I
was at Chiang Mai airport last April with my family, waiting to board a flight.
I observed a child no older than one year of age sitting on the ground tapping
anxiously on digital tablet. What shocked me wasn’t the fact that he had an
expensive gadget in his hands and was manipulating it as if it were a robust
toy truck. I simply wondered if I were to hand him over an actual book with
pages, would he flip the pages or would he start to tap the book as well. The
action of tapping, swiping or pressing your fingers over such gadgets has
become an innate pattern of actions in most children who are exposed to the
digital era of iEverything.
I
shared this anecdote with a close friend and to my surprise she sent me a video
from Youtube.com where a child was actually given a magazine and in the video
one could observe how this child kept tapping and pressing the pages of the the
magazine, with the expectation that a 3D image may appear or a sound would be
heard. No doubt, it was very amusing to watch but one cannot escape from the
harsh reality of digital invasion that is entering the lives of children so young.
I am not against technology in fact I support the use of tablets and other such
devices in schools, which are preparing our children for what awaits them.
However, there are some serious repercussions of the premature introduction of
such devices and this is the issue that I would like to address.
Are
you one of those parents who struggles with trying to keep your iPad away from
your children and often cannot even use it without the constant interruption of
your child wanting to play games or watch videos on it? How do you remedy this
problem? I know of homes where every child has their own iPad and we are
talking about average two to three children per family. Shocking isn’t it? I’m
not sure if my parents would have ever bought me a gift worth $500, only to
later buy my brother one as well. These are extreme cases of course, but they
do exist.
One
of the most important areas affected by the use of digital gadgets and machines
is the attention span of a human
being. Let’s take the example of us looking for information online, the
alluring world of Google. Google seems to have the answer to everything and
sometimes a little too much I feel. When you make a search there are pages and
pages of information that appear before us and it is true that we have mastered
the art of scanning information rapidly and efficiently, but at the same time
what we are receiving is information overload. The latter has a direct impact
on our attention span and more importantly on our memory.
For
a growing child it is extremely important to train the brain to focus at an
early age, this enables them to memorise, be creative, solve problems and make
sound decisions throughout their lives. However, the environment we grow up in
has a strong influence on our attention span.
In
earlier generations, children grew up reading a lot and this continues to be
the encouraged activity proposed by schools even today, as it offers few distractions
whilst you are doing it, and your channel of thoughts is entirely focused on
the book. As technology has entered our lives, first with television and now
with the Internet, our brains have slowly started to get wired differently.
Television has offered visual stimuli that in turn has fragmented our attention
and left little room for our imagination to work. The Internet offers only a
world of distraction, ranging from pop ups, sponsored ads, page uploads, the
possibility to open as many tabs as you like, interactive communication and
last but not least the actual information one had decided to search in the
first place!
Therefore,
technology conditions our brains to pay attention to information very
differently than reading. If we see toddlers, who cannot even read yet
manipulating an iPad for distraction, how is a book going to offer them any
attraction after a few years?
In
the same way, if a student reads uninterrupted text, rather than one filled
with hyperlinks and ads, he has better chances of quicker completion and
understanding of what he was instructed to learn in the first place.
Nicholas
Carr a technology writer uses a metaphor that describes the way in which
technology conditions our brain differently than traditional reading. He offered
the difference between scuba diving and jet skiing. Book reading is like scuba diving in which the diver is submerged in a
quiet, visually restricted, slow-paced setting with few distractions and, as a
result, is required to focus narrowly and think deeply on the limited
information that is available to them. In contrast, using the Internet is like
jet skiing, in which the jet skier is skimming along the surface of the water
at high speed, exposed to a broad vista, surrounded by many distractions, and only
able to focus fleetingly on any one thing.
My
son often tells me that if I don’t understand something, I should ask Google.
It’s interesting how right and wrong he is at the same time. What worries me is
the fact that our kids will be experts at knowing
where to retrieve the answers from, but not as smart to retain all the information gained. Let’s go one step further and
address the tangibility of this information gained. If they do retain it and we
are being positive about this, given that they will have to already filter so
much in this process of accessing it in the first place, they will more than
likely not be concerned about contemplating, thinking critically and being
imaginative. These finer skills of the brain are what technology is suppressing,
thanks to the information overload it provides us with.
Coming
back to the toddler with the iPad, he can press, swipe and tap on it. The
material an iPad is made of has no textures to feel or smell. Can you rip an
iPad apart? I should hope not!
With
a traditional book you can touch each page, smell the ink and the paper if it’s
new or the musky smell after a book has become old, bend it and see the creases
forming and even write in it. Furthermore, with a book you can even tear the
pages, not that you would encourage this on a child. However, each page he
tears will leave an impression on him and remind him of why he had that book in
the first place. It offers a “higher-order” experience to the child,
appropriate to the age of the child. An iPad will offer you an equally if not a
more gratifying experience but only after you’ve experienced a traditional book
first. Do you see my point here?
When
your child learns how to write and you see them write their name for the first
time, I’m pretty sure this has melted you down. Now imagine if your child had
learnt to write using a touch-screen tablet to practice letter formations with
his finger and shown you his name on a screen for the first time? Well it’s
pretty cool but it’s not as cool as old school is it?
My
argument is the same again, it is important traditional methods such as
handwriting lessons be instilled vigorously and these can be complemented with
keyboarding classes. What should not be done is replace the traditional for the
technological entirely. There is not enough history in technology to determine
the effects it will or has already had on our children, so why are we playing
with their brains and “wiring” them to a fashion we don’t know the tomorrow of?
I
will personally treasure my little “I love you” post it notes from my son and
daughter, because in a short blink I will see them holding a smartphone and
sending the same message to their girl / boy friend! Call me old fashioned but
I still write on paper everyday and there is a sense of self-expression that
cannot be recreated using the best fonts or styles on any computer. The geeks
will probably tell me there is some sort of App that allows you to match your
own handwriting and create a personalized font. That would be incredibly
incredible no doubt. In order to reach that stage of incredibleness you need to
actually know what your font is and
this is only done using pencil and paper.
