Digital Nation

After watching the film ‘Digital Nation’ you realize just how much the digital era in compasses everything we do. In the film they go from teaching kids in the second grade how to use a computer the same time a kid is learning, the addiction of online gaming to even training the military. To me I think a kid in the second grade using a computer in school is completely unacceptable, I think having a computer instead of a text book encourages kids to take short cuts and just look up answeres instead of having to read and search for them. Then they also go into the problems of the youth getting addicted to online games and the health issuses it can cause. I was blown away watching this part of the film, it’s hard to believe that kids can get this wrapped up in a virtual world and completely forget the real world ( the one that matters). I understand that these types of virtual worlds allow people to escape their real life and be whoever they want to be and do whatever they want, however instead of it being a hobby it becomes them and how they actually live their life. People get so tied to this stuff that their real life suffers from school grades to performance at work. As for the part of the film they discuss using a virtual world to train the army for combat is a complete joke, I spent two deployments in Iraq I was army infantry. I actually used that program to train before both deployments and it does absolutely nothing to train you for the real thing, if anything that simulator gives you a false sense because there is no adrenalin rush you get when your actually getting shot at or having to shoot someone. Although I think the combat portion of the army simulator is a joke, the ability for them to use UAV has helped out tremendously and saved countless lives including my own. As stated in the video the pilots of these UAV aircrafts are not physically there so they do not see what the bomb they drop actually does so the mental part of war is not the same as the infantry on the ground. I am not completely against the digital era as there has been a lot of good come from it.  Medical treatment has advance because of this, training for jobs and even school. To me the ability to take online classes is the only way im able to further my education as I work sixty plus hours a week and have a wife and two kids. Without online classes I would never be able to attend college and get my degree. There are pros and cons to the virtual worlds the digital era has made and even though I have been sucked into this world just as the rest of us, I think we as parents can see the negative and positive effects of it and try our best to steer our kids in the right direction, whatever direction that may be.