Representational image | Photo: iStockScreen time and electronic gadgets have become a necessary evil. Cyber/gadget de-addication centers are gaining popularity in India. China has already identified internet and gaming addiction as one of the main health hazards in their society. In China, there are huge hospital wards with 500 beds for people suffering from cyber-related problems. Thailand, Taiwan, and Korea have strict rules to monitor the use of gaming devices and online exposure of their citizens.
We in India are unaware of the actual threat behind the overuse of electronic gadgets and the internet. In Kerala, in spite of the fact that we stand first in terms of literacy and education, we do not seem to be so uncomfortable with the fact that our children are getting addicted to internet and electronic gadgets.
What happens to your child's brain?
Aric Sigman, associate fellow of the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Society of Medicine, says that by allowing kids to enjoy electronic gadgets for a long time, we are unknowingly hindering their brain development. We depend on and trust technology a lot. We expect and hope that technology can enhance the development of the cognitive skills of our children. But we are terribly wrong. These gadgets and screens are directly tampering with our kid’s vocabulary, communication skills, development of emotional bonds, understanding other’s emotions and the ability to concentrate.
Evolutionally non-digital
We are evolutionally wired to learn a lot of things from other's behavior. We take a lot of inputs from the verbal and non-verbal cues of others. The inputs and developments during the first three years of the human brain is so crucial as it becomes a permanent foundation for all the further development of the brain.
So, when your child keeps staring at the screen for a lot of time, he is missing the chance to learn from others. The brain’s frontal lobe, which is the area responsible for decoding and comprehending social interactions, is getting deprived of the cues to learn. The child misses things like learning to empathize; read hundreds of unspoken signs; decipher the tones of voices; and develop skills to adjust and maintain real-world relationships. When you try to substitute that inputs with screen time, it could prove detrimental.
Seeing your kid's face as you breast feed
Your kid needs a lot of your attention. Your little ones need your touch, tickle, pat, and hug. Babies fathom a lot from their mothers’ gesture, touch, physical bond, and occasional teasing. When you resort to endless scrolling on Facebook during feeding your baby, you are causing a great damage to the emotional nourishment of your child. More than that, it is almost a known fact that kids who hear stories from screens become lazy and emotionally cold. The vocabulary and articulation skills of screen-reared children are far inferior to that of normally raised children.
Instant gratification
Representational imageBehavioral psychology has proven that an entire generation called the millennial generation (born after 1984) is suffering a lot due to instant gratification. When your child learns to click and swipe, when the superfast microprocessors of the gadgets give a very fast response, your child fails to learn patience, empathy and sympathy. In the child's brain, the idea that all stimuli should elicit a quick response is getting reinforced.
Hating a delayed world
'Get it with just a click of the mouse' is true in the digital world, but nowhere else. When every finger swipe brings a response of colors and shapes and sounds, a child’s brain responds gleefully with the neurotransmitter dopamine, the key component in our reward system that is associated with feelings of pleasure. When a child gets easily used to an immediate stimuli response system, the dopamine level in the brain makes him so addictive to such actions. Thereafter, he would be so reluctant and defiant to anything other than this immediate gratification and sudden response. Thereby, he may hate the real-world connections.
Let your child get bored
A lot of working parents feel so safe and comfortable when their children spent a lot of time in front of screens. Parents are happy that their child is engaged with something and is safe. Parents feel that their children should not get bored. Both these ideas have serious flaws. Great correlations have been found in the studies done on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and screen time.
We human beings are evolved to acquire a lot of skills during our most bored times. In a large study carried out in Canada in the 1980s during the gradual extension of television across the country, it was found that the children in the 'no-TV' towns scored significantly higher than the others on divergent thinking skills, a measure of imagination and creativity. Later, when televisions emerged in these towns, their imagination level and creativity dropped to the same level of the children of the TV watching towns.
Remember - your child learns a lot during the bored times. He learns the cues of the real world, he learns to think, he would be forced to ask questions and would develop the urge to explore different things and thereby develop creativity, patience and diligence.
(The author is a cyber psychology consultant and behavioral psychologist)
