How will my family be in the future with technology taking over and my kids not experience what I experienced when I was small? What are ways to prevent what life has to offer when I was little?

You can easily keep technology from taking over your household. My spouse and I do not have children, but we have tons of friends and family that do. So from observation, here is what I would suggest.

Technology is here to make our lives easier. I agree with you on building a strong family foundation, and as we raise families, technology should help us simplify our lifestyles. This means free time to spend with family. We all have a have a responsibility to connect and teach our kids quality time, and what we learned in our upbringing to keep traditions alive. Embrase the simplicity technology brings & enjoy family time ...

I can only speak from my personal experience in this area. I have a 12 year old son who loves to play games on Xbox and watch youtube videos all day. While he is active in sports and likes to hang out with his friend we had noticed he was spending up to 6 hours a day either on the Xbox or on his phone. We know this is way too much time and he is missing out on both human interaction and experiences doing other things. We put a limit of 3 hours a day which he had to manage on his own. At first he felt like we were taking something away from him but even after the first day we noticed that most of the time he doesn't even get to 3 hours any more. He uses his time more wisely and has gotten into more activities such as: golfing in the yard, building things with his hands, walking the dog, talking to us about his day in the car, etc. He also has not complaint about his time off the technology at all. I think the take-away here is that while he was upset at first, we explained the why's behind the decision and once he adjusted he was perfectly fine. I work for a tech company and love tech myself, but it's important to put guidelines and expectations, follow them closely and find a balance. I hope this helps with your decisions and how you could manage your concerns.

How you raise your children will have a significant impact on this. If I become concerned with technology taking over, I apply certain rules in my household. No phones at the dinner table, no computers/games until homework is done, get outside during the weekends, etc. One thing I do know, is my children have been influenced more by what i have done than what I have said.

Try and identify ways that technology could have enhanced the experiences that you may have had when you were a child. would you have liked to have known more about a bug you found in your backyard? How much water could you collect in a cup from this week's rainfall? Technology shouldn't impede your families ability to have a "childhood"....it should enhance it.

Technology tools that are available now to young families come in all shapes and sizes. Whether it is a tablet to connect you to the internet and provide video content in real time or GPS trackers in watches that allow you to push the limits of exploration without losing track of where you are.

If you fear the impact technology may have on your family then they may never understand its full potential to enhance their lives. Instead, find a means to embrace technology and it's inevitable integration and turn it into a means of creating memorable family experiences.

We could have a whole debate about the benefits of technology. when it comes to kids though, you have times where as a parent you should be able to moderate the use of technology. Especially when it comes to playing games.

As the old saying goes, too much of anything is not good.

Typically my wife and I moderate our kids technology time to about an hour on the weekends. Weekdays they are not allowed to use technology unless it is to do research for projects they need to work on.

I agree with what several people have said in the above posts. If you would like your kids to have good 'old school' family experiences, like the ones you remember from your childhood, this is absolutely still possible if you create the appropriate setting to foster it. Limiting TV time, playing boardgames, spending time outside or using technology for, say, orienteering together as a family are great ways to achieve this.

When it comes to your worry about the mirror that social media provides into life outside of your family's direct influence, the best thing you can do as a parent is to learn how you can best protect your kids and teach them how to use such platforms as safely as possible. This would be particularly important as they grow older and it becomes more difficult to keep tabs on what they engage in and watch.

First off I want to praise you for wanting your children to have an actual childhood and wanting them to know what it's like to have fun without being on the computer 24/7. You have to understand you have the power in this situation. You can control their "tech time" so to speak. Growing up all I had was a computer and TV. Although I had access to it my mother made sure I didn't stay in front of one too long. I fell in love with reading because she made sure I stepped away from devices. I've provided some things to do below. I believe once you implement a few or all of these steps, it'll allow more family time and help bring a more positive balance into your household.

Just because Bill Gates said that social media makes you stupid, you don't have to believe it. Anything can make you stupid if you don't use it in the right manner and/or if you do something unethical without thinking of its consequences. Those consequences will make you feel stupid, not the technology itself.

You cannot avoid having your kids growing up using technology from their early stages of their life. We are leaving in a world where everything is getting connected in order to have better security, better productivity and in general a lot easier life having the different type of inventions helping us through our life. Your kids will never have the chance to live the exact same life you had. Imagine if your grandparents wanted you to live their childhood life. Would you like to live that life? Black and white TV, no internet, no emails. Would be strange to live your life now, isn't it? The best you can do is to make sure they (your kids) use the technology only when they need it, but not for everything. Let them explore stuff which is relevant for their age and be sure the content they browse or learn is again aligned with their age. Your children will have fun, but a different type of fun you or your parents, grandparents have experienced. There is nothing wrong with it. They will want to do the same or similar stuff what their peers do, otherwise they will feel isolated from the "new" stuff.

Surely there are many negative sides there which comes along with advanced technology, but here comes your main role as an adult/parent: Learn together with them, see how they embrace the new things, make sure you always update them and yourself as well about the newest threats they could bump into.

Ways of preventing what life offered to you when you were small are:

• Save the nature from pollution so your kids can live a healthy life
• Save the memories, search for childhood memories of yours and always do photos and videos so you'll be able to share what has changed and later you can look back with your children and reminisce together on those moments
• Teach your kids not only how to use technology but how to live without it as well, you never know when you get into a situation when google maps is not at your fingertips or pizza ordering could be off due to heavy snowing in the area - so they need to cook something for themselves.

Technology is not taking over, it's expanding our horizon, our vista. We design these inventions to support our daily life and at the same time these inventions are designing/defining us as well.

Hope I gave you another perspective on the technologytakeovereffect .

Technology is changing how we do our day to day for all ages. The fun part of having technology at our fingertips and our kids is to use it to our advantage! Kids can still have fun riding bikes, but now challenge them with apps that keep track of how far they ride their bike or use apps to find secret treasures out at the park. Technology will change how we spend our time, but can make our time even more fun.