This summer, while spending a long holiday with my kids, I was shocked by their media and technology consumption habits, which reminded me of something I once heard: “In magazines, parenting looks like a cruise. When you get there, it’s a tiny rowing boat in a storm.”

Times have changed today, thanks to technology that allows children to live independent lives with limited parental involvement through the use of mobiles, instant messaging and social networks. Children see this as freedom from parents’ over-involvement in their lives, while parents see this as the reason for losing a connection with their kids. However, children’s immersion in technology also gives parents a reason to not put in effort into entertaining their kids and instead use that time for themselves, thus making parents equally guilty in that divide.

YouTube’s research has shown a 95 percent growth in subscriptions for kids’ channels, an 84 percent growth in views and a nearly 50 percent growth in gaming. This is great news for us in the advertising world, since we now have a better understanding of children’s media consumption habits, which in turn enables us to create content for our clients that is engaging for children without being intrusive. The bad news is that children are so immersed in technology that there’s only a 30 percent chance of them greeting their parents when they return from work and a 50 percent chance that they will completely ignore them, according to Psychology Today.

An article published by The National in April 2014 shows a struggle between research results and local scholars’ opinions in the Gulf.

According to research conducted by the
University of Sharjah, nearly 46 percent of Arab youth, including Gulf nationals, believed that
traditional values are outdated – youth are more influenced by celebrities, social media figures and artists than by their own families.

However, local scholars disagree: they believe family continues to play a focal role in children’s lives and that Arab youth still respect traditions, irrespective of their media consumption habits – an opinion I tend to lean toward from my personal experience in the Gulf region.

Like it or not, technology is an essential part of our world and members of Generations Y and Z don’t know life without it. Research by Pan Arab Kids Telemetry found that children between the ages of four to 15 spend a quarter of their time watching TV. This percentage is expected to drop among children aged ten and above due to peer pressure and the wide availability of content through different forms of technology.

Furthermore, a US study by the Newspaper Association of America Foundation revealed that TV viewership among those aged eight to 18 dropped by 16 percent in one year, although TV consumption via mobile increased by a significant time of 38 minutes.

Additionally, the rise in coding apps and computer programming, which, in some countries, are part of the school curriculum from age five onwards, will definitely play a role in providing the tools to create, innovate and better tell stories, thus turning kids’ passion for technology into productivity and potential future businesses.

For the advertising industry, this means a well-groomed generation of marketers and ad people to tackle new challenges. Nevertheless, the region is yet to introduce these new developments in the educational curriculum.

As an advertiser, this is an exciting time, when apps and technology have taken into consideration that children are natural born storytellers. These apps allows for kids to unleash their imagination and create characters that form great stories. A good example is the expected evolution of Minecraft with new features that will enable story creation.

However, as a parent, I can’t help but feel that kids should enjoy the pleasure of reading a book without being interrupted by a Snapchat notification; ride bikes in the real world – not just in a video game; play sports with their friends out in the park – not just through an AR- or VR-based app; and draw pictures with pencils and crayons – not just download an app to form a sketch of a picture they clicked.

Because eventually, these real-life experiences are what will help children become better storytellers in the virtual world.