No read, no write but Internet ready

My cousin is 7 years old. When he was 3, he would go to my house every dinner time to watch me play GTA: San Andreas, a video game for the Playstation 2. Karl, who did not know how to read or write and could barely say a few words at the time, was enamored by just watching the game. When I got bored of playing one time, I gave Karl the controller and he gave me a really big smile. He was so cute that I taught him how to play the game; I even put cheats so he could enjoy the game at its best. Unfortunately, Karl kept dying in the game, at first, it was okay putting the cheats all over again, but Karl, being a kid, kept dying every 5 minutes or so. I told him that I was tired of putting the cheats and that he should just enjoy it as it is. It kept happening everyday, I was bored of playing with the game so I let Karl play it as much as he wants to, if I was in a good mood, I’d put the cheats for him but if not then I wouldn’t even bother.

Little did I know, every time I would put the cheats, Karl would memorize it and at 3 years old, I was surprised to see him putting the cheats himself. I was so shocked that when his parents came home (Karl’s family is my neighbor and they have a door to our house) I called them to see what their son could do. The funny reaction was, they were so proud of him when he did the cheats. I remember when I was still young, my parents would tell me stories of how proud they were when I learned how to start talking at 2 yrs. Old, and there I was, witnessing parents being proud of their kid for memorizing video game cheats. Wow.

Karl, like most kids these days, is very literate with the use of technology. The sad thing is, with every good thing that exists, a bad thing will follow. Thieves, Internet Predators and Bad people roam the internet searching for victims. When I was a kid, the only thing I was afraid of was the monster behind the big tree that would take us if we didn’t go inside early. We just need to discipline the youth of today in order to help them and keep them away from troubles