Children’s Development and Technology Overuse

Children’s Development and Technology Overuse

            It is worth taking the memory trip when I come to think about the past times while I was growing up as I attempt to comprehend the issues confronting today’s children. Previously, just about 25 years ago, youngsters used to spend the whole day outside playing games, building fortifications, riding bicycles, and playing sports. Youngsters of that time created their type of play that neither required supervision of their parents nor expensive hardware; they were the bosses of fanciful games. Past youngsters move a ton, and their physical world primarily relied on nature and was just basic (Chaudron et al., 2015). During that time, the family time had its true meaning because it was frequently spent doing errands, and the youngsters had desires to meet consistently. The lounge area was a focal spot where families gathered to have meals and discuss their day, and it turned into the center for artworks and assignments after supper.

Technology has helped our world in many ways, such as enhancing globalization and cultural exchanges both politically, socially, and economically through sectors like education, where nowadays youngsters can access vast information anywhere and at any time. Teachers also can access and handle reports and grading papers and interact with students through online courses hence significantly reduce hours of work. The other sector is communication, whereby applications like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, and other communication applications have improved interaction between people of different races, backgrounds, and ethnicities, whether at personal or business level. The security sector has also contributed to making technology worthwhile as the development of software and different security devices, crucial information like financial data at any level, can be secured (Clement and Miles, 2018).

In terms of children’s development, technology has helped children in different ways, like improving and developing their hand-eye coordination through engaging applications that make them follow an object on the screen. These skills are necessary as it enhances a child’s concentration, writing, and drawing skills as they begin school (Clement and Miles, 2018). It also helps in their language development skills through eBooks and online stores as they can learn new words with their proper pronunciation. With flashcards and picture dictionaries, children can boost their vocabulary and easily find the meanings of difficult words. Technology also promotes a child’s cognitive development and their readiness for school in early education through specific computer programs that are developmentally appropriate. Such programs make children competent through engagement in higher-order thinking. Technology, through games and other learning applications, boosts a child’s visual attention because they train a child to pay attention to details, and they also motivate them to complete tasks. These applications consequently create an environment for them to not easily give up as well as surpass challenges even beyond the realm of the screen.

Through interactive media, a child’s talent can be developed and natured. In today’s world, this is another critical survival skill next to education. Early onscreen exposure of children to exercises of music or writing nature enables their parents to figure out their inclinations and interests. The very same technology offers a platform for children to engage in many activities that are related to their interests. A perfect example is when I hear a child humming or singing a particular tune or line from a song s/he heard, and I always think that that could be his or her calling. So technology has helped in the early discovery of a child’s talents, and parents can then nature them at an early stage in their development and make them experts in their particular fields (Donohue and Schomburg, 2017).

Although I appreciate what technology has done in our lives today and the tremendous benefits after that, that is just one side of the coin. I cannot leave out the other side of it, which covers the downsides that come with too much embracing of technology on our children’s development. With the onset of technology, I tend to think that most families are made of technocrats because technology is found in every corner. Today’s family, technically known as the twenty-first century one, is different from the previous ones before technology. The twenty-first-century family is breaking its very establishment and causing deterioration of guiding principles that were the building blocks of families in the past. Shuffling home, school, work, and lives of the society, guardians presently depend intensely on intercommunication, data and, transportation to move to the fast life (Chaudron et al., 2015).

Technological advancements such as ipads, TV, video games, the internet, and mobile phones have progressed so quickly that families have hardly seen the colossal effect and changes to the structure of their family and quality of life. Recent studies have shown the number of hours children spend on diversion innovation and the ones with technology equipment in their rooms and the number of families that use them. And it was found that matured kids averagely used 7.5 hours of the day on technological entertainment and 75 percent of them possessed TVs in their rooms and 50 that percent of the had their TV’s on the whole day. The previous meaningful engagements, like dinner table conversations, have been wiped out by take-outs and big screens (George et al., 2018).

Physically, the overuse of technology is manifested by the fact that children nowadays currently depend on it for most of their play. And the effect of this is that it horribly constrains their inventiveness and minds, just as restricting essential stumble blocks to their bodies that will enable them to accomplish motor development and optimal sensory. This inactivity or rather ‘idleness’ leads to delays in attainment of the milestones that are necessary for child development. This technology overuse has rendered today’s children sedentary, as they do not get a lot of body exercise. After school, they opt to stay at home glued to their screens rather than go outside and play with their friends. And in some studies, this has caused the rates of child obesity, ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, anxiety, and diabetes to rise in the past many decades drastically and have become national epidemics in some countries (George et al., 2018).

Socially, technology overuse has deprived kids of the benefits of mingling with their friends because they are heavily reliant on technological entertainment. This consequently also denies them of supply of vitamin D from the sun, which keeps their skin healthy by fighting infections as well as maintaining their regular cycle of sleeping through the body’s production of melatonin. Children are still too young for the pace at which technology is moving, further scientific studies have also proved that harmful blue light emitted from screens of devices like computers and smartphones cause eye irritation and strains well as headaches. This consequently interferes with the child’s melatonin hormone hence their sleep patterns (Clement and Miles, 2018).

Psychologically, the overuse of technology renders children to be jerks of all trade, which is harmful to a child because technology has a lot of stimuli and needs attention to different things at the same time. Children who overuse technology are unable to focus and affect their information processing ability compared to the ones who minimally interact with technology. Technology overuse deprives children of the ability to be creative and think critically because it aligns their thinking only in a superficial manner (McDaniel and Radesky, 2018). Technology changes the style in which children mingle and connect with others, consequently affecting their psychological and emotional wellbeing, with excessive social media usage stimulating negative mind states and low confidence levels. This lack of interaction also makes it progressively hard for them to get on expressive gestures and create relevant associations with others, and this can have grave negative impacts as they grow and develop (Mustafaoğlu et al., 2018).

To wrap it up, it is not necessarily the case that technology is all negative or that youngsters ought to never utilize it. Technology provides tons of favorable chances of getting the hang of, engaging, and mingling though it, however, needs to be checked and used correctly. In as much as many guardians and teachers are trying to avert the effects of technology on child development, a lot still needs to be done to help children play in more healthy ways, like their predecessors. Parents can, for example, set some daily limits on their children’s interaction with technology such as phones and computers. Teachers can also hold some separate seminars and involve parents; together, and they can educate children on the negatives of technology such as cyberbullying. Parents also need to set an excellent example for their children by not spending a lot of time on their screens as they can easily emulate this behavior. So a dire, more critical glance at the essential variables that meet development milestones, and the consequent effect of technology overuse on those components would help guardians, teachers and health professionals to more readily comprehend the complexities of this issue and assist in creating compelling procedures to avert excessive use of technology.

References

Chaudron, S., Beutel, M. E., Donoso Navarrete, V., Dreier, M., Fletcher-Watson, B., Heikkilä, A. S., … & Mascheroni, G. (2015). Young children (0-8) and digital technology: A qualitative exploratory study across seven countries. JRC; ISPRA, Italy.

Clement, J., & Miles, M. (2018). Screen schooled: Two veteran teachers expose how technology overuse is making our kids dumber. Black Inc..

Donohue, C., & Schomburg, R. (2017). Technology and interactive media in early childhood programs: What we’ve learned from five years of research, policy, and practice. YC Young Children, 72(4), 72-78.

George, M. J., Russell, M. A., Piontak, J. R., & Odgers, C. L. (2018). Concurrent and subsequent associations between daily digital technology use and high‐risk adolescents’ mental health symptoms. Child Development, 89(1), 78-88.

McDaniel, B. T., & Radesky, J. S. (2018). Technoference: Parent distraction with technology and associations with child behavior problems. Child development, 89(1), 100-109.

Mustafaoğlu, R., Zirek, E., Yasacı, Z., & Özdinçler, A. R. (2018). The negative effects of digital technology usage on children’s development and health. Addicta: The Turkish Journal on Addictions, 5(2), 13-21.