Can our children live without Google?

I was working in a class last week and they were given the task of doing some research on a geography topic.  The school has a class-sized iPad collection, but there were only a few available and the total disdain at the lack of available technology was palpable pretty quickly.  You could hear them quietly moaning about the age of the books and many of them were earnestly commenting about how on earth they were going to find the required information.

It is one of those moments that makes you chuckle but when you go away and think about it, it makes you feel quite sad. As the teacher explained to them, books are our friends, we choose a book and we know firstly that the information is pretty reliable but also we can find the required information rapidly by using the index at the back. There was a rustle of pages and eventually the children resigned to their non-electronic research. One or two even later commented how easy it had been to find the information.

Later on at home, I was chatting to the boys about what had happened and they said that they would much prefer to use computers to do research as it was quicker.  What about reliability?  They looked at me blankly.  I explained how a lot of information on the internet could be incorrect and what about those links that were sponsored and not even relevant?

They too were unconvinced and looked at me as though I was some sort of technology-hating alien.  The thing is, I’m not at all.  I use Google far too often myself. Those annoying things that used to give you sleepless nights are now a simple Google search away.  That person on the television that you recognise but can’t remember where from; Google will know exactly who they are.  Haven’t got an ingredient for a recipe?  Google can offer some alternatives.  I took the opportunity to look back at my recent Google history and it is quite funny how many things I use Google for when I could quite easily look in a book for.

French words are a good example. I have a fabulous dictionary which is gathering dust because when I am on the computer doing some work, it is so much quicker to use Google.  Recipes are another.  I have just short of 100 recipe books, yet most new recipes I try are from the internet.  Google tells me what is going to happen in my favourite TV programs, it gives me technical help when I break my blog, it is where I do a lot of my shopping, where I research for my content writing work.  Google is my dictionary and thesaurus, my reference library and newspaper.

Whoops.

So it’s not just children who are addicted to Google then is it?

Yet, I am a huge lover and advocate of books.  I remember being fascinated by Encyclopedia Britannica when I was a child.  We didn’t have them but if we went anywhere that did, I couldn’t wait to get them down and explore the strange and wonderful things inside.  Do people still have them? Has Google replaced the need for encyclopedias? We have quite a few reference books for the children and they do like some of them but still would turn to the internet rather than go and get an actual book off a shelf.

I love to see books on shelves and I definitely want my children to grow up thinking that books are their friends.  Google and the internet are all well and good and we now live in a world where we couldn’t live without them, but I want to lead by example and try to use our books more to find things in a hope that I will inspire my children to do the same.

What were the last ten things you searched for on Google?