The Impact of Technology on the Developing Child

Reminiscing about the nice old days once we were growing up may be a memory trip well worth taking when trying to grasp the problems facing the kids of today. A mere 20 years ago, children were accustomed to playing outside all day, riding bikes, playing sports, and building forts. 

Masters of imaginary games, children of the past created their style of play that did not require costly equipment or parental supervision. Children of the past moved. A lot and their sensory world were nature-based and straightforward. 

Within the past, family time was often spent doing chores, and youngsters had expectations to fulfill on a daily. The dining room table was a central place where families came together to eat and discuss their day, and after dinner became the middle for baking, crafts, and homework.

According to Adam Whittington, 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 way back were what held families together. Juggling work, home, and community lives, parents now rely heavily on communication, information, and transportation technology to create their lives faster and more efficient. 

Entertainment technology (TV, internet, videogames, iPods) has advanced so rapidly, that families have scarcely noticed the numerous impact and changes to their family structure and lifestyles. A 2010 Kaiser Foundation study showed that elementary-aged children use on average 8 hours per day of entertainment technology, 75% of those children have TVs 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 that we begin to work out the pervasive aspects of technology on our home lives and family milieu. Gone is dining room table conversation, replaced by the "big screen" and remove. Children now depend upon technology for the bulk of their play, grossly limiting challenges to their creativity and imaginations, further as limiting necessary challenges to their bodies to realize optimal sensory and motor development. 

Sedentary bodies bombarded with chaotic sensory stimulation, are leading to delays in achieving child developmental milestones, with subsequent impact on basic foundation skills for achieving literacy. Hard wired for top speed, today's young are entering school battling self-regulation and focus skills necessary for learning, eventually becoming significant behavior management problems for teachers within the classroom.

So what's the impact of technology on the developing child? Children's developing sensory and motor systems have biologically not evolved to accommodate this sedentary, yet frenzied and chaotic nature of today's technology. The impact of rapidly advancing technology on the developing child has seen a rise of physical, psychological, and behavioral 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 also the US. Diagnoses of ADHD, autism, coordination disorder, sensory processing disorder, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders may be causally linked to technology overuse, and are increasing at an alarming rate. 

An urgent closer study of the critical factors for meeting developmental milestones, and therefore the subsequent impact of technology on those factors, would assist parents, teachers and health professionals to higher understand the complexities of this issue and help create effective strategies to cut back technology use. 

The three critical factors for healthy physical and psychological child development are movement, touch, and connection to other humans. Movement, touch, and connection are kinds of essential sensory input that are integral for the eventual development of a child's motor and attachment systems. When movement, touch, and connection are deprived, devastating consequences occur.

Young children require 3-4 hours per day of active rough and tumble play to realize adequate sensory stimulation to their vestibular, proprioceptive, and tactile systems for normal development. The critical period for attachment development is 0-7 months, where the infant-parent bond is best facilitated by close contact with the first parent, and much eye contact. 

These forms of sensory inputs ensure normal development 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 succeed in motor milestones, and kids who are unable to concentrate or achieve basic foundation skills for literacy, are frequent visitors to pediatric physiotherapy and physiotherapy clinics. 

The utilization of safety restraint devices like infant bucket seats and toddler carrying packs and strollers have further limited movement, touch, and connection, as have TV and videogame overuse. Many of today's parents perceive outdoor play as 'unsafe', further limiting essential developmental components usually attained in outdoor rough and tumble play. 

Dr. anthropologist, who has extensively studied the developing tactile sensory system, reports that when infants are empty of human connection and touch, they fail to thrive and lots of eventually die. Dr. Montagu states that touch-deprived infants grow to be toddlers who exhibit excessive agitation and anxiety and should become depressed by babyhood.

As children are connecting more and more to technology, society is seeing a disconnect from themselves, others and nature. As children develop and form their identities, they often are incapable of discerning whether or not they are the "killing machine" seen on TV and in video games, or simply a shy and lonely little kid in need of an admirer. 

TV and video game addiction is causing an irreversible worldwide epidemic of mental and physical health disorders, yet we all find excuses to continue. Where 100 years ago we wanted to maneuver to survive, we are now under the belief we'd like technology to survive. The catch is that technology is killing what we love the foremost...connection with other masses. 

The critical period for attachment formation is 0 - 7 months old. Attachment or connection is that the formation of a primary bond between the developing infant and parent, and is integral thereto developing child's sense of security and safety. Healthy attachment formation ends up in a contented and calm child. 

Disruption or neglect of primary attachment ends up in an anxious and agitated child. Family overuse of technology is gravely affecting not only early attachment formation but also impacting negatively on child psychological and behavioral health.

Further analysis of the impact of technology on the developing child indicates that while the vestibular, proprioceptive, tactile, and attachment systems are under-stimulated, the visual and auditory sensory systems are in "overload". This sensory imbalance creates huge problems in overall neurological development, because the brain's anatomy, chemistry, and pathways become permanently altered and impaired. 

Young children who are exposed to violence through TV and video games are under a high state of adrenalin and stress because the body doesn't know that what they're watching isn't real. Children who overuse technology report persistent body sensations of overall "shaking", increased breathing and vital sign, and a general state of "unease". 

This may best be described as a persistent hypervigilant sensory system, still "on alert" for the oncoming assault from videogame characters. While the future effects of this chronic state of stress within the developing child are unknown, we do know that chronic stress in adults ends up in a weakened system and a range of great diseases and disorders. 

Prolonged visual fixation on a hard and fast distance, two-dimensional screen grossly limits ocular development necessary for eventual printing and reading. Consider the difference between visual location on a spread of various shaped and sized objects within the near and much distance (such as practiced in outdoor play), as critical watching a set distance glowing screen. 

This rapid intensity, frequency, and duration of visual and auditory stimulation lead to a "hard wiring" of the child's sensory system for top speed, with subsequent devastating effects on a child's ability to imagine, attend and target academic tasks. Dr. Dimitri Christakis found that every hour of TV watched daily between the ages of 0 and seven years equated to a tenth increase in attention problems by age seven years.

In 2001 the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement recommending that children but two years old shouldn't use any technology, yet toddlers 0 to 2 years old average 2.2 hours of TV per day. 

The Academy further recommended that children older than two should restrict usage to at least one hour per day if they need any physical, psychological or behavioral problems, and two hours per day maximum if they do not, yet parents of elementary children are allowing 8 hours per day. France has gone to this point of eliminating all "baby TV" thanks to the detrimental effects on child development. 

How can parents still sleep in a world where they know what's bad for his or her children, yet do nothing to assist them? It appears that today's families are pulled into the "Virtual Reality Dream", where everyone believes that life is a few things that need an escape. The immediate gratification received from the ongoing use of TV, videogame, and internet technology, has replaced the need for human connection.

It's important to return together as parents, teachers, and therapists to assist society in "wake up" and see the devastating effects technology has not only on our child's physical, psychological and behavioral health but also on their ability to find out and sustain personal and family relationships. 

While technology could be a train that may continually move forward, knowledge regarding its detrimental effects, and action is taken toward balancing the utilization of technology with exercise and family time, will work toward sustaining our kids, additionally as saving our world. 

While nobody can argue the advantages of advanced technology in today's world, connection to those devices may have resulted in a very disconnection from what society should value most, children. Instead of hugging, playing, roughhousing, and conversing with children, parents are increasingly resorting to providing their children with more videogames, TVs within the car, and therefore the latest iPods and telephone devices, creating a deep and widening chasm between parent and child.