GarretTS#11

October 19th.

Tonight I met with TaeYuen, a CIES student from South Korea. We worked on formulating a debate for one of his classes which involved analyzing a topic and then taking a stance in order to create an argument. The topic was: What age is too young to begin using a cellphone. TaeYuen and and I read a few articles and discussed the topic and the stance he took was as following, and in his words: "I believe that anytime before 14 or 15 is too soon. I do not think that children fully understand the responsibility that comes with using such an advanced piece of technology." I helped him further develop his argument with a few supporting details which came from a few articles that I read to him. The first article talked about how technology is leading to a decrease in memory because our brains do not place as much importance on remember information because it is so easily, and readily available. The second article covered a story written about a high school boy, a 9th grader, who was dating a 9th grade girl. The girl sent the boy, who at the time was her boyfriend, a couple naked pictures. Upon breaking up the boy showed the pictures to his classmates. This caused great embarrassment for the young women, which clearly exemplifies how most children, and even a large amount of young adults, do not fully understand what is at stake when irresponsibly using cellphones. I also posited the idea that I believe that so much of social media usage within the younger communities is mostly for social media, and overuse with these social media platforms often leads to a kind of compulsive and thoughtless behavior. We then formulated a counterargument and prosed the idea that in our generation, and future generations as well, technology is, and will continue to b, so heavily integrated into all aspects of society, and that the sooner that kids are exposed to technology, the more adept they will be interacting with it. We continued this counterargument by following up with the idea that while technology usage may not be completely detrimental to children, it is a huge responsibility on the parents end to make sure that they regulate technology usage, as well as fully explain to their kids potential repercussions of irresponsibly using technology.