The Impact of Technology on the Developing Child
Reminiscing about the good old days when we were growing up is a memory trip well worth taking, when trying to understand the issues facing the children of today. A mere 20 years ago, children used to play outside all day, riding bikes, playing sports and construction forts. Masters of imaginary games, children of the past created their own form of play that didn't need costly equipment or parental supervision. Children of the past moved... A lot, and their sensory world was nature based and simple. In the past, family time was often spent doing chores, and children had expectations to meet on a daily basis. The dining room table was a central place where families came together to eat and talk about their day, and after dinner became the town for baking, crafts and homework.
The Impact of Technology on the Developing Child
Today's families are different. Technology's impact on the 21st century family is fracturing its very foundation, and causing a disintegration of core values that long ago were what held families together. Juggling work, home and society lives, parents now rely heavily on communication, information and communication technology to make their lives faster and more efficient. Entertainment technology (Tv, internet, videogames, iPods) has advanced so rapidly, that families have scarcely noticed the necessary impact and changes to their family buildings and lifestyles. A 2010 Kaiser Foundation study showed that elementary aged children use on mean 8 hours per day of entertainment technology, 75% of these children have Tv's in their bedrooms, and 50% of North American homes have the Tv on all day. Add emails, cell phones, internet surfing, and chat lines, and we begin to see the pervasive aspects of technology on our home lives and family milieu. Gone is dining room table conversation, replaced by the "big screen" and take out. Children now rely on technology for the majority of their play, grossly limiting challenges to their creativity and imaginations, as well as limiting necessary challenges to their bodies to perform optimal sensory and motor development. Sedentary bodies bombarded with chaotic sensory stimulation, are resulting in delays in attaining child developmental milestones, with subsequent impact on basic foundation skills for achieving literacy. Hard wired for high speed, today's young are entering school struggling with self regulation and attentiveness skills necessary for learning, eventually becoming necessary behavior supervision problems for teachers in the classroom.
So what is the impact of technology on the developing child? Children's developing sensory and motor systems have biologically not evolved to adapt this sedentary, yet frenzied and chaotic nature of today's technology. The impact of rapidly advancing technology on the developing child has seen an increase of physical, psychological and behavior disorders that the health and education systems are just starting to detect, much less understand. Child obesity and diabetes are now national epidemics in both Canada and the Us. Diagnoses of Adhd, autism, coordination disorder, sensory processing disorder, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders can be causally associated to technology overuse, and are expanding at an alarming rate. An urgent closer look at the necessary factors for meeting developmental milestones, and the subsequent impact of technology on those factors, would aid parents, teachers and health professionals to better understand the complexities of this issue, and help generate efficient strategies to cut technology use. The three necessary factors for salutary physical and psychological child improvement are movement, touch and connection to other humans. Movement, touch and connection are forms of necessary sensory input that are integral for the eventual improvement of a child's motor and attachment systems. When movement, touch and connection are deprived, devastating consequences occur.
Young children need 3-4 hours per day of active rough and tumble play to perform sufficient sensory stimulation to their vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile systems for normal development. The necessary duration for attachment improvement is 0-7 months, where the infant-parent bond is best facilitated by close experience with the traditional parent, and lots of eye contact. These types of sensory inputs ensure normal improvement of posture, bilateral coordination, optimal arousal states and self regulation necessary for achieving foundation skills for eventual school entry. Infants with low tone, toddlers failing to reach motor milestones, and children who are unable to pay attentiveness or perform basic foundation skills for literacy, are frequent visitors to pediatric physiotherapy and occupational therapy clinics. The use of protection restraint devices such as child bucket seats and toddler carrying packs and strollers, have additional minute movement, touch and connection, as have Tv and videogame overuse. Many of today's parents realize outdoor play is 'unsafe', additional limiting necessary developmental components usually attained in outdoor rough and tumble play. Dr. Ashley Montagu, who has extensively studied the developing tactile sensory system, reports that when infants are deprived of human connection and touch, they fail to thrive and many eventually die. Dr. Montagu states that touch deprived infants institute into toddlers who exhibit immoderate agitation and anxiety, and may become depressed by early childhood.
As children are connecting more and more to technology, society is looking a disconnect from themselves, others and nature. As minute children institute and form their identities, they often are incapable of discerning either they are the "killing machine" seen on Tv and in videogames, or just a shy and lonely minute kid in need of a friend. Tv and videogame addiction is causing an irreversible worldwide epidemic of reasoning and physical health disorders, yet we all find excuses to continue. Where 100 years ago we needed to move to survive, we are now under the assumption we need technology to survive. The catch is that technology is killing what we love the most...connection with other human beings. The necessary duration for attachment formation is 0 - 7 months of age. Attachment or connection is the formation of a traditional bond between the developing child and parent, and is integral to that developing child's sense of protection and safety. salutary attachment formation results in a happy and calm child. Disruption or neglect of traditional attachment results in an anxious and agitated child. family over use of technology is gravely affecting not only early attachment formation, but also impacting negatively on child psychological and behavioral health.
Further pathology of the impact of technology on the developing child indicates that while the vestibular, proprioceptive, tactile and attachment systems are under stimulated, the optic and auditory sensory systems are in "overload". This sensory imbalance creates huge problems in full, neurological development, as the brain's anatomy, chemistry and pathways become constantly altered and impaired. Young children who are exposed to violence straight through Tv and videogames are in a high state of adrenalin and stress, as the body does not know that what they are watching is not real. Children who overuse technology narrative persistent body sensations of full, "shaking", increased breathing and heart rate, and a normal state of "unease". This can best be described as a persistent hypervigalent sensory system, still "on alert" for the oncoming charge from videogame characters. While the long term effects of this continuing state of stress in the developing child are unknown, we do know that continuing stress in adults results in a weakened immune principles and a range of serious diseases and disorders. Prolonged optic fixation on a fixed distance, two dimensional screen grossly limits ocular improvement necessary for eventual printing and reading. Consider the dissimilarity between optic location on a range of separate shaped and sized objects in the near and far distance (such as practiced in outdoor play), as opposed to looking at a fixed distance glowing screen. This rapid intensity, frequency and duration of optic and auditory stimulation results in a "hard wiring" of the child's sensory principles for high speed, with subsequent devastating effects on a child's capability to imagine, attend and focus on schoraly tasks. Dr. Dimitri Christakis found that each hour of Tv watched daily between the ages of 0 and 7 years equated to a 10% increase in attentiveness problems by age seven years.
In 2001 the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a course statement recommending that children less than two years of age should not use any technology, yet toddlers 0 to 2 years of age mean 2.2 hours of Tv per day. The Academy additional recommended that children older than two should restrict usage to one hour per day if they have any physical, psychological or behavioral problems, and two hours per day maximum if they don't, yet parents of elementary children are allowing 8 hours per day. France has gone so far as to eliminate all "baby Tv" due to the detrimental effects on child development. How can parents continue to live in a world where they know what is bad for their children, yet do nothing to help them? It appears that today's families have been pulled into the "Virtual Reality Dream", where every person believes that life is something that requires an escape. The immediate gratification received from ongoing use of Tv, videogame and internet technology, has replaced the desire for human connection.
It's prominent to come together as parents, teachers and therapists to help society "wake up" and see the devastating effects technology is having not only on our child's physical, psychological and behavioral health, but also on their capability to learn and sustain personal and family relationships. While technology is a train that will continually move forward, knowledge about its detrimental effects, and action taken toward balancing the use of technology with rehearsal and family time, will work toward sustaining our children, as well as saving our world. While no one can argue the benefits of advanced technology in today's world, connection to these devices may have resulted in a disconnection from what society should value most, children. Rather than hugging, playing, rough housing, and conversing with children, parents are increasingly resorting to providing their children with more videogames, Tv's in the car, and the latest iPods and cell phone devices, creating a deep and widening chasm between parent and child.
Cris Rowan, pediatric occupational therapist and child improvement devotee has advanced a idea termed 'Balanced Technology Management' (Btm) where parents conduct balance between activities children need for increase and success with technology use. Rowan's company Zone'in Programs Inc. Http://www.zonein.ca has advanced a 'System of Solutions' for addressing technology overuse in children straight through the creation of Zone'in Products, Workshops, Training and Consultation services.
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