Journal #5

I think it's kind of sad that an acceptable punishment in today's world is taking away Facebook and online games from kids. The cell phone thing confuses me even more: why would parents take away the one thing that their kids actually use to communicate with them? Facebook and online games take away the social aspect of that part of the child's day, but they should really just be able to deal with it.

I've never been seriously grounded for more than a day, so I don't really know how taking away those kinds of things would affect me or anyone else. I read most of the time anyway, and would still have to use the computer for homework, so grounding me from the computer wouldn't really work. Neither would the cell phone thing because that's the only way my parents can get in touch with me at my extracurriculars. The only way my parents could ground me and actually make me feel something about it would be if they took away my books for any period of time. I know I'm kind of old school and outdated on this, but I spend most, sometimes all of my free time in a day reading. Taking away books is ind of harsh though, and I never do anything worth grounding for anyway, so I don't have to worry about that.

I also don't see how taking away Facebook would be a good punishment. You see your friends at school everyday, so you should be able to deal with not reading about/stalking them on Facebook. It would be annoying, like any punishment, but completely bearable and a total waste of a punishment.

These example groundings really show how reliant we are on technology to help and entertain us. I would hate to not have the Internet and other such technology, but I really wish more people would just read. I worked at the library this summer, and there were fewer people than one might think who stopped in regularly to check out books. That makes me sad.