Technology and Young Children

Rough Draft Technology since the last generation has changed massive amounts. Today’s adults grew up where being outdoors would beat any television or even early video games. This is because video games would not be portable until the 1990’s and there was no “real” smartphone until 2007. Even the children from the 1990’s wouldn’t play as much video games as children today because playing a sport was so much more inviting. Yet, the children of the present grew up playing video games. While in the past, video games were not made to appeal to children under 6, today there are hundreds of iPhone apps just to entertain toddlers. These apps can severely limit the child in its future. Almost every child between the ages of eight and twelve own an cell phones.

The average home in America has as many televisions as they do people. Only 20% of American homes do not have a computer. Technology is quickly becoming a new way of life. The amount of time people are on their devices is growing rapidly, Most people can’t live without some type technology device. People have not realized yet how they or their families are being affected by this constant use of technology. While there are tons of amazing benefits that technology brings, there are also a lot of drawbacks that should be considered when introducing children into our world of technology. Parents need to be extremely careful with limiting their children's exposure to cell phones, television, and computers. As a result of technology increasing, children are experiencing health problems, school issues, and social problems. Kids need to be more active in this day and time.

Playing sports or playing with friends when I was child helped in many ways. My parents never let me and my siblings stay inside and play video games. Communicating with friends taught us how to interact. Playing outdoors you builds relationship with your friends and neighbors, they were the only people me and my siblings could play with. Playing with each other outside or even watching television didn’t take 100% of our attention as children, yet playing games takes full attention. This is because in video games children need to time finger movements correctly based on visuals and sounds. So a child would have to completely focus on the screen and the sound at the same time, along with timing the fingers correctly.

The content of the games being played could definitely have a factor in how a child performs in school, and how aggressive they are towards peers and teachers. Obviously if a child is playing hours upon hours of violent video games, this can lead to them acting out violence and having no consequences for it. If a child took the time that they played video games a week and used that time to be engaged in reading, homework or even a creative activity we’d have less issues with our children’s school performances. Parents should really be monitoring how long their child is playing video games, but this doesn’t always happen, because most parents are too busy doing their own thing and being on social media so they use this to keep the child occupied, so they want bother them.

As we can all recognize, technology today is vastly growing, and is out of our hands. What we do have control over is how much of that technology we expose our children to. It is up to the us to monitor and react to the technology being used by our children. This may not seem very serious to some parents, but more and more we are seeing children, young adults walking into their classrooms and shooting theirs peers and teachers. All because maybe they played one too many violent video games growing up, or have felt like an out-cast due to a social-anxiety disorder which can be caused by dissocializing yourself with video games, computers and even television. Even though not one research conducted could really prove either positive or negative long term outcomes of technology, it is apparent that technology does have a great effect on our children's lives and developmental behaviors. Technology has many effects on our children today, but how could it when our society is transforming into a technology world. Children these days will never know what life is like without technology so it is important to make sure we use the technology we have for what its worth. Although there are many negatives to the use of technology, we need to embrace the ever changing world, and just learn as parents is to always pay attention to what our child is doing.