Just Kidding!

By Rysha Sultania

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I have a 4 year old brother at home and everywhere he goes, along with his infectious laughter goes some sort of screen too!

Recently, the brat celebrated his birthday and during the festivities, as the designated party planner, i was shocked to see children’s exposure to technology and just how much it has changed society! Instead of playing pass-the-parcel along the tune of Twinkle-Twinkle, these mini-adults marched right up to the speakers and opened Youtube to play some more “groovy” music. To say I felt old was an understatement!

However jokes apart, the tech trend has greatly transformed to include a much younger demographic than say 10 years ago. Today, kids not only watch much weirder and frankly worse cartoons as we did but access a lot more age-related content considering how ubiquitous their presence on the net is. Given the Covid-19 situation, kids as young as the age of 3 are attending online school. Whether this is a boon or bane is whole other ball game but one thing’s for sure, child involvement in technology is here and dare I say, it’s here for good.

Parents of course aren’t too glad about it, what with its many negative side effects, which I am only too glad to list. Jim Taylor, Ph.D., wrote in Psychology Today that

heightened technology exposure might actually be changing the way children’s brains

are wired. When children are exposed to technology at high rates, their brain may

adopt an internet approach to thinking – quickly scanning and processing multiple

sources of data .This leads to a lot of internal confusion, leaving children a lot more

confused than were when they spent time reading and mulling over information.

Your teachers weren’t lying when they said that video games are the spawn of Satan.

Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the Journal of Youth and Adolescence,

found a correlation between simulated violence, often found in popular video games,

and heightened aggression. Exposure to violence was found to make children and

teens more likely to argue with peers or teachers, and less empathetic and impacted

by actual violence.

“For young children, the impact may be felt as screen time replaces time previously

devoted to play, peer interaction and exploration, which are thought to foster

empathy, problem-solving skills, curiosity, intelligence, and listening skills”, says

Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist affiliated with Harvard. Researchers

from Boston University  posit that mobile phone use may prevent children from

developing empathy, social and problem-solving skills.

However not all is bleak about the gift of the Digital Age. It is said that video games improve reflex movement, hand eye coordination, visual-spatial understanding among other motor skills. Online learning is helping immensely to keep kids on track with their precocious development and in touch with their classmates and the student life. When applied appropriately (as opposed to driving and texting, for example) a well-honed ability to multi-task that is brought on with technology use equips children with a necessary skill for modern adult life, according to PsychCentral.

I suppose just how it is with every other thing in life, moderation remains key even to

ensure wringing the immense potential technology serves for kids without

compromising on mental and physical well-being. Unlike current netizen behavior,

that is definitely not child’s play!

References:

https://www.floridatechonline.com/blog/psychology/how-technology-affects-child-development/