Yes, you read it right! Digital devices are a substitute for the pacifiers we once stuck into the mouths of children when they were young ( I did not use a pacifier for my kids). A very disturbing trend has become visible these days and it is the decreasing age at which parents expose their children to digital devices, namely, smartphones, tablets and laptops. By doing so, parents are disrupting their children’s natural mental growth. Earlier exposure to digital content is killing the creative ability of children. It is also robbing our children of essential social interactions with others, something that is very important for their emotional development.
Children today are lacking in essential emotional skills which in turn is developing a very poor emotional quotient in them. But then what is worrying is that the natural stages of the mental development of children through exposure to schemas, cognitive frameworks or concepts that in turn help our children organise and interpret information about the world around us have been disrupted by their early exposure to digital devices.
It is the selfishness of adults, or perhaps their insensitivity towards their duties as parents that is to blame for the disrupted, stunted or ineffectual cognitive, and emotional development of their children. One cannot condone the use of digital devices as pacifiers to keep children occupied while one browses through a catalogue of dresses to purchase online, or for that effect to complete an online assignment. Gen Y is being brought up in the most insensitive and appalling manner. They are not being exposed to nature, they are not allowed to socialise with kids of their own age, nor are they taken outdoors to play in parks, climb trees, jump over obstacles or even breathe in the fresh air. All they do is stay indoors, play online games, stare at screens and gorge on a virtual cornucopia of virtual experiences that drive a vicarious thrill that drives a cortisol rush, or an adrenaline trip making them digital addicts.
An interesting development has taken place recently in North London in which parents at a Jewish primary school have been calling for smartphone free childhoods. Parents are worried how when they wake up ten years from now they would wonder how they could have allowed their children to have become associated with smartphones or the social media. There is a movement in the west where parents want to ban their children from owning smartphones until they attain an age of 14. Parents, teachers and counsellors all of the word are reporting alarming levels of body dysmorphia, cases of self-harm, depression leading to suicidal tendencies. All this has been reported by Elisa Bray in her article, ‘Smartphone ban: Meet the north London parents shunning devices for their children’ published on March 20, 2024 in The JC-Life and Culture publication.
Likewise, there is a Smartphone Free Childhood movement in Bristol run by GP Susanna Davies, whose special expertise is mental health in adolescents. The call for a smartphone free childhood is growing in size and soon it will be acknowledged that early use of smartphone by children is worse as bad as smoking twenty or more cigarettes in a day! And this is an important movement that is meant to protect the mental health of children before it is too late. We know that the use of smartphones by children causes them to isolate themselves from their family and friends. It leads to underdeveloped social skills, impacting their emotional intelligence which will eventually affect them when they become adults.
The Jewish community talks about handing over a standard “kosher” phone to children which is sufficient for communication purposes to children. Kosher phones don’t have access to the internet thus they are used only for vocal communication. However, I would go a step further and suggest that phones of any kind should not be given to children below 14-15 years of age!
The need of the hour is to focus more on developing strong values in children. We need, more than anything to develop a feeling of respect for nature and the environment and the need for sustainable development. These values can be developed through authentic experiential learning situations. Experiential learning curriculum can help keep children away from smartphones and internet enabled devices. We need teach children about understanding and addressing climate change, and its impact on the ecology. Expeditionary leaning can help the child learn more about the actual world around them and not the synthetic world provided by the internet. We need to teach our children about the need for good health and well-being. We need to teach them about being responsible consumers and producers, being conscious about animal welfare, and human impacts of consumer products. Children need to be taught to be agents of change, responsible citizens, that will happen only if we nurture them in the true spirit of real adventure, the adventure of exploring the world through all the five senses and not just through smartphones, tablets and laptops.
The use of smartphones and laptops and tablets, initially meant as aids to education have now become the means of learning and this is where things have gone wrong with how we teach children below the age of 14 years. The trade off of using smartphones, laptops and tablets has resulted in reduced creativity, reduced problem solving skills, attention deficit, and a general lack of energy. For teachers, undoubtedly, smartphones, tablets and laptops have made life easier, providing them with shortcuts and ease of work. This unfortunately has added to the amount of exposure to digital content and even social media thrown in that children have today.
