As with my last blog post, today we are going to take a look at the future of today's children and how they're being affected by the social networking media and technology.
I have noticed that children have more access to technology at a much younger age than in recent years. It almost seems as if as the years go by, children who are getting cell phones are younger and younger.
Aside from most of these children with all this technology at a young age being spoiled brats, it is having a terrible consequence on them. I am sure well-intentioned parents want their children to be happy and safe with a cell phone, but in essence, it is hurting them.
It is hurting them because while spending most of their time in the digital world, their brains are working less and less to create images, process information, and attempt to understand what is going on around them. Being so in tune with the digital world to me seems almost synonomous to mindlessness. There is less human interaction, less thinking, and more time spending inside. These children are much more prone to being depressed, anti-social, and have trouble learning and retaining information.
This article does an amazing job detailing exactly how this happens and what other problems may occur.
With the introduction of social networking websites such as Facebook, children and teens are "spending time" with their friends online and less outside. There is close to no human interaction and is only done over the phone or computer. But not only that, some or even most of their "friends" they have never met before, which can be an extremely dangerous thing, especially when Billy Bob 13/M/WY can just as easily be a 47 year old sex offender.
Even I notice myself on electronics very frequently. I also notice that my thinking process slows down immensely and my ability to process things is nearly absent after being around electronics for 8-10 + hours at a time.
Although I believe that technology and social networking can be an amazingly benificial thing, I believe we need to be careful of how young children can have access these things when their brains are still developing.
I love this post and this topic when we discussed it in class. It's so applicable to me being an aunt to my older sisters seven month old son. At such a young age she already let's him hold and play on her cell phone when he gets fussy. And when she brings him over to my place I always thought it would be alright to put on "educational pograms" like Little Einsteins. When she let's me babysit him and he starts to get fussy I hand him my cell phone and for the most part he just puts it in his mouth but sometimes his little fingers hit the home button and the bright lights practically blind him. I even see this in my baby sister who is turnin 16. She is so enveloped within her twitter, facebook, and instagram she hardly has time to spend with her darling older sister, me! Whenever I take her somewhere she's constantly checking her phone and taking selfies. She spends so much time on the internet and watching t.v. her grades are falling while her social life is thriving. I tried to stress the importance of limiting her time and focusing on things that could actually benefit her mind but she is aleady so far wrapped up that she doesn't want to do anything but focus on that.
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