The Filipino Youth : Coping with Modern Technology

The Filipino Youth : Coping With Modern Technology

We have come to an era where everything inconceivable for the past 50 years has been made possible and actual. Once a dream, now a commodity. Once a prospect, now outdated. Once a thing of imagination, now an item of sensation. We can say that everything, I mean, everything, is now made available and accessible.

Man is the only living specie with boundless needs, but thankfully, with immeasurable capacity to invent things and satisfy his insatiability. Technology accommodates every human and inhuman want – pampers every fancy of human fiber. Look around. People manipulate the environment to achieve practical goals – goals that respond to their physiological drive. Technology is always about satisfaction, gratification and indulgence; technology is about excess, as in excessive entertainment of human needs.

While new technology can provide advances for humanity, it can also have disturbing impacts. Our youth is the most vulnerable to any unfavorable bearing technology may bring. With the flood of modern equipment, gadgets and devices, we are deprived of the basics and fundamentals and essentials of things; we are estranged by sound judgment to determine what is right or wrong, what is appropriate or not, what is effective and not so. With the advent of PlayStation and the likes, who would prefer to gather around grandmother’s cradle and listen to her old-age stories? Who would have the thought of grabbing a book and have the religious habit of reading when internet is inviting? Who would flip pages of encyclopedia if they can just surf at Wikipedia and other educational portals? Gone are the days for serenades - cellular phones radically take over the courtship activity; say goodbye to airmail – electronic mails revolutionize the mailing system.

The streets are the most abandoned part of the countryside. Children are no longer inclined to go out and play under the sun with other kids. Their social skills are limited by the equipment they have inside the house – home theater, internet access, and other nanotechnology they have. Who wishes to exchange these kinds of comfort for a dusty street and smelling playmates? Have we become a culture of gadgets and material acquisition over socialization and interrelationship? We have to address this question. Sooner or a little later it will haunt us with a big blow.

Technology changes the idea of comfort and confuses the concept of quality time. What is true for the past 50 years may be incorrigibly invalid today. So we have come to deal with the contention at bar now: This is the part where we are to realize our youth needs to be guided, directed, and funneled every step of the way as they cope with the challenges of technology. For heaven’s sake, they are defenseless and susceptible! We acknowledge the apparent fact that these changes bring us to meet our obligations for the moral preservation of our youngsters today. It is inescapable as nightmares; if not delegated properly, tomorrow is but unthinkable.

Do we change technology or it is technology which changes us? What is the clear position of the government, of the church, and of the school on the matter of our Filipino youth coping with modern technology? Technology has never been bad or evil, but it can corrupt the good values and classic habits of pure heart if mishandled.

Let us spread the SOS message or distress call about protecting our youth from violent videogames, abusive chatrooms, enslaving gadgets, and pretentious social networks like Friendster and MySpace. Remember a time when adolescents had a simple life: playing in the woods, hanging with friends at the beach, and listening to grandmother’s tales. I miss them and want to relive their cheesiness.