No, your child need not become a computer whiz

Disclaimer: This blogpost talks about my own experiences and ordeals of being a computer whiz from a tender age by giving some insights into how life can change at a later phase for such children. Neither am I advocating anything about good parenting nor am I asking you to control your child’s life. Through this blogpost, I also hope to make a case against profiteering services that might look very enticing as a parent.

I was born and brought up in India. Like many of us here, I developed a strong liking for the American lifestyle and wanted to “make it big” by emigrating to the US. I used to keep hearing about Bill Gates, how he was the richest person on the planet for so many consecutive years, and how he did it by writing software. For me, fame, money, and happiness, unfortunately, all became dependent on the idea of becoming a software engineer. As a result, I started to focus all of my energy and time towards learning to code and understanding the science behind how computers really work. Fast forward to today, now that I am 24 years old working as a Software Engineer, having had one of the best Computer Science education, having worked in the Silicon Valley, and having achieved some remarkable feats in the eyes of my friends and family, I wish I did not spend all that time in front of the computer screen from such a young age. 

My personality type in Layman’s terms is that of an “introvert”. I have always been a very reserved person at the core. I used to be very picky in terms of the kind of people I liked or chose to hangout with from a very young age. And even though the internet would like to reinforce the notion that all software engineers are introverts and socially awkward beings, I beg to differ. I have worked with software engineers who are extremely social beings with a personal life as vibrant as that of any “extrovert”. I use double-quotes for both introvert and extrovert because I do not believe that these two terms do justice in categorizing people. Rather, I feel strongly about them and believe that they are too big a generalization to describe humans. Having said that, it just so happens that a lot of people who are software engineers tend to be introverts (there is an interesting research paper that tries to link personality traits and programming aptitude).

When I first started to write code at the age of nine years old, I was thrilled to be able to “talk to” and “control” the computer. That is what writing code is - it is a way to control your computer by talking to it in a programming language. While most of the people are able to control their computers, especially in today’s computer-literate society, only a handful of them can really talk to their computer in a language that the computer understands. I understood, at a very young age, that this ability of writing code, of problem solving, is a super power which will only increase in magnitude as more and more things become digital and computer-controlled. So I started to devote the majority of my days to conversing with my computer. The obvious implication was that I started to spend less time with the humans around me. At first, this behavior did not strike my parents as particularly something to worry about. For them, their son was passionate about something and they wanted me to explore it as much as I wanted to. The common scoldings of screen time definitely followed every now and then but generally speaking, they did not bother that much about me spending so much time in front of the computer screen. 

I was working on new things almost every day - a desktop app, a website, a game, and I used to proudly share my creations with my parents and elder sister. They were clearly astonished at first but eventually became my biggest supporters and promoters. There were the usual neighbors, colleagues, friends or extended family members who used to express their puzzlement at why my parents were allowing me to spend so much time with the computer whereas, according to them, I should be out enjoying life with my friends at that age. But I was proving my mettle by winning competitions nationally and internationally, and perhaps that was what kept my parents from ever stopping me from doing what I was doing. I used to make a point to always be one of the toppers in school and get good grades because eventually I wanted to study abroad and get a Computer Science degree from a top North American University. 

Years passed by and adolescence hit. During this phase of life, everyone is utterly confused about their bodily changes, both mentally and physically. It is a time which is especially tough for parents to connect with their child, a time where you relate more with your fellow friends and prefer their company over talking things over with your parents. This is universally true but is even more prevalent in traditional Indian families where dialogue is generally very restricted between the child and their parents especially on topics that are still considered taboo in Indian society. What I am trying to imply here is that at that time, I really wanted to be around people of my own age. But unfortunately, I had lost out on the time I would otherwise have used to cultivate strong friendships with my fellow mates. I had subconsciously started to prefer spending time with a machine more than spending that same time with an actual human. Being with my computer had become my comfort zone. 

As time passed by and I grew up, I started to socialize even less. The amount of human contact that I had had been dwindling but more so, the extent of my human relatability had been gradually declining as well. I had started to ignore attending parties, picnics, and gatherings both at school and at home. Not because I did not want to but because all this while when I was just spending time on the computer my social anxiety was skyrocketing. I had started to become mechanical - unemotional, unfeeling. It was not as if I was unaware of what I was becoming, but I chose to be ignorant because I thought that once I achieve my dream of getting an education abroad and start working in the Silicon Valley, I will be content and then I may work on becoming human again. I was so mistaken.

I achieved my goal. I graduated from high school with a very high grade and got admission at one of the world’s best Universities for Computer Science. I was 18 then, and I was so proud of myself. I had carefully laid-out plans for how I would like to spend the next few years at University, the people I hoped to meet, the connections I wanted to establish, the friendships I wanted to cultivate. I graduated from University in 2021, and nothing of what I had wanted to do could happen. Simply because once I was out of my comfort zone and into the real world, I could no longer associate with anyone - unable to make friends, unable to curb my manufactured social anxiety, unable to stay happy. My emotional quotient was almost nil. I had taken away humanness from myself all these years for more than a decade of my life and I was pathetically ignorant. As a result, I obviously could not maintain human connections. I kept losing out on people, kept disappointing them by being clueless. 

Do not get me wrong. I am 24 now, living a comfortable life, making good money. But I am catching up with my humanness. I would like to have no regrets. But in hindsight, it would have been nicer to have more human relations all this while. So if your child seems like they are on the brink of becoming a computer whiz, I want you to be very alert. There is a time for everything. In the end, man is a social being and no one deserves to become so mechanical that they completely forget how to act like a human. The idea of making human connections should not become foreign to your child. I want your child to have as normal a life as they can away from the computer screen, speaking a language that humans understand, relating to their fellow humans more, and fostering human relationships along the way as they grow up.

Originally published on substack.