ÇEVRE HIGHLIGHTS - 30. SAYI

65 HAZ İ RAN 2026 Harun AKASYA Teacher, what kind of help will artificial intelligence give us in software development? For a while, AI was seen as such a threat. Software developers worried, thinking, “Is it going to write code instead of us? Will we lose our jobs?” But we are starting to see that it’s not exactly like that. Yes, exactly. Every job has its own grunt work. For example, your grunt work as students is doing repetitive assignments, right? Those are tedious tasks. Or take a profession like medicine—some scientific studies are very valuable, but doing the same routine thing over and over is just grunt work. Software development has its tedious parts too; tasks that are necessary but boring. At that exact point, artificial intelligence steps in. We can leave all the grunt work to it and say, “Go ahead and do this.” This saves us time, giving us more room for human touch and human intuition. By saving us time, it has actually made our work more predictable. What do you think are the biggest threats awaiting children on gaming platforms? Personally, I think none of you will have any problems on these platforms because you are all very conscious and aware. The issue is for children who lack this awareness—young students who follow the instructions on those platforms blindly without filtering or thinking about them. For instance, if an in-game instruction tells them something absurd like, “Go to the kitchen, get some water, and pour it over your head”—we hear about these kinds of things in the news. You wouldn’t do that, or you wouldn’t spend 10 hours of your day playing games. As long as you don’t do these things, you won’t face any problems. For example, I’ve recently started playing games too. I have a 7-year-old son, and we play Red Dead Redemption together. It’s a very nice game. We also play Far Cry. If you play in moderation, it’s a wonderful way to unwind and relax. Therefore, we need games; we all need them. I am 37 years old, and I need them. You naturally need them too, but you have to play in a balanced way. Teacher, how can we protect ourselves from these threats? Actually, we shouldn’t try to actively hide from them; we just need to be conscious. We shouldn’t play excessively. We shouldn’t spend all of our time on it. But life can’t be without games either; we need to play. Back in our day, we used to play marbles on the street. Today, the equivalent of that is a game I hear about called Valorant, or Counter-Strike. Times have changed, so naturally, we will use these platforms, but we will use them consciously. The key words here are balance and awareness. As long as you have those, there is no problem. How can games that contain weapons or aggression affect us? Well, yes, it might be an issue for some children who already have underlying psychological problems. But for a well- adjusted child, I honestly don’t know if it causes such problems. This isn’t my exact area of expertise, so I want to speak carefully, but I take my own childhood and my son as a reference. If a child doesn’t already have an anxiety disorder or a psychological issue, playing a game with weapons will not motivate them toward real weapons. So, rest easy. What can we do to prevent our personal data from being misused and to protect ourselves from dangers in technological environments? Dangers will always exist. When we were kids playing on the street, there were dangers and problems there too. Now, they exist in the virtual world. Again, the key here is to be careful and conscious. We shouldn’t click on every pop-up, right? We shouldn’t just accept everything. For example, when a warning pops up or when you need to accept a user agreement in a game or on social media, you need to read it. You shouldn’t just skip through and hit accept immediately. As long as we are conscious, there is no issue. How do you gain this awareness? You can achieve it by consulting the experts in this field—like your school guidance counselors or your computer science teachers. Even this is not my specific expertise; I am just sharing from my own experiences. But we must reach out to the actual experts. One of the biggest problems in Turkey is that everyone claims to know everything, which misleads people. Therefore, if you want support regarding games, you should consult an expert. If you want support to protect your mental well-being, you need to reach out to a good guidance counselor. Keep this in mind. What are the dangers awaiting a generation that grows up highly attached to technology? I f technology dependency means screen addiction, that is a risk. If a child is constantly watching something while eating, or watching Rafadan Tayfa while doing homework, those are problems. However, if they are using technology to solve real-world problems—and that is what connects them to technology—then we are all for it. Let them be attached to technology in that way, let them push it further. But if we are talking about gaming addiction or screen addiction, we must be very careful. Do you know why? If you constantly stare at a screen and just watch things, you become entirely passive. Your vocabulary won’t expand. You won’t be able to solve a reading comprehension question in Turkish, and you will struggle to communicate with people. To overcome this, we need to lift our heads from screens and, for example, chat with our parents during dinner. We need to talk about how our day went. On the other hand, being a “nerd”—obsessively dedicated to something productive—like being a nerd about robotic coding? We welcome that. You can be a tech addict in that sense. There are differences between real life and digital life. Won’t these digital environments restrict our lives? Y es, and that’s why you need to maintain a balance. While you are all doing these wonderful activities, you also have exams waiting for you at the end of middle school, right? Or you have your regular school exams. You have an academic life too. Life is a matter of balance. People who manage this balance well will succeed, even if they aren’t the most naturally gifted. A person who knows when to sleep, when to do their homework, and when to play games will be successful. If you maintain this balance, you won’t have any problems. Teacher, what do you think will be the most important