Written by: Aathishree S.V.
She is an undergraduate student at Flame University, pursuing a major in Sociology. She worked with Helikx as an intern for a month.
Check out her personal blog: http://theyellowpage-aathi.blogspot.com/
Did you know that children from wealthy families were said to have been "born with a silver spoon"?
My cousin brother was born with a Pandora's box instead. The box was there to take a picture of his parents holding him for the first time. It was there to entrance him with a video of The Gummy Bear song when he refused to eat. It was there when he was cranky; it was there to make him happy. Digital devices like smartphones and tablets compromised my brother’s childhood. He liked playing outdoors, but he loved the shiny and sleek Pandora's boxes! He would play the same games on the phone repeatedly. Engrossed in the phone, he would stop responding to people around him. Because his school wanted to introduce "enhanced learning", my brother got his very own iPad at seven years of age! The amount of time and effort he put into playing games and downloading apps on the tablet surprised me. There was a point when I even wondered if he was addicted. He became reticent, yet more aggressive due to all the fighter and racing games he played. I couldn't accept that he was wasting away his precious childhood in front of a screen, which was slowly turning him into a machine such as itself. There was even a time when I saw some disturbing content in the suggestions list on YouTube while he was watching a simulation game. I was horrified by the possibility of my brother's mind getting polluted. The thought of that possibility becoming a reality drew the line for me.
The first ten years of a child's life make up for his/her best childhood. It's the time when kids begin to discover their surroundings; the time they just go out and have fun! It's also a crucial time for them to bond with their parents. It is at this pivotal phase of their lives that their parents can undisputedly shape their minds, teach them moral values and help them grow responsibly.
Today, we are all living in a digital world. Though there is technology all around us, somehow it has proven incapable of solving urgent problems like Global Warming. We may leave the world before the system collapses, but our children will suffer because they are the future. If we want them to survive, then we need to nurture them in the right way. I know it would be impossible to start lecturing teenagers on the adverse effects of over-using technology. But there’s still hope with children. We can shape their future in the right way. So, if we are handing a smartphone or a tablet to a child, then we need to understand the consequences and act accordingly.
I firmly believe that children below the age of ten should have restricted access to smartphones and tablets.
By restricted access, I mean the amount of time the child spends using these devices at home, i.e., screen time. Writing from direct experience, I am convinced that excessive screen time can have adverse effects on young children. It can lead to difficulties in learning and communication, along with a decrease in social skills. Immoderate usage can also cause drastic behavioural changes. Online activity, of "digitalised kids" between five and ten years, can expose them to cyberbullying and undesirable content. At a very young age, children can become materialistic, thereby plunging into needless consumerism and identity crisis. Above all, essential parent-child relationships can deteriorate due to valuable time at home lost inside luring screens.
Dr Nicole Beurkens (2017), a clinical child psychologist, notes that "non-verbal (emotional) cues are a critical component of social communication, and deficits in this area create difficulties for children in forming relationships and communicating effectively with others." Supporting her observation, researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine suggest that children's over-indulgence in smart devices reduces their sensorimotor and visual-motor skills (Walters, 2015). Therefore, it becomes hard for digitalised kids to comprehend language and face-to-face interactions. Also, the researchers find that these kids show a weakening of higher-level cognitive skills needed for understanding subjects like math and science. According to Dr Beurkens these skills belong to executive functions of the brain, which gets impaired due to kids' particular overexposure to silly and fast-paced on-screen games (Beurkens, 2017). She also warns parents not to use mobiles and tablets to distract kids because not only do such tactics reduce their ability to self-regulate, but they also act as conversation-killers, especially among children of the same age.
An extensive study of digitally-active three-year-olds and five-year-olds, conducted by a group of Canadian investigators, revealed the dominating effects that increased screen time had on the behaviour of these children (Tamana et al., 2019). Externalising problems such as inattention and aggression and internalising problems like depression, withdrawal and anxiety, seemed to have significantly affected those kids whose screen time was more than two hours every day. Contrastingly, they discovered that those children who spent the same amount of time in physical activities had almost no mental-health complications. The association of screen time with behavioural morbidities was higher than its effect on the kids' sleep patterns and parenting style. Hence, their study proves how easily a few extra hours can change the nature of a child: from cute to diabolic.
If you're looking for an amusing take of the relationship between digital devices and children, then Dean Burnett, a doctor of neuroscience, is your guy. In his article in The Guardian, Burnett writes about the danger of having children around tablets; not the other way around. He is determined that, due to their incapacity to hold things, toddlers mainly are bound to drop/break these fragile and hard-to-repair gadgets, at least once (Burnett, 2015). Though this is a hilarious insight, it is essential to note the logic behind it: Don't give expensive devices to children unless you are Bill Gates!
It would be ignorant of parents to assume that their kids' activity on smart devices is restricted to playing games and watching colourful YouTube videos. But, a survey taken in eleven countries presents many respondents expressing concern over their children's exposure to immoral and harmful content (Silver et al., 2019). It was only recently that an online-hoax called Momo Challenge threatened the lives of young children who fell into its traps. Moreover, physicians from the American College of Pediatricians affirm that a lot of kids have social media accounts by the age of ten. While online, they accidentally come across undesirable content, especially pornography ("The Impact of Media," 2016). The physicians assert that such perversion of innocent minds can induce early sexual attitudes and gender-stereotypical beliefs. Online activities further affect the morality of children. An article in the Journal of Social Science reports the impact cyberbullying has on all young minds associated with it. It claims that while the victims of internet harassment descend into depression, anxiety and low self-esteem, the bullies themselves succumb to risky behaviours and belligerence and the bystanders experience agitation and guilt (D'Antona et al., 2010). To avoid children underdoing such trauma, I would suggest parents monitor screen time heavily. When I found out that my brother was under the danger of exposure to illicit content, I immediately told his parents to install parental control on his device and switch his account to YouTube Kids.
Back when mobile phones were emerging as a fad, the main reason why parents agreed to buy them for their children was for security purposes. A research paper based on Roy Morgan's Young Australians Survey concurs with this notion but informs that today the reasons for buying smartphones are fast-changing. The document states that children, particularly tweens, attracted mainly by the brand, the ringtones, the lastest application facilities and appearance of the device, pressurise their parents to buy expensive gadgets (Downie & Glazebrook, 2007). The research discloses that many tweens fear missing out on new updates and models. It claims that these children are attempting to establish their identity through possession of "cool" phones. This materialistic attitude commercialises their childhood and inflicts upon them, a never-ending consumer culture. The survey notes the existence of such a culture predominantly among children from low-income families. When their families' financial circumstances deny them the needful, the survey opines, these kids undergo identity crises and begin to experience psychosomatic dysfunctions (Downie & Glazebrook, p.05).
A subtle existence of all the fore-mentioned traits existed in my cousin brother as well. I have been in my brother's life since the day he was born. Numerous times, I cradled him as a baby, fed him, bathed him and watched him play. He used to be excessively tall and tanned for his age because of all the time spent in the sun. My best memories of him involved him playing games, both imaginary and real: jumping around chasing after footballs and narrating tales about the tiny plastic people he stationed around huts he built out of wet playground mud. But clearly, these activities did not define him as much as the gadgets did. The first ten years of a child's life make up for his/her best childhood. It's the time when kids begin to discover their surroundings; the time they just go out and have fun! It's also a crucial time for them to bond with their parents. It is at this pivotal phase of their lives that their parents can undisputedly shape their minds, teach them moral values and help them grow responsibly. So, when a lifeless machine substitutes the role of parents and the outdoors, the child's attachment and loyalty immediately shift to the former, creating a permanent break in his/her bond with the latter. But even after knowing all these facts, some argue in favour of children having access to digital devices.
Jordy Kaufman, director of a research facility called BabyLab, insists that mobile phones and iPads are not like the traditional television set or video games. He claims that their benefits are plenty when used in the right way. He also believes that these devices can replace traditional toys, saying that they have the potential to exceed the teaching capacity by engaging the mirror neurons - which help the human brain understand the virtual space - in children thereby increasing cognitive development (Cocozza, 2014). Another scholar named Rosie Flewitt, from the Institute of Education at the University of London, talks about the benefits of tablet use in early primary education (Cocozza, 2014).
Tablet learning can curb creativity and imagination by reducing children to a fixed framework and not allowing them to think outside the box. But that is one minor setback which can be overlooked if the tablets are only used for educational purposes. So, while I agree with Miss Flewitt about tablet learning stimulating intelligence in children, I cannot accept Mr Kaufman's arguments. Scientific research and testing prove that giving tablet access to young children (between 24-60 months) can lead to poor performances that are undetectable to parents (Madigan et al., 2019). Due to this factor, parents will be oblivious to how their children utilise their gadgets. Without parental control, the ethical and moral usage of devices is highly tested. Also, I strongly question the advantage of replacing traditional toys with tablets. I remember witnessing my brother once trying to move a building block from the floor by placing his finger in the air around it and swiping up. He was trying to move the block without even touching it! Very young children are not capable of reinterpreting virtually gained knowledge in real life. At that time, my brother was not more than one year old. So if we want our children to be able to understand the simple concept of picking and holding objects, then putting a tablet in their hands is not going to do the trick. It is also important to note that the engagement of children is heightened when they actively take part in what is entertaining them, like outdoor activities, not when they are being entertained by a screen.
In conclusion, restricted screen time is the answer to all the problems posed by the use of digital devices. Firstly, access must be denied entirely to very young children (below five years) at home. The only exception for these kids using the devices should be during school-time. Secondly, children between five and ten years of age should have monitored and time-constricted screen time. Parents must also learn to be assertive about these rules and must always try to supplement benefits from the screen time by teaching the kids new things on gadgets such as basic animations and reading. Finally, it is imperative for parents to always remind children of all ages about the harmful effects of using digital devices.
If these three things are kept in mind, then even if our children are born with Pandora's boxes, they can still learn to live with them and also use them for the betterment of society and the future.
Bibliography
Beurkens, Nicole. “Screen Time Can Be DANGEROUS For Kids' (Mental & Physical Health).” Dr. Nicole Beurkens, 1 Oct. 2018, www.drbeurkens.com/dangers-overexposure-electronics-kids-mental-physical-health/.
Burnett, Dean. “Toddlers Pose a Serious Risk to Smartphones and Tablets | Dean Burnett.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 3 Feb. 2015, www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015/feb/03/toddlers-damage-smartphones-tablets.
Cocozza, Paula. “Are IPads and Tablets Bad for Young Children?” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 Jan. 2014, www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/08/are-tablet-computers-bad-young-children.
D'Antona, Robin, et al. “Sexting, Texting, Cyberbullying and Keeping Youth Safe Online.” Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 6, no. 4, 2010, pp. 523–528., doi:10.3844/jssp.2010.523.528.
Downie, Christian, and Kate Glazebrook. “Mobile Phones and the Consumer Kids.” Australia Institute, Feb. 2007, pp. 1–7., http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.554.4187&rep=rep1&type=pdf
“The Impact of Media Use and Screen Time on Children, Adolescents, and Families.” American College of Pediatricians, 9 Nov. 2016, www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/parenting-issues/the-impact-of-media-use-and-screen-time-on-children-adolescents-and-families.
Madigan, Sheri, et al. “Association Between Screen Time and Children’s Performance on a Developmental Screening Test.” JAMA Pediatrics, vol. 173, no. 3, 28 Jan. 2019, pp. 244–260., doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.5056.
Silver, Laura, et al. “2. Majorities Say Mobile Phones Are Good for Society, Even amid Concerns about Their Impact on Children.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center, 7 Mar. 2019, www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/03/07/majorities-say-mobile-phones-are-good-for-society-even-amid-concerns-about-their-impact-on-children/.
Tamana, Sukhpreet K., et al. “Screen-Time Is Associated with Inattention Problems in Preschoolers: Results from the CHILD Birth Cohort Study.” Plos One, vol. 14, no. 4, 17 Apr. 2019, pp. 1–8., doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0213995.
Veldhuis, Lydian, et al. “Parenting Style, the Home Environment, and Screen Time of 5-Year-Old Children; The ‘Be Active, Eat Right’ Study.” PLoS ONE, vol. 9, no. 2, 12 Feb. 2014, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0088486.
Walters, Joanna. “Tablets and Smartphones May Affect Social and Emotional Development, Scientists Speculate.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 Feb. 2015, www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/01/toddler-brains-research-smartphones-damage-social-development.
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