It's a nice enough commercial. Got all the things we like/hope for/dream of, I suppose. Nice house. Happy pretty smiling blonde little girl, all curious and alert and intelligent and well-behaved. Lots of toys. Mother lovingly reading to said child. Did I say lots of toys? They read, not from a book, but from the new Google tablet. In between short passages from Curious George, the child is seen running around, happy and free and well-behaved, playing with things that relate to the story, and of course talking to Grandma on the tablet.
I love Google. Use it all the time. G-mail, Google Chrome, Google Search, Maps, heck my phone has a Google platform. This is not against Google. It's not even against tablets. Heck, I wish I had one. Big time. I have Big Time Tablet Envy. Instead, and I'm struggling to put these feelings into words, I just find the whole commercial to be a very sad statement on reality. I'll try to explain....
I like seeing kids with books. Real books. Yes, tablets in schools make sense. But at home on the couch? Bedtime? Something comforting about BOOKS. Books passed down. Books your Dad read to you and now you read to your kid. Is your kid going to read to THEIR kid from the table you used? SNORT! Hardly. Not in ANY scenario. And then there are libraries. A kid of any economic background can enjoy books so long as there are libraries. There are a lot more kids whose families CAN'T afford tablets than can, I would say. I know we had a good life with enough of most everything, but we would have been hard-pressed to have tablets. And my dad was a teacher. Irony.
And about that perfect house with perfect toys and the perfect back yard. Talk about showing what the typical household in America is NOT right now. Maybe I'm just tired of the "Hey look at this don't you want this if you just buy THIS product you too can have this" messages in this consumer buy-buy-buy society. It's a symptom.. or actually is it the problem? It's a MYTH.
You know, like in the BOOKS?
I don't wish to stop progress. I just wish that it would be tempered with good sense. I wish that we weren't ignoring important issues in our quest to consume everything we see. What are we leaving behind?
WHO are we leaving behind?
By the way, when you Google mixed feelings, you get:
*mixed feelings (about someone or something)
uncertainty about someone or something.
Just FYI.
i actually saw that commercial while watching a football game this weekend. I had similar feelings. I love the feel of a book in my hand, the kids knowing when to turn the page.. It's the same as when my boys were born, sure I could have held them as I gave them a bottle but it's much more satisfying to have nursed them. There's a bonding that doesn't happen with a bottle (IMO). I keep thinking about a kindle for books, but I just don't think it will be the same for me.
ReplyDeleteAs for little ones with tablets, I think there's a time and place for everything. It bothers me that children aren't allowed to use an encyclopedia for school work and have to use the internet too.