My son is playing a game racing cars on our desktop computer. My daughter is looking up spelling words while listening to music videos on YouTube, on the old laptop, and I am happily, wirelessly blogging on the latest addition to the family, a lovely 13” notebook. I had to buy a third PC otherwise I would have to wait until the kids went to bed before I could get at the computer. And that’s when I wanted to be going to bed.
It’s a technological age, the kids tell me. They cannot imagine a time when everyone didn’t have access to a PC. Well, everyone in their world, which means mostly them.
Our society is becoming more and more reliant on computers. We use them in our office jobs, and also in the field more often these days, thanks to some very whizzy technology. When we come home we play on them, we chat to our friends on Facebook or Twitter, we check our bank accounts.
Even our kids are making more use of them at school. Many schools have one or more computers in every classroom, and there is an international organisation committed to supplying a laptop to every child in some third world countries, to aid in education and opportunity.
So the question I would like answered is, how many PCs does the average family have these days? This is not easy to answer. There are some scary answers on chat boards. And I found a clinical study with some figures. But generally, there doesn’t seem to be overly much in the way of statistics.
Given the increasing use of computers, what are the long-term effects of prolonged use? There are physical effects such as carpal tunnel syndrome, ‘computer neck’ and so forth, and of course, straight-out addiction, already a well documented hazard.
It’s too early to say, really. Our need to be connected is encouraging extensive use of technologies such as computers and mobile phones. Time will tell what the effect is. I only hope it’s not another situation like asbestos – looks great to start with…