Interview with an 8 year old

I found the assignment of interviewing an adolescent to be an interesting task. My 8 year old nephew is the oldest child in my life so I figured it was best to go with him as opposed to my own 3 year old. Comparing my interview to other classmates; it seems that I interviewed the youngest person. I knew from that start that he would be an excellent interview because he loves technology more then anyone I know. My nephew knows how to work an iPad better then most adults I know.

Cooper was very willing to help me with my "homework" assignment and found it very funny that I actually had homework to do. I was impressed with his maturity and how he took the questions seriously. My original expectations were that this was going to be a waste of time and I'd have to ask a random child to help me out. I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong with my original assumption. Unfortunately I think my nephew spends too much time on his iPad on a daily basis and unfortunately it's the object that he likes the most which is why he's always getting it taken away. I was happy to hear that he wasn't playing games and watching irrelevant videos the entire time. I've learned through my own studies that games like Minecraft are challenging for the mind and it's players are allowed to use critical thinking. It allows kids to be creative and it also gives kids the opportunity to share tips and solve problems together with other players. Minecraft is also social media friendly and allows it's players to share information via YouTube which I think is an added bonus for older players, not necessarily my 8 year old nephew.

My interviewees response to social media questions was somewhat surprising to me, and I think it shows that his parents are restricting the use of social media at a young age. He is only aware of Facebook through his parents and other adults in his life. His knowledge of it is very simple and he thinks it is just a platform for sharing photos and opinions. I like that he is not aware of cyberbullying because I think he is too young to be exposed to something so harmful. I was surprised that he did not know what Instagram is because I feel that a lot of younger kids are allowed access to that platform since it is mostly just picture sharing. I was also happily surprised to hear that none of his classmates or friends has a social media account and that he actually laughed at me when I asked him that. His laugh made me think that even he knows it's ridiculous for someone of his age to have access to something like Facebook.

All in all I enjoyed the assignment very much. I had a good time crafting questions and really enjoyed having one on one time with my nephew to conduct the survey. I believe we take an adolescents opinions for granted when in fact we should listen to them more. I think that the answers to the questions that he provided also opened up his parents eyes and they are now limiting his screen time, and encouraging him to do more academic work when he is on his iPad.