Hey Siri, technology is making our kids Uber lazy
CHILDREN don’t know anything about grammar, times tables and how to spell basic words because they’re relying on Siri to tell them the answers.
THIS week, we heard kids from Marryatville High School have been banned from using food delivery service UberEats for ordering school lunches. What a sign of the times.
When I was at school a luxurious lunch was considered to be a white bread roll with Twisties inside it and a 15c lemonade Whizz. Or maybe a double-cut ham and cheese roll if things were really going my way. (You’ve got to love the fact that South Australia is the home state of the double-cut roll – probably their only home.)
It certainly wasn’t a $29.99 serving of butter chicken, lamb rogan josh, naan bread and a side order of basmati rice with a fragrant hint of cumin and saffron.
Welcome to our world, where bike sales are plummeting because kids are being driven to school every day.
Schools have resilience classes helping kids deal with the idea of failure.
Kids use the Color Therapy app instead of colouring in using pencils.
I get it. My two oldest kids are surgically attached to their phones, and use Apple’s virtual assistant Siri 300 or so times a day. Mostly it’s voice-dictated messages sent to me asking me to bring them food while they’re lying in bed late for school.
Typing or texting is so last century.
My older son thinks I’m mad when he sees me laboriously typing in addresses on Google maps, (lucky he doesn’t know I’ve still got a street directory in my glove box).
Thanks to Siri, students can take three seconds flat to find out the average rainfall in the Peruvian basin, the molarity of hypochlorite or the plot line of Romeo and Juliet. It sounds pretty impressive to our library-locked pre-internet generation, doesn’t it? But the kids are not doing this. They’re looking up things they should know anyway.
“Hey Siri, what’s seven times two?”
“Hey Siri, what’s an adjective?”
“Hey Siri, how can I earn money from my bedroom after school without my parents finding out?”
One homework guide notes dictating to Siri is useful “while your hands are full of books” but my son mostly uses it to do homework when his hands are being used to beat his best mate’s score on Clash of Clans.
(“Hey Siri, what’s a book?”)
One survey even found mobile phones are used extensively by kids to cheat in tests.
Again, the kids these days are missing out. Surely mobile phone cheating couldn’t be as much fun as writing maths formulas up and down your thighs and hiding notes in your underwear to read in the loo. (Look, it got me through matric, OK.)
The flip side is that kids don’t know anything about grammar, don’t know their times tables and can’t spell common words like necessiry and basicly.
Part of the problem is the poor quality of the games and apps they spend so much time on. Take Wishbone, which teenage girls use mostly to do mini quizzes and compare answers with their friends. I had a go the other day, only to find the second screen read: WYR* be a song writter or a singer?
Well, I’d rather my kids didn’t grow up thinking writter is a word.
It all means kids are not as smart as they think they are.
The other day I heard some teenagers discussing the “erectile” vomit their friend had done in the toilet at Hungry Jack’s after a big night out. I assume they meant projectile vomit.
(“Hey Siri, what’s erectile vomit?”)
Ultimately, nothing can replace old-fashioned conversations with kids.
My eight-year-old son asked me the other day: “Do women go through puberty?”
“Yes”, I said.
“What about dogs?” he then asked.
Ummm.
Before I could work out what to say, he answered his own question.
“No, probably not, they’re hairy enough already.”
I’d love to see Siri deal with that one.
*Would you rather?