How does technology affects the development of children’s minds?

Technology

The sad reality is that, nowadays, babies learn to unlock their phones before adding, building sentences, or dressing autonomously. They learn to be distracted with amazing ease.

As parents, we use this resource multiple times. If we go out to dinner, we will enjoy a concert or take our children to the hairdresser; mobile is the way to entertain and not disturb. They play a game or a YouTube video and the child disappears.

This has innumerable consequences for children’s development, but we want to emphasize two.

Distraction instead of tolerance for frustration or effort

The human mind is very comfortable. It is always governed by the law of minimum effort. If you find shortcuts, data you can forget, or efforts to save, it will always take them.

The child’s brain does not like to get frustrated and will never exert itself if it is not through an adult.

There are countless situations in which parents require the attention and effort of the child so that the child achieves the necessary autonomy.

Let’s take a simple example: learn to eat on a plate and with cutlery. This simple task that we all have so automated was a great effort when we were little. Our parents had to sit with us day after day, creating a habit that brought frustrations, stains, and difficulties.

All parents know the sensation of seeing your child stain from head to toe while dining when you already had him bathed and clean. How slow and tedious it is that he picks up the spoon by himself and manages to bring it to his mouth.

Many times we want to save time and effort and give them food. However, that frustration is part of the trial-and-error learning process that will create the habit and make you independent.

However, if when the child has to make an effort to hit and put the food in his mouth, we distract him with a video of the mobile, his brain disperses. Without realizing it we are creating the mental association that every time a situation comes in which to make an effort it will not be necessary to do so, there will be a distraction.

It is impossible for our children to maintain sustained attention if we use these mechanisms frequently.

When children are young they need to fantasize about building the world and creating stories in their heads. In this way, they can imagine themselves as teachers, firefighters, singers, or doctors.

It is important that they take a piece of cardboard and pretend that it is a magic wand, that they paint a dragon on a sheet and pretend to defeat it.

If we listen to 3-year-olds playing by themselves (or with their non-interactive toys) you will see exactly what “symbolic play” means. It means being able to use imagination and symbolism in what surrounds us; it is always a unique and wonderful creation of children’s minds.

Obviously we are not talking about a game whose direct purpose is educational, it is not that they learn and internalize rules, but something very important and that will determine their cognitive development: the ability to think, to symbolize the world, to understand ourselves with a common language.

Whether the child can understand and internalize the reality around him depends, in part, on whether he can enjoy this type of creative play.

Movies, video games, or apps do not allow children to create (from the verb create) anything of their own. They can interact, they can be entertaining or even educational, but they shouldn’t take up most of your leisure time.

As we have said before, the brain, in general, is lazy and if it can save the effort it will. Therefore, you will always choose a screen where you “get it all done” over the effort of a game where you have to make up your own stories. However, now we know the great importance of those inventions and fantasies that he develops when he plays.

Consequences of early abuse of technologies

In the long term, when children enter preadolescence, the abuse of screens during cognitive development usually means that they do not have hobbies, they are not particularly interested in anything and they are not able to get bored.

They need their dose of images, mobile, YouTube, or Instagram. They are less creative, they have fewer concerns and sometimes, the most serious, they have failed to symbolize the world in their minds.

It is essential that children learn to be bored, to entertain themselves (without anything, being with themselves), to wait, to maintain attention, to be frustrated, and to choose. Aspects that a mobile or tablet does not provide you.

But of course, we are in society, our babies grow up, they go to school and before arriving at the institute their friends already have mobiles. They soon start asking for a smartphone of their own.

At what age is it recommended that a child have a mobile?

The age at which minors have their first smartphone has plummeted in the last decade.

Personally I have seen 2-year-olds quietly unlock their parents’ mobile. 3-year-old children unlock it and open a video or game player application completely autonomously. And to some 10-year-olds who are already asking for the latest iPhone on the market. The situation is discouraging.

Harper Harrison

Harper Harrison is a reporter for The Hear UP. Harper got an internship at the NPR and worked as a reporter and producer. harper has also worked as a reporter for the Medium. Harper covers health and science for The Hear UP.