Technology is all around us. It is growing faster, becoming more advanced than we might want. Although it can be extremely useful, it can also be very detrimental.
Mark Knapp and Elizabeth Pester, a couple from Oklahoma, are an example of this. These parents took their love of video games too far. Consumed by the virtual reality of their Second Life avatars, they let their 2 year old daughter nearly starve to death. When the police found her in October, the toddler weighed just 13 pounds. After she was brought to a hospital, her parents left to continue playing their Second Life game.
“She’s not able to walk, she’s not able to move and she has very limited vocal skills,” said Detective Danielle Bishop when the event was reported to KOTV. This also was not the first time when their child had to be taken away from them for neglect.
According to court papers obtained by the news station, authorities had to take the child away from the couple for alleged neglect in years past. Oklahoma’s Department of Human Services took Knapp and Pester’s daughter into custody in 2010 when she was just a few weeks old and having feeding problems; she was returned to her parents in 2011. Then, just months later, she was hospitalized due to malnourishment.
Knapp and Pester are so obsessed with their virtual world that they let their daughter suffer for it. Being relatively new parents, one would think that all of their attention would be on their daughter; but, technology took over. This is unfortunately prevalent in our world today, as technology continues to advance. How far will technology take people in their negligence of the “real world”?