Children in the Digital Age and Loreena McKennitt

http://www.falstafffamilycentre.com/stolenchild/

If you don't know McKennitt - she is a wonderful Canadian singer.  If you have concerns about technology and the effects of disconnection on children and teens - go to her website.

Here is her letter to the editor at the Globe and Mail about the suicides  and teen distress in Woodstock, Ontario.  So important.

Death’s grip

As we search for the root causes of the suicides in Woodstock, Ont., or elsewhere, no examination would be complete without taking into account what we as a species need, in order to be grounded and connected to our community and our families in real and meaningful ways (Woodstock Students Protest For Support – June 8).

U.K. anthropologist Robin Dunbar notes in his presentation “Can the Internet Buy You More Friends?” that we, as mammals, thrive in small villages – like-groups, not massive and disconnected urban settings designed to serve automobiles over people.

Nor do we thrive in an artificially connected and highly addictive world of technology rich with the misuse of words such as “friend,” “connection” or “community” as the Silicon Valley co-opts the language of the village only to deliver loneliness and alienation.

If “it takes a village to raise a child,” we must reclaim what it means to be a village and examine the role of connection technologies in our educational, community and family settings.

These are not someone else’s kids. They are our kids and we are failing them. No number of therapists can fix them unless we help change the context of their lives.

Loreena McKennitt, Stolen Child Project, Falstaff Family Centre; Stratford, Ont.