Is a Connected Child Unhealthy?

There is no doubt that technology is getting better every day, and we crave the newest, latest, and greatest. However, is this desire for always better and more technology really all that good? While technology is now an intricate and vital part of our lives in today’s day and age, it may have negative effects on children and youth.

We are more connected than ever before; and it is easy to see the upsides to this. Phones are smaller, lighter, and smarter. Not only that, but everyone has one. This makes it incredibly easy to get a hold of someone. Every day more and more cell towers are being constructed; making coverage better and the serves faster.

Social media is also growing daily. Millions of people are able to meet, connect, and interact, now, on a global scale. This benefits both individuals and businesses alike and in a variety of ways.

One of the biggest changes we see in the past ten years is the introduction of technology in the classroom. Even if we look back to five years, the amount of technology being used in schools has increased. Districts are spending thousands of dollars on new laptops, computers, TVs, and some even give out iPads to students. Every student of the incoming freshman class of 2019 are the first recipients of university issued iPads at the University of Kentucky. So if schools are spending so much money and resources to implement technology into the learning process, it must be good, right?

Not necessarily. Research conducted by Florida Tech suggests that even just the presence of a computer or similar device may be enough to cause for distraction. Even when computers are intended for education purposes they still offer a means to distract. A Duke University professor also found that most of the time, children used computers for entertainment purposes rather than that of education unless being directly supervised by an adult.

In addition to tech in the classroom, we are also seeing a rise in personal and at home screen time in children. The Kaiser Foundation found that younger children spend nearly 7 ½ hours per day using technology for entertainment. 75 percent of those children were found to have television sets in their bedrooms.

Research from Florida Tech also found links to this much technology use and developmental problems in children. They found that it can hurt attention spans, increase aggression, lessens physical activity, harms performance in school, limits interpersonal interactions, effects emotional development, and was found to reduce self soothing and self regulation in infants to small children.

Growing up in a time of rapid technological growth, I have been a part of these numbers to some degree. I am not against the growth of technology in any way; I just don’t want it to get out of hand in younger demographics. Not only is there evidence to support this, but I think it is vital for children to spend more time outside, or using imagination, or with their families than we are seeing today.

In the process of forming opinions, it is important to be educated on the subject. Additional research to help you become more familiar with the subject can be found here from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Institute of Health.