The Children of Tomorrow
The effects of technology on the next generation
By Thomas Petrou
By Thomas Petrou
A few weeks ago while I was eating a salad at Tender Greens, I made an observation when I saw a couple sitting down at a table eating lunch: neither of them put down their phones. That’s a challenge, even when they would take a drink of water they would hold up the glass along with their phone close to their eyes. After I finished my meal, I drove to my grandparents’ to visit with my little sister while she was there. When I arrived at my grandparents’ I walked into the house to see my eight-year-old little sister playing on her iPad with the television on in the background.
Now that is where I draw the line, adults have the option to watch how ever much television or phone access because when they can buy it themselves then that is their choice, but when children are playing on smartphones and tablets and watching television at the same time; their young minds are still developing. I started to do some research on the topic of children and the effects of too much television and I came across many interesting yet sad facts. The first 2 years of life are considered a critical time for brain development. Television and other electronic media can affect healthy physical and social development. Can we really control children's access to technology? Do children have too easy of access to technology? Is it right for us to limit our children's use of technology? What is the purpose of non educational television? There is a problem with the generation of children who are growing up with such common use of technology because many parents have smart phones and televisions in the house then children can have easy access to them. Even if parents don’t let children watch any non-educational television at home, when they are out of the house, they can find it another way. The only way to keep children away from technology is to completely isolate them because a lot of people in America have some source of technology. American children spend an average of 6 hours and 32 minutes a day watching television or using other forms of social media or technology. They devote more time to technology than any other activity except sleep. When the average child in America is spending more time using different forms of technology than anything else then that is when we should know there is a problem. Children who have to easy access to television can witness a lot of violence, since 61% of all television programming contains violence. Preschool children who frequently watch violent television programs or play violent video games are 11 times more likely to engage in aggressive and antisocial behavior than children not frequently exposed to violent screenings. In a study of more than 700 children, Columbia University researchers found that adolescents who watch more than an hour a day of television are more prone to aggression and violence once they reach their late teens and early 20s. According to the American Academy of pediatrics, a child who watches three to four hours a day of non-educational television will see about 8,000 small-screen murders by the time he or she completes grade school. What do infants have to gain from non-educational television? Is it healthy for children to see 8,000 murders? To address my second question, two thirds of infants and toddlers watch a screen for an average of two hours a day. Kids under age 6 watch an average of about 2 hours of screen media a day, primarily television, videos, or DVD’s. Children and teens 8 to 18 years old spend nearly 4 hours a day in front of a television screen and almost 2 additional hours on the computer (not including homework) and playing video games.
After doing research and finding out many of the statistics on the effects of too much technology on children in this generation, I decided to start interviewing people. I interviewed my uncle, Andreas Petrou, who has a 2-year-old daughter, my father, John Petrou, who has an 7-year-old daughter, and my aunt, Irene Stafford, who has a 8-year-old son and a 5-year-old son. I had started by interviewing my uncle because he had the youngest child. My uncle grew up in a home that didn’t accept television as a common thing to watch. He and his brother and sister had to go out of the house to see friends and not just call them or Facetime them. During the interview he talked about how often his daughter Peri watches television, he said she watched 3-4 hours a day. “She watches more TV in one day then I watched my whole childhood,” he said. I was shocked, even though I grew up in a generation that had easier access to technology compared to my parents and grandparents. I also grew up in a home that didn’t have cable and in order to interact you had to actually go talk to your friends to hang out instead of just sending a text. After the interview, I decided to stay and watch my little cousin for a while to see how her interaction with technology was. Most of the time that I was there, I had noticed that if the TV was on she wouldn’t really take her eyes off it. When she wasn’t watching TV she would be playing on her iPad. Yes. Her own iPad. I don’t even have an iPad and my 2 year old cousin does, the oddest thing that I had noticed about this was how well she used it. She knew how to type in a password look through youtube videos and play games on the iPad and she doesn’t even have the ability to speak yet. After this interview I decided to go to my dad’s house to see how my little sister reacts to technology. Once I arrived at my father’s house, I interviewed him to find out what type of patterns he observed in how my little sister Lysette interacted with technology. Throughout the interview, I learned that she has better self control with her iPad and the amount of television she watches because when she was younger she wasn’t allowed to watch TV for more than an hour a day. While compared to my little cousin Peri, she has better self control, she still knows how to use an iPad and iPhone better than I would expect. “She knows how to use an iPad better than me,” said my father. My little sister was born in February 2007, four months before the first iPhone got released, which means that except for her first four months of her life which she most likely won’t remember, she has had immediate access to Apple’s technology. Towards the end of the interview, I brought up the fact that my father bought the first iPhone when it first came out. “Do you think that Lysette has been effected in her language development due to the fact that she has had easy access to technology?” I asked. “Yes, by having TV’s in bedrooms, and iPhones on counters, and iPads all over the house, while they can be beneficial and make things easier, they also make things easier to avoid,” he said. My little sister has grown up in a technology-filled house, where she had good discipline when she was little, but as she became more difficult, my father and stepmother handed her an iPad in order to avoid dealing with the problems at hand. By the end of our interview I had heard that my Aunt Irene was coming into town, so I decided to interview her as well. I went to my grandmother’s again where I had first witnessed my little sister’s addiction to technology, to interview my aunt. When I arrived, I saw the same thing that I originally witnessed with my little sister; my little cousins were sitting in front of the television with it on while playing on their iPads. When I asked them to come and play outside they said that they would rather play on the computer. Throughout the interview with my aunt, I learned that her children have a lot of things to do in the day; they have school, piano, karate, and they are both learning Spanish. “They usually don’t have time for technology, but when they do, they get addicted,” she said. Therefore, the access to television and other types of technology is used as a reward. This method has its benefits and its downsides, because when the children are out of school and don’t have to go to their extracurriculars, they get obsessed with their technology and could stay on it all day if they were allowed too. At this rate, everyone in the future generation is going to be like the couple who wouldn’t put down their phones, even while they eat. In 100 years there isn’t going to be anyone who grew up without the option of using technology, everyone is going to always be on there phone. While they eat, while they do everything except sleeping. Can we help to shape the children of tomorrow before it’s too late? |