Hi-Tech Kids

My youngest son, who is almost ten, wants to get a Facebook account. I tell him he's too young; he tells me a classmate already has an account.

Aren't his two email accounts enough? He can't even remember the password for one of them, so if I've sent him messages there, he can't retrieve them.

He asks me to send messages his way, so I find appropriate jokes and emails I get and forward them his way...simply to see him feel important that he has email.

My middle child, who turned twelve in August, has a couple email accounts, but refuses to get Facebook. She doesn't want her info "out there" and believes in privacy...and I'm proud of her for that. She gets annoyed when she sees me posting items about our life on my blog or on Facebook.

When she gets home from school she rushes upstairs "to check my emails." If her friends were in school, and she was in school, who the heck is sending her emails?!?

And after checking her emails, she watches TV show episodes on the computer until she's called to do her homework.

The kid hardly uses our landline telephone anymore; she plans her social activities via email messages back and forth or text messages. I always say, "Adina, can't you make a regular phone call anymore?"

And our eldest, who is 14 1/2, carries his cell phone around with him. He, too, rarely uses the landline, but receives calls via the cell, and makes his calls via the cell. He isn't so into emailing, but I do know he has a Facebook account. I check it once in a while and see his status is still simple-- "Yay, the Leafs won" or "The Raptors won!"

I'm afraid these kids will not only not know how to write in longhand anymore, due to the computer; will not know how to write letters to people, due to writing emails to people; will not know how to use a telephone anymore without texting or a cell phone. I'm nostalgic for "the good old days" and am often slow to change.

But then again, their hi-tech knowledge has helped me learn how to download computer items, has helped me work the digital camera, has helped me learn how to work the TV remotes. These little Einsteins of mine have their fingers on the pulse of technology and know how to use it.