Recently I went to Manchester to visit my family. My two cousins, Barney aged nine and Ollie aged eight, are both very knowledgeable and confident with technology, each owning an iPod and Kindle Fire. With what I’ve learned so far about the development of technology in the classroom in the back of my mind, I saw what an excellent opportunity I had at learning more, first hand from children.

Barney, the eldest, is at the stage where he is desperate to be a teenager. He acts years beyond his age, and is easily lead and influenced by his peers. I was fortunate enough to overhear part of an ongoing argument between he and his parents over social media.

“But all of my friends have Instagram, and three of the girls at my table do as well, and this one girl, right, has 109 followers!” (When talking to him about it later, he didn’t even understand the concept of followers.)

Luckily for Barney, his parents are fully aware of the dangers of the internet, and have forbidden all forms of social media until they deem it appropriate. I found it quite overwhelming  that children in his class, aged 8 and 9, have accounts on social media. Not only is it dangerous, and they’re at risk of viewing things that they should be protected from until an older age, but I couldn’t get my head round what they found so interesting and compelling? Without sounding like a ‘technophobe’, I did find it difficult to understand how this was happening, how children of such a young age were drawn to social media, and why parents were allowing their children access to such websites. Are parents simply unaware of the dangers of social media and the consequences of not being safe online?

On the last night of my stay, I’d been sat with Ollie, who was sat watching me on my phone. Up until he got his first iPod, he’d be stuck to me like glue, watching carefully what I was doing on my phone. I would just be waiting for the question that would normally pop up, “have you got any games on your phone that I can play?” No Ollie, just boring adult apps (Facebook, Twitter etc) However, now he asked me a different question. He’s recently been pestering his parents for a Snapchat account, but knows that it’ll be a long time before he is allowed to have it. Understandably, he feels as though he’s missing out. I’ve tried telling him that his time will come, but by then there’ll probably be something even better.

“Leah, what was the coolest app when you were my age?”

Answering this question made me feel very old. I had to explain to him, that when I was his age, the closest thing I had to technology was a Tamagotchi (if anyone can even remember what they  were.) Ollie certainly didn’t. He couldn’t get his head round the fact that I didn’t have an iPad/tablet when I was younger, and didn’t have access to all these games and apps, that he’d obviously assumed, had always been around. At that age, you don’t think about how things have progressed over time, as children live in the moment, taking each day as it comes. I think this really just made me understand quite how much we have developed, with regards to technology and the internet.