Excerpt from Taming the Techno-BEAST

Let me say up front that I’m not writing this booklet as some parenting expert who has arrived. In fact, this whole discussion came about because of a tingle that creeps up my back every time this topic comes up.

The world we live in is saturated by all kinds of technological gizmos. There are X-boxes, game cubes, Wii, cell phones, iPhones, iPods, INTERNET Blogs, chat rooms, Facebook, My Space, and You Tube, just to name a few. They surround us. They are as present as the air we breathe.

I should also say that I’m not an anti-technology guy. I’ve got a cordless drill, an electric toothbrush, and we have at least 10 computers in our house. In fact, I’m not even against video games or enjoying and using technology to its fullest.

I can’t imagine doing what I do without the INTERNET or today’s technology. I even remember the thrill of seeing PONG for the very first time. I must have been about eleven when my cousins from North Carolina said, “Hey, do you want to play something neat?”

I had no idea what was in-store, but as we plopped down in front of the TV and plugged in this contraption with wires and knobs, I was intrigued. A few seconds later, right on the TV screen, a few bars and a square dot magically appeared and bounced across the screen.

Here’s the kicker, you could control the long rectangles with a joystick and move them back and forth to hit the square ball. It was kind of like ping PONG…and I was hooked.

But there was more than just Pong. The ‘Pong Package’ came with a racecar-looking thing that you actually ‘drove’ around an oval track (you could even race on ice). Could life and technology get any better? It did.

A few years later, my friend Shawn McIntyre got an Atari for Christmas…whatever that was.

I remember my dad driving us the couple miles to his house and then we watched as Space Invaders did jumping jacks across the bottom of the screen and aliens spewed cosmic bombs upon them.
I’m not sure how many hours we played at the McIntyre’s, but we eventually came home and resumed life at the boring Wilson home. But it didn’t take long before we had our own Atari so we could zap aliens, asteroids, and spaceships to our hearts’ content.
At about that time, Pac Man and Centipede (along with a few others that I can’t recall) showed up in Pizza Huts and skating rinks all over the Midwest…and probably the world.

Then, I guess I dropped off the face of the earth, because I don’t remember the transition between Pac Man and X-box.

However, one day I woke up as a married adult with children and found that it had invaded my home. Our step into the computer game world started out innocently enough. We thought it would be educational for Winnie the Pooh to teach our children about honey pots, shapes, and numbers.

After all, Winnie the Pooh was so tame and Pooh-ish…and Math Blaster…that was good. And Where in the World is Carmen San Diego taught them about geography. It was better than Sesame Street and our kids learned a ton.

But then something happened…our house got quiet.

At first it was nice. We had already banned television because it was all that our kids wanted to do, and they whined when we asked them to turn it off. So instead, they wrestled, played, and bothered us when we would rather not be bothered. Now we had all these educational computer tools that would teach our children and keep them quiet…what more could a parent want?

After all, we’re not talking about ‘bad’ games. I mean bad games are bad, and they shouldn’t be played by anyone. Our games were good. But those good games still had a powerful draw on our children.

Phrases started to pop up in our house that had never been uttered before.

“Where is everyone?” I’d ask, coming in the door to be greeted by my wife.

“They’re in the attic playing on the computer,” my wife would say pleasantly, obviously enjoying the quiet.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed the quiet too. I could sit on the couch and talk with my wife without being peppered with questions by children who wouldn’t even wait for the answer.

But I began to hear phrases that I didn’t like.
“Hey guys,” I’d holler up to my kids on the computer, “it’s time to come down for dinner.”
“We’re almost done, Dad. Just a few more minutes…”
“Do I have to? I’m right in the middle of a game…”
“I haven’t had my turn yet…”

And sometimes, to my chagrin, although the attic was full of kids, no one would answer me. Total silence. I’d walk upstairs to see if they were all unconscious from a gas leak or something only to find them huddled around the screen as some long-tongued, anteater looking thing sucked in numbers way faster than I could add them together.

“But they’re learning so much,” I would say, trying to ease the concerns of my much more in-tune wife. “We’re preparing them for the future.” Not that I didn’t mind the quiet. Actually, it was kind of like having a baby-sitter to pawn off the kids to when I didn’t want to be bothered.

“Dad, will you help me make a sword out of wood?” one of my children would ask while I was in the middle of something…important.

Quickly sidestepping the question, I would offer, “Why don’t you go play the computer instead?”

Like the wind, they’d vanish, leaving a couple hours of quiet in their wake.

But as all parents of technologically savvy children know, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Pot leads to other educational games, like Clifford Learns the Alphabet and Hot Wheels Racer (hey, it teaches them how to drive…kind of).

Later, my older boys were introduced to a great game that could teach them what it was like to live the pioneer life. I think it was called Oregon Trail. Talk about educationally engaging. It was so cool. The kids learned about what life was really like out on the trail. They shot game, talked to real people along the trail, and bought supplies for the long journey.

“This is educational,” my mantra became.

Of course, Oregon Trail led to other historical, strategy, computer games. Yes, they shot and killed each other, but these people were only a half-inch tall and didn’t scream or ooze blood and guts. It was educational…really.

Now, about this time in our technological journey, my wife began to see warning signs that something bad had crept into our house, but being the stupidly optimistic husband I am…especially one that enjoyed peace and quiet, I continued to reassure her that everything was going to be fine.

Let me restate that we did not allow our children to play anything that was ungodly or questionable. We did not allow our children to play any games with scantily-clothed warrior women or slime drooling aliens or own personal video game machines that could be toted wherever the user roamed.

I hated seeing that in other people’s homes. Their children would walk in our house while playing a little beeping gizmo, play it the entire visit, and then walk back out to the car holding it up to their face.

In pious pride, I comforted myself with the fact that we didn’t have Game Boys or Nintendo…we had our standards. Our games were innocent educational games. Yeah, it was almost like school…kind of.

But our home invader began to show its true colors and my children had fallen in love with it.

“Hey guys,” I’d say, ” you’ve spent enough time on the computer today…it’s a gorgeous day…why don’t you go outside and play?”
“It’s not fair…I was right in the middle of a game…Sam got to play for an hour…”

I also noticed that my children started fighting over the games and talking about them incessantly.

“Dad, I assembled 34 legions today, mined a ton of gold, and built 6 stockades,” they’d brag as if it was all sitting in the back yard.

If I threatened to put a stop to their playing or pitch the computer, the tears would flow. To make matters worse, our children began to deceive us…sometimes sneaking a little extra play time without our knowing it…or even worse, against our instructions.

That’s when I realized what my wife had known for some time…the Techno-Beast had invaded our home, and it was hell-bent on devouring our children.

But Wait, There’s more

Now some might accuse me of being sensational and making a big deal over nothing…but they’d be wrong because this Techno-Beast has consumed entire families and spit out their bones.

This issue is much more than the fact that kids spend too much time playing video games or text messaging friends. This is a life and death struggle.

I didn’t realize the scope of the problem until I received an email from a dad who had destroyed his family because of his addiction to playing on-line video games. Listen to the sadness behind this letter:

_”Video games were one of the reasons why my wife left me. Video games on my days off from work, were my drug of choice. I was working every chance I had, ignoring everything else in my life. I loved my job, and actually loathed the times that I was scheduled off, until I found Everquest. Everquest is an online role-playing game from Sony that allows you to live out a fantasy life in a virtual world. Many of the players in this fantasy world refer to the game as “Evercrack” as the addictive properties mimic those of crack cocaine. I received a rush from playing the game and would forgo sleeping and eating for the opportunity to play. There were days that I would play for 20 hours straight, sleep for 4 hours (or less) and then sign on again. In those brief times I did sleep, my dreams were filled of images from the game.”_

Sadly, this is not an isolated story. As I speak around the country, I’ve shared his story. It’s usually as I leave the platform that a woman approaches me (which always makes me nervous) and whispers, “Oh yeah, my husband does the same. He’ll hide in the bathroom to play his little games or sneak out of bed at night and play for hours.”

Some of the wives say it with tears in their eyes, but still others say it with disdain and unbelief. I’m telling you Mom and Dad, this video technology “thing” is so much bigger than a boy or girl pounding away on a Game Cube or sharing her life on Facebook. It’s about the future…your child’s future.

Often painlessly and smoothly, the Techno-Beast sinks its claws deep into our children, then settles down and rears its ugly, fang-slobbering head when they have families of their own.
It begins innocently.

~ Chapter 1 – Taming the Techno-BEAST Buy It Now (only $5)

PS – My son Sam (14) drew the monster.