Video and computer games have become a highly popular spare-time activity for children, adolescents and even some adults. Some report favourable and adverse effects of frequent video game playing. Studies have demonstrated that video game playing can enhance visual skills related to attention and probabilistic inferences. Furthermore, improvements in higher cognitive executive functions such as task switching, working memory and reasoning have been associated with gaming improvements in older adults. Complex visual simulation are used in warfare training, piloting and even surgery today depends on gaming technologies.

Kids who spend many hours everyday playing video games or computer games may be hardwired to behave that way; they may become impulsive and suffer from attention deficit. Studies find that their brains may have been altered as a result of all the gaming. Some argue that video gaming is addictive the way cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs are.

Arguments are far from over. Studies will continue to emerge on either end of spectrum. In the meantime, moderation and parental supervision may be more essential than ever before. Keeping them off from such influences may be nearly impossible. Video games continues to get more violent and morally offensive. Long terms effects of such behaviors are difficutl to predict. Teens might not have moral framework to navigate thro quagmire and parents better be more involved.

Find out more about the Coconut Generation book – www.CoconutGeneration.com

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What do you think some challenges of Asian Indian families in Amerfica? Listen to the program and send your feedbacks. Thanks.

It is not just about gulping down food or learning table manners. But dinner time is proving to be very critical family time and means to pass on values to the next generation.

Dinner time is where we share our values, what happened to us during the day, our hopes and fears. It’s where we ask questions and learn from each other. This is where we become real, vulnerable to each other, support and help each other copes with real life issues. This is where we do life on life from generation to generation.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University finds that teens who have dinner with their parents three or fewer times per week are four times more likely to smoke, twice as likely to drink, two-and-a-half times more likely to smoke marijuana, and four times as likely to say they will use drugs in the future as those who eat dinner five to seven times a week with their parents.

These findings mirror the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health, which is the largest longitudinal study ever done on adolescents. This study has some amazing statistics. Of twelve to fourteen year olds who don’t experience family dinners at least five days a week, 14 percent report drinking more than once a month. That’s kids twelve to fourteen. But for those who have family dinners, it’s cut to 7 percent! Also, 27 percent of twelve to fourteen year olds who don’t have regular family dinners say they think about suicide, compared with only 8 percent of those who do eat with their families. Among seventeen to nineteen year olds, 68 percent without the influence of family dinners have had sex, versus 49 percent of those who have had family dinners.

Take time to have dinner with your family tonight!

According to the study, millennials (those 18-29) consider abortion to be “morally wrong” even more (58%) than Baby Boomers (those 45-64) (51%). Generation X (those 30-44) are similar to Millennials (60% see abortion as “morally wrong”). More than 6 in 10 of the Greatest Generation (those 65+) feel the same.

On the eve of the 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion throughout the United States, this is an major turnaround. America is turning away from a culture of death to embrace life. After whole generation who fought for the woman’s right to choose, the next generation seems to be swining to the other end.

Why is Abortion morally wrong? Because it is morally wrong to murder a person made in the image and likeness of God. From the moment of conception, an unborn baby is a distinct person made in the image and likeness of God. God forms a person in the womb, not a mass of tissue(non-person). Most defenceless, voiceless being in our society. How can anyone, especially a mother, choose to carry out such a cold-blooded murder and what happens to a nation that can protect its weakest citizens and in fact permits such attrocities to be carried out?

Why is this happening now? Difficult to answer conclusively. But it could be advances in medical imaging technology, and we are now know more about babies in the womb. Also women who had suffered as a result of abortion are speaking up more than ever. Seeing and hearing their stories are making next generation think again. Negative consequences of choice can now be accessed more readily.

Next generation’s moral courage is commendable.

Young people today process more information in a year than one generation ago had done throughout their entire adolescence. They are more exposed, more aware, more travelled, more skilled (especially with technology) than the previous generation. They think and express ahead of their age. Or, should we say we are stuck in the old way of thinking?

Marketers know this all too well. ‘Catch them young’ is their slogan. Winning brand allegiance early on can reap rich dividends not only in the future, but for immediate quarter sales as well. Young people in every stage of life today have more disposable wealth than a generation ago and are more flirtatious with it.

The rise in eating disorders, drug and alcohol usage, and violent behaviors are all seeping into younger kids. Deviant behaviors of college kids can now be seen among high schoolers and those of junior high can now be observed among middle schoolers. What was 18 is now 13!

Kids today are exposed to more sex than ever. Racy television shows, ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ and explicitly naked images are freely disseminated to younger audiences. The puberty and first sexual experience ages are sliding downward. Pregnant sixth graders and scores of teens with post abortion trauma are becoming less of an aberration.

All of these and other reasons make kids ‘older’ than they really are. Kids might become independent early and even handle adult responsibility well, but this does not make them adults. Having adult like bodies or doing grown-up chores are not enough. Transition into adulthood requires a coherent sense of self, vocational commitment, moral conviction and emotional maturity.

Sometimes parents force children to achieve too much too soon. Parents try to live out their unachieved dreams through their children or they strive to make them even more successful than they are. Attempts in transforming their kids into stars and child prodigies, even though they are not naturally gifted, have disastrous consequences.

Fleeting innocence and early maturation isolates kids from their peers. Lack of friendship and a sense of belonging can adversely affect any person. Parental expectation or negligence further aggravates this crisis. ‘Hurried’ children handle enormous levels of stress and often suffer from early burn out.

Parent must maintain the delicate balance between protecting children from over exposure without intruding into their lives. Avoid ‘when I was your age’ talk and actively get involved their lives. Hurried intellectual, emotional and social development is unhealthy.

Parenting is a much harder job than what we signed up for. Nevertheless, it can be very fulfilling as well. Slow down. Take time to be with your children. Let them be kids. Stop rushing through parenting – our most important assignment in life! Perhaps our children aren’t growing up too fast, rather we are parenting too fast.

<First appeared in Sam’s weekly column in India Tribune.>

According to a new poll by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, About 1 in 7 American teens with cellphones say they have received nude or nearly nude photos by text message. Among older teens, almost 30%admitted to have seen sexual images on their cell phones. Researchers claim that sexting has clearly become a part of teen culture and may have unintended consequences .

See Pew report in its entirety at Teen & Sexting. See also news report on Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN.

What do young people really do? They send and recieve sexually suggestive photos or videos, provocative sexual comments or nude images they have downloaded from the Internet. Why do they do it? Some simply for fun, other who are in romantic relationships, expressing sexual intention or peer rivlarly or to defame somebody.

Sexually suggestive images are becoming a new form of relationship currency. Young people in relationships trade images to each other. What they do not realize is that images that you send to your friend can easily to forward to others or posted on Internet for everyone to view. Phones with camera, Internet connectivity and lots of memory makes this extremely easy thing to do.

When conflict arises in relationship or when it falls out, sexting message can be used to retalitate or blackmail and even seek sexual favors from old girlfriends. Some teens even took their own lives after being harassed and taunted by their peers for their naked photos starting circulating. This trend is becoming a doorway to porn addiction among teens.

But school and safety officials warn that parents should be vigilant in monitoring how their teens use technology. From time to time Parents must browse through your teen’s phone for saved images, videos or send/recieved text messages. Parents should concentrate on making their kids aware of the potential legal and emotional ramifications of sexting.

Here is Open doors 2009 report from Institute of International Education. See also news report in Times of India. 

China remained in second place, although there was a sharp 21 per cent spike in students from China, going up from 81,127 last academic year to 98,235 this year. South Korea (69,000 to 75,000) remained in third place. International students contribute $17.8 billion to the US economy, through their expenditures on tuition and living expenses.

Universities in California hosted the largest number of foreign students with 93,124, up 10%, followed by New York with 74,934, up 7%, and Texas with 58,188, up 12%. The New York City metropolitan area continues to be the leading city for international students, with 59,322 enrolled in area schools, up 8%. The Los Angeles metropolitan area is in second place with 42,897 international students, up 11%.

The top ten most popular fields of study for international students in the United States in 2009 were Business Management (21% of total), Engineering (18%) and Physical and Life Sciences (9%), Social Sciences (9%), Mathematics and Computer Science (8%), Health Professions (5%), Fine & Applied Arts (5%), Language (4%), Humanities (3%), Education (3%), and Agriculture (1%).

Another interesting trend is the 20% rise of number of American students studying in India. The number of Americans studying in India rose from 2627 in 2006/2007 to 3146 in 2007/2008, making India the 17th in the list of countries for US students. The top five spots went to UK, Italy, Spain, France and China, the last of which had more than 13,000 American students. Flow is happening both ways.

Some recommends serial monogamy – a model in which people move from one committed long-term relationship to another and choose partners for different reasons at different stages of their life. But what kind of commitment is that? Do you consider 3 month as long term? Then what about children through all those marriages? Imagine someone saying, “these are my kids born in my 20s, then these in 30s, these in so and so country, these after retirement!”

The duplicity (or should we say multiplicity) of polygamy – in relationship with many women/men at the same time, does not have any commitment at all. All the time, both are thinking who else other person is flirting with. They never really give themselves to each other, without which they will never achieve deeper intimacy in the relationship. Suscipion, jealousy and mistrust are deterimental to building fulfilling marriage.

Then there is the concept of “open marriage” in which couples stayed married but were free to date other people. Now there is a dating site of married men and women, that claims profiles of over 5 million, has a tag line – ‘Life is short, Have an Affair.” Researchers have proven multiple sexual partners robs the real joy of sexual intimacy and fulfilling deep relationship.

More recently, polyamory — the practice of having romantic relationships with multiple people at the same time with the full knowledge and consent of all involved — has been getting a lot of attention. According to Newsweek magazine researchers estimate there are more than half a million polyamorous families in the United States. Dinner everynight with different people in different places, can sound very exciting, but it will drain your emotional vitality. It is not variety or number of partners that ensures pleasure or fulfillment, but it is exclusivity.

“Till a tempting partner do us apart” is symbolic of the Western cultural liberalism. A generation who have not seen marital fidelity and does not know how to spell COMMITMENT. Marriage is designed to be an exclusively relationship between a man and women. Attempts at reframing the basic equation to satisfy human selfishness and sinfulness will cause Western civilization to implode. Where goes the marriage in a society, there goes the nation!

The estimate covers food, shelter and other necessities for a child to age 18. The figure does not include the cost of childbirth or college. I also assume it does not incude private schooling or technotools like iPhone or laptops. Last year, the USDA estimated it would cost $269,040 to raise a child born in 2007 to age 18, including inflation. The USDA has made the estimates since 1960, when the estimated cost was $25,300. 

Average Indian American household will spend way more than that for their kids. Indian American household income is the largest among any ethnic groups (also highest educated) and they are keen on spending it on their children. They even save up to pay for the college education and wedding!

The growing cost of childrearing is another reason, families in the west are limiting number of children they are having. More children also mean more cost of raising them, which they do not have. parent become more preoccupied with saving up for their retirement and do not want to keep incurring expenses on their children. No wonder children per household is lagging behind the replacement need of 2.1 per family. Population control policy is imploding on western civilization leading to demographic winter.

Listen to her testimony on youtube.

This has turn into legal battle between Christianity & Islam – high powered lawayers and another culture war in Florida. She is a minor (17 years old only) and parents are trying to get her back to Ohio. Abuse/threat, custody battle with religious conversion makes this potent news item and controversy.

I want to share some reflections on second generation and youth work. South Asians who are born and raised outside of South Asian cultural context, particularly in the West are less committed to the faith of their parents. I have heard from Hindu temple authorities and priests that second generations are not involved in puja and religious activities like their parents. Same is true of South Asian muslims and sikhs. It is true of South Asian Christians as well, they are less likely subscribe to the traditional Christianity of their parents.

The westernized and secularized second generation are more likely to be drawn to Jesus Christ to fill their spiritual quest. The vibrant Christian churches and ministries are able to fill this gap. But only some are turning to Jesus, while most second generation are getting sucked into American materialism and promiscuity. They are neither able to relate to faith of their forefathers nor embrace the faith of people in this land.

Immigrant parents are busy trying to make a living and create security for themselves that they are clueless about their children’s spiritual struggles. They are treated as little and not knowledgable, but they pursue non-conventional means to explore deeper life issues, including technology. For parents religious rituals were enough, but children are deeply spiritual and disillusioned by immigrant cultural relgiosity.

This also highlights the crucial nature of youthwork in immigrant churches. Mere religious socialization is not enough for the second generation. The goal should not be turn kids into nice Indian (read malayali, tamil, gujurati, telugu etc) [or Sri Lankan or Pakistani for that matter] nor fine Catholic, Syrian Christian or Pentecostal, but a transformational experience through an encounter with the living God.