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| "For it's one, two, three strikes...never mind." |
I learned may things about many things while a Jim Joseph Fellow at the Lookstein Institute for Jewish Education in the Diaspora at Bar Ilan University. One of them is to "Listen to Dr. Eliezer Jones." He is usually funny and nearly always right. This past Sunday Orthodox Jews did what the New York Mets couldn't - they filled Citi Field. And they did it to hold a rally against the internet (the rally was advertised on the web, curiously. I dismissed the whole thing when I first heard about it as just another example of an insular part of the of the Jewish people becoming even more insular. Today, my friend Eliezer and a colleague of his from Yeshiva University made me think again. And again. They taught me something (more than one something). Let them tel it as published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency...
By Eliezer Jones and David Pelcovitz · May 21, 2012
OPINION
NEW YORK (JTA) -- Tens of thousands of Jews filled Citi
Field in Queens on Sunday and heard from haredi Orthodox leaders that
the Internet should be avoided in the home at all costs and used
sparingly at work, and then only with a filter blocking content that
could be damaging spiritually.
Debate as you will what some may see as draconian edicts to protect
the Jewish community from moral corruption. But at the heart of the
matter is a question that should concern us all: How do we keep our
children safe on the Internet?
We know that we cannot work around the Internet. Research from the
Pew Foundation indicates that 54 percent of children say they go to
Google first when they have a question, as opposed to only 26 percent
who say they go to a parent and 3 percent to a teacher. Rather we must
figure out how parents and teachers can make this important tool work
safely and effectively for our kids.
The difficulty is that even the simple solutions are incredibly
complicated. Powerful filters can block illicit images and material, but
those filters often block out the good with the bad and limit far too
much useful information. This solution has been discussed and debated on
our own campus concerning Internet access in dormitories.
Some yeshivot have considered avoiding technology altogether and
sticking with books and blackboards. But that would leave students
without the digital competence required to succeed academically in
college and beyond, not to mention that it would rob teachers of
increasingly exciting and effective educational tools.
The only real answer is that as parents and teachers, we must instill
in our children a strong value system based on Jewish morals and
traditions that allows our children to become their own filters when
exploring the Internet. That would be far more powerful than any
protective software.
The onus is clearly on us because it seems that children will listen
to our rules, at least when it comes to the Internet. Only three in 10
young people reported to a Kaiser Foundation survey that they are given
clear rules about how much time they may spend using a computer,
watching TV or playing video games. The average child with no rules
spends more than three hours per day on such media. Those who are given
rules spend considerably less time.
Yeshiva high school students said they would be receptive to rules.
More than half of those surveyed by researcher Debbie Fox, director of
the Aleinu Family Resource Center, a program of the Jewish Family
Service of Los Angeles, said that they would welcome more guidance from
parents regarding Internet use.
These same students, in fact, said that they would be far stricter
with their own future adolescent children regarding responsible Internet
use than their parents, and would monitor their children much more
closely.
The dangers of the Internet are not limited to challenging content. A
2010 Kaiser Family Foundation study showed that about half of students
in grades seven through 12 said they do their homework with media open
that do not pertain to their task at hand. In other words, about 50
percent of middle and high school students are doing homework with
divided attention. And while some kids may believe that they are being
more efficient, multitasking has been proven in adults to cause higher
levels of stress and lower levels of efficiency.
While some kids can multitask well, it's up to parents to actively
determine if their children work more efficiently while doing so or
while focusing on their work without interruption. Parents should
collaborate with their children to test whether they are more efficient
when not being interrupted or distracted, and then meter their
background activity accordingly.
The greatest challenge of all, however, may be making sure that our
kids completely separate from the Internet at times. According to the
Pew Foundation, 75 percent of American teens prefer texting to in-person
contact with friends. Perhaps it's no coincidence that this
generation's empathy levels among adolescents are significantly lower
than those of previous generations.
It may seem that adolescents in every generation feel isolated and
tuned out at some point or another. But it turns out that their computer
habits may be compounding the problem. Parents need to teach children
that some of their relationships must include direct face-to-face
interaction without the distraction of text messages and cell phone
calls.
While some of what occurred at Citi Field this past weekend might
seem foreign, we must work to ensure that our students and our children
can grow up as highly moral and successful Jewish digital citizens.
(Dr. Eliezer Jones is the educational technology specialist at
Yeshiva University's Institute for University-School Partnership. Dr.
David Pelcovitz is the Gwendolyn and Joseph Straus chair in psychology
and Jewish education at YU's Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education
and Administration. For more information about safe Internet rules and
guidelines, visit www.yuschoolpartnership.org/parentguidedigitalage.)
