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Wednesday, July 2, 2014

When parents go ‘online’ and get tech savvy

You may bond with your folks via technology; give it a chance!
Image courtesy: Google images
A friend of mine recently got the shock of his life (he described it to me in this fashion) when he saw that he has got a ‘friend’ request on facebook from his father. According to him, his father had put a passport size picture as the profile picture which was totally not ‘cool’.  What freaked him even more was the fact that his father would be now able to see everything that his son does ‘online’. Another friend of mine just can’t understand why his mother wants to learn how to ‘Whatsapp’. He never gave it a logical thought and gets furious whenever his mother asks him for help concerning the same.  I’m sure many of us would’ve felt a bit uneasy when our parents wished to learn new things about technology or wanted to join the virtual world. I wouldn’t deny it; I felt the same at some point of time. But I think that when our parents start getting tech savvy, that’s the cutest thing they do and if you think logically, they are not wrong in doing it!

Who doesn’t have a little curiosity? 
When I reach home at night, my sister opens up the door for me. After that, she gets back to what she was doing earlier; she starts surfing her iphone again. I give a hug to my parents, lie down on the bed and start the TV. On one of the channels, they show how youngsters get tricked on ‘social networking sites’. They also show how virtual world can create problems in real life. I watch a little TV, get bored and then go to my sister again. She’s still surfing through her phone. I take a look and discover that she’s replying to her friends on FB. Then I ask her if she has seen my latest profile picture. She says yes, and we start discussing the comments I’ve got! And during the whole TV time, the conversation with my sister, my mother is just listening to everything. Isn’t it obvious on her part to be a little curious about the whole thing? Will it not make your curious if you listen about a same particular thing every day, everywhere? The whole world has gone ‘online’, so why should our parents stay behind just because we don’t want them to enter our ‘online’ space?

They use it for fun; the way it is supposed to be!
Any kind of online medium is meant for two things – connectivity and fun. The irony, as everybody knows, we are getting ‘disconnected’ from people who really matter and we are so much into the online race that it’s not fun anymore! Parents know things better than their kids always and in this context as well, they know it better. Most parents use online media for fun rather than anything else and if you talk about connectivity, they are connected to their close ones in real sense. And about fun, oh they have it more than us for sure! One of colleagues recently told me that her mother is way ahead of her in Candy Crush Saga and she teases her often with the same! But she agreed that it’s really cute! Some other parents I know have gotten online just to be more in touch with their kids who are studying away from home. Like many of us, who think about the ‘like’ and the ‘comments’, our parents don’t give two hoots about it and if you ask me, that’s a real cool thing to do!

It’s cute, period!
When parents start getting tech savvy, except it or not, it’s cute! A senior at work some days back started smiling suddenly while she was working. When I asked her about it, she told me that her father joined facebook months back and it was now that he was replying to a post she posted to welcome him online. Her father had written that he was learning the thing slowly and it was fun. I remember during my exams while I was studying at a friend’s place, I sent a couple of family pictures to my father on Whatsapp. My father replied by sending me a picture of Sai Baba to wish me luck for my exams! And all I could wonder was just one thing, ‘Can parents get any more adorable?’ I’ll also share the most adorable thing my father did once. It was some years back when my father learnt to type a text message. The first ever message he sent was to me was on my birthday. It read –

‘H:a:p:p:y::b:i:r:t:h:d:a:y::m:y::d:e:a:r::a:m:ar’

He typed the colons, instead of giving a space as he was still in the learning process. He now types the messaged with a space, but frankly, I miss those damn colons!

Just have a little patience
I’m not trying to be preachy here, but I’m just trying to put forth a point. There’s nothing wrong if parents go ‘online’ or start getting tech savvy. They might ask for your help regarding the same at times. At that point of time, have a little patience as they might take time to understand it. This if you compare with the zillions of things they have done for you till date, is nothing, absolutely nothing!

2 comments:

Saima said...

Nice post.totally agree....njyd reading it:)

Amar Ashok Jajoo said...

Thanks a ton Saima! :)