Technology too early has me worried for this new generation

Parent Cafe
41

We’ve eaten family dinners around the table, and family dinners around the television. We all tend to talk through, or basically have a running commentary through television shows and commercials, so does that count? Mystery Science Theater 3000, anyone? Some of my fondest memories are playing video games with my kids, trying to get to the next level of Crash Bandicoot, or when the kids would call me to beat some bad guy in TEKKEN (a violent game, I wouldn’t recommend it). I played more Pokemon than any adult woman should. My kids also read, played instruments and were immersed in popular culture. And we also went outside and watched ants, and collected seashells, and cooked, and planted a garden. Not all in the same week, though.

I think the main thing is that the parents be interested in their children, and show their children interesting things. It could be true that a lot of parents aren’t doing that lately. I don’t know. My son claims that a lot of kids in his generation really are glued to their phones, and are afraid of social interaction.So it’s a valid concern.

42

I think the brain will definitely be working a little differently in the future as a result of the environment, i.e., technology and how the world works around us. There will be some positive effects, and some changes that we rue.

Personally I really rebel against some of the differences I see now versus a few decades ago. (Yet I realize I have to accept it.) Things move so much faster, and well-considered thought doesn’t seem to be valued by the society or in the workplace. On a more mundane note, spelling and punctuation have gone drastically downhill, and it is SO frustrating when I can’t decipher written language due to missing punctuation.

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Here is the nuts and bolts of what the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) recommends and why:
https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/pages/media-and-children.aspx

And some good parent advice - note that excessive media is not just about being in front of a screen but even things like tv on in the background all the time:
http://www.zerotothree.org/parenting-resources/screen-sense/screen-sense_key-research-finds_final3.pdf

(Early childhood/pediatrics is my professional world so I can go on and on and on about this!)

44

When my S was a toddler, I had someone caring for my S who insisted she needed the “background noise” of the TV (and it wasn’t necessarily even children’s programming). Even though I liked her in most other ways, I hated it this and eventually found someone else. I guess my instincts were right about that one.

Now that I think of it…“background” isn’t really “background” most of the time. When I’m in a restaurant/bar that has a TV going…even if I’m not even interested in what’s on it…I can’t help but find my eyes (and attention) drifting over to what is showing. Well, until I realize what I’m doing and focus back to the people I’m with. When I’ve mentioned this to others they have agreed that it happens to them as well. Kinda crazy how we are “programmed” to watch a screen.

45

That could be replied to pretty much any post on CC.

So?

46

Anyone else dislike the Chevrolet ad seen on TV recently? They are promoting their Wifi capable cars. The ad shows two peaceful kids watching things on tablets in the Chevy while two kids in the other brand are yelling for cookies. Hasn’t anyone heard of BOOKS? Our son used to be so engrossed in whatever he was reading he had no concept for the distances travelled multiple times between places. For some of us that doesn’t work as reading makes us carsick- but works well for most.

47

When my own child was young (especially before elementary school), I tried to steer him away from technology and media. We wanted him to play with more traditional toys (blocks, etc.), i.e., those toys that kids plays with their hands. No these unnatural movements like clicking, double-clicking on the mouse, or staring at the computer screen.

Despite this effort on my part, when he was not longer in the elementary school, he still used too much of his time on “technology/media”. To discourage him from using the technology too much and to save money at the same time, we uses a slow online ISV.

On the other hand, when he was older (in high school) we encouraged him to use technology in an active way. We bought some computer music software/hardware (Cubase and Logic after a few simpler ones.) for him to play with so that he could become computer literate.

48

I agree. A balance in life is good in all areas. There is much that is good about tv and other technologies. I would not have wanted to deprive my children of it.

49

DH had been eating in front of the tv every once in a while the last year or two. Now that we recently got two new beautiful sofas, we’re back at the table. :slight_smile:

50

I agree that a balance is the key.

Although the technology itself is not bad, I still think that, when the children are young, giving them some plain old toys like blocks could more easily encourage them to have a more “active” child play. (I read several books about how to raise a child. It seems most educators specializing in young children’s education seem to have the opinion that many traditional toys are not necessarily worse than the new “gadgets”, especially for the very young kids.)

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BTW, I did not avoid the technology (in this case, computers) altogether.

Any parents here taught their children to learn to program using LOGO? I did. I even taught him how to calculate the area of a circle using that “turtle” based programming language well before he was ready for his high school AP Calculus. Related math concepts are: random number, ratio between two areas, probability, and Monte Carlo method. The kid could get it if this kind of topic is introduced gradually, a tiny step at a time.

52

I don’t know whether it’s good or bad, but I was standing in line on a grocery store and the kid demanded the iPhone to play otherwise she scream her head off. She’s younger than 2 because she didn’t speak, only screaming. Mom was very embarrassed.

53

My Millennial is probably going to show a little bit here, lol. Anyway, this is the field I’m currently in, so I’m interested in it.

Have you ever watched a kid play Minecraft? That game is an open-world sandbox game. Kids can build ANYTHING in there. It requires strategy, some math and spatial skills, critical thought, quick response time. Some kids are learning how to code through Minecraft. If you search the Internet you can find examples of some really amazing things that young children (talking about ages 7-13) have built in Minecraft. Not only that, but there are social events built around the game. There are special servers you can play on with other people, where you can show off what you built and see what others have done. You can trade ideas and meet people from all over the world. There’s a new social play league that’s been built around Minecraft, where kids meet in movie theaters and work cooperatively to fight monsters and build cool stuff.

That toddler who is in the stroller on the cell phone might be playing an alphabet game. (One of my small cousin’s favorite games on my iPhone was a game that required him to pick the right letter from a group of 3. He liked the sound it made when he picked the WRONG letter, so he learned the alphabet so he could deliberately pick the wrong letter and hear the sound. LOL!) They might be having a book read aloud to them while mom shops. They might be playing a puzzle game that increases their spatial awareness.

Anything in excess can be bad, so of course excessive media use is bad. But we don’t actually know what excessive media use is. The AAP recommends 1-2 hours a day, but there’s no scientific reason for that - there aren’t studies that support that as a sweet spot, and research shows that two-thirds of children consume less than 2 hours of media a day anyway (and most of the remaining 1/3 watch 2-3 hours a day. Only a small percentage of kids consume more than 3 hours a day of media). The relationship between obesity and media consumption is also far from established - one meta-analysis concluded that it’s too small to be clinically significant, and a recent study found no connection between BMI and time spent playing video games or using the computer. Owning a cell phone or having a television in one’s room has little connection to socioemotional development, according to other studies.

Really, the only well-established connection we have to obesity is a sedentary lifestyle and a lack of physical activity. And we know socioemotional development os based upon kids actually interacting with other people. But you can be physically active, socially interactive, and still play games/consume media. I like games but I also like to go hiking and cycling and walk my dog; I make sure I balance them. Kids have to learn that balance, too. What is “high-quality content”? How do parents judge that? As I noted above, imagination and free play is VERY possible with interactive media.

Kids have been demanding things and screaming their heads off if they can’t get them since the dawn of time, lol. If it’s not an iPhone, maybe it’s a toy, mom’s keys, some snacks, who knows. Kids have low impulse control and short attention spans. Technology doesn’t cause that.

54

After several hours spent at an extended family gathering today, and seeing the kids of a few nieces and nephews glued to the Disney Channel, I have to say that I would keep my kids away from that, at all costs! I have never seen such inane shows in my life! Terrible writing, even worse acting, ugh. Just awful.

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It probably will but we can all wear glasses and get lasik now, so it’s not that terrible a problem.

My family got a computer in 1994 when I was 3, and I’d use it for a variety of things. Mostly simple games and some simple art programs. As for TV, I mostly just watched when my mom watched, so when I was little I didn’t spend several hours watching TV in a row. My mom never really showed me kids shows so I’ve never watched Barney or Sesame Street or shows like that. But as far as I know, before I was 3 I had very little screen time. My parents tell me I used to play with blocks and count things a lot before that.

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Interesting article related to this subject.
http://time.com/3682621/this-country-just-made-it-illegal-to-give-kids-too-much-screen-time/

In-depth article.

http://time.com/raising-the-screen-generation/

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raclut, thank you for posting the Time article. It was very interesting.

58

Not just eyesight, but bone health. Younger and younger people are going in to seek treatment for neck pain and problem with discs in their cervical spine. We have our heads bent down or bending forward too much.

59

Okay, so many of us are the first generation being raised on television. It was always present in our lives. People said then that this would be catastrophic. Well it wasn’t.

Most of our young adults ( early 30’s, late 20’s) were the first home computer/Internet cellphone generation. Again, super bad predictions about their socialization. Did not happen.

Now we have smart phones, wristwatches, etc. and you know what? Life will adapt. Just like it did to the automobile and telephone!

Technology brings changes. It isn’t the end of the world or catastrophic. IMO, to conceal your children from this is a grave disservice. It is the world and they have to live in at this time.

To require a few hours, days or weeks down time, ie off TV, internet, cellphone, etc is certainly okay. This was needed way before even radio.way before even that. Meditation, solitude, lone time.

60

@morrismm:
Thank you , you wrote what I was thinking. Bad parenting is bad parenting, and I think back when we were growing up the kids watching too much tv was the big thing, then it was computers and video games. Using smart phones and tablets as baby sitters is as much of a problem as using tv as baby sitter, I remember being horrified when a cousin of mine was so proud when they had their young daughter sitting glued to the tv watching Barney for hours on end, because it gave them peace or whatnot…I do have problems with the use of modern tech, I see young kids with their own phones with internet access, I see kids with tablets that are surfing the net with no supervision, and it concerns me (and no, they didn’t have parental controls enabled, I checked). My problem isn’t so much the quantity, but what kids may be doing with it, I hear acounts of really young kids inappropriately texting or bullying, and I blame the parents, they want their kids to think they are cool so they are giving these kids smart phones and tablets, or for that matter computers, without keeping on eye on what they are doing.

The computer can teach a lot, but there are things it cannot do. The virtual worlds of the computer are amazing, programs like the old Sims could teach things, but it also makes it seem a lot easier than it is. It also doesn’t teach skills with visualization in the real world in three dimensions, that for example blocks or legos might teach (as good as the sim programs I have seen, that allow building a ‘castle’ on a screen, it just isn’t the same thing as doing it “in real life”.

What it really comes down to is channeling the kids into the right kind of things, and balancing it out. The computer can stimulate a sense of imagination, and can also dull it under too much data, too much stimulation, and there needs to be a balance somewhere.