simply have a suggestion. Don’t entertain your kids. Engage them.

People in their 20’s who can’t make a decision have that problem because they were never asked to. They can’t hold a conversation because when they were little kids they were being entertained, distracted, quieted by flashing lights and handheld devices. The technology now is only more addicting, more engaging, more of a vortex. While it is undoubtedly tempting to put it in front of a kid to shut them up, it’s a classic example of short term gain for long term pain.

Search Engine #Parenting

We love our tech in America, probably almost as much as the NSA does. Google, Siri, #Alexa are incredible technology changing the modern world; the way we think, communicate, consume content and learning and so much more. The problem is when we forget that Google is missing a few things, namely empathy and morality.

If I ask Google how to make a bomb, Google will tell me. And add me to a watch list - because that’s what it’s programmed to do. If I ask my dad how to make a bomb, he’ll sit me down and ask what’s going on in my life. He’ll have follow up questions and they’ll be good ones. My dad cares how I turn out. Search engines don’t.

In a world where answers are available as never before, maybe the problem is that we are asking the wrong questions. Accessibility to information is a good thing, if we are prepared and formed to handle and deal with the answers.

You can Google your way to articles that will teach you anything you want to know. You can build a tree fort, or restart someone’s heart. You can learn how to cook, or start a business. You can learn how to manipulate someone to do what you want, or 3-D print a weapon.

In a world with all of that information just a keystroke or “Okay, Google” away, we need a generation of young people who are well-formed and well-socialized. Who are confident in who they are live life purposefully.

Technology is meant to enhance the human experience, not replace it.

If you have kids, prep them for using technology by keeping it out of their life during their formative years. Let them play with dirt. Let them learn to ask questions, and find their own answers. Guide them. Direct them. Provoke them. Engage them. Love them.

But for the sake of all that is Holy, don’t have them just Google it.