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Is a child’s development helped or harmed by digitized technologies? Explain.
Abstract
In the 21st century, digital technology becomes a crucial part of children’s life. In the modern world, it will be harder for them to survive without using technology. There is not a single area on the planet where digital technology hasn't transformed life. While digital technology has aided in the development of children, it has also posed certain risks. Technology helps children in learning, demonstrating greater interest, acquiring multitasking skills and moral values, and achieving outstanding academic results. On the other hand, there are certain harms of the technology and it is a hindrance in their mental and physical development, impacting their eyesight, lowering their capability to focus, and increasing the online harassment. All this happened because children are unable to decide the proper amount of time that they need to devote towards digital technology. For the proper utilization of technology, children can take the help of their parents, siblings, and teachers. By following proper measures children can limit the harms that technology done to them.
Is a child’s development helped or harmed by digitized technologies? Explain.
The use of digital technologies in every aspect of human life is rising from the past time. People are taking advantage of digital technology in different ways like digital learning, online shopping, social media, news, and many more. The whole world is impacted by technology and people can observe the usage of these digital technologies in shops, schools, homes, hospitals, companies, industries, and all the other places. Parents are also using these devices and technology for the mental development of their children by downloading games relating to shapes, alphabets, and numbers. The digitized technology made the life of children very easy in learning but it is also a hindrance to their mental and physical development. This has both, positives and negatives, in the development of the children.
Evolution of the digital technology
Digital technologies came into existence in the 19th century with the evolution of the first transistor. After this transistor, the first computer was launched for data storage and communication. The advanced computers and internet were developed between the period of 1969-1989 and it also supports the development of digital technologies. In 1987, Robert Solow helps in the evolution of digital technology with the revolution of personal computers. These digital technologies started to use in the US in the 1990s in various forms and at various places (David, 2010). People applied the new revolution for business and study purposes in the beginning when the whole world trying to learn this. This new technology changed the economies and helped in expansion. Greenspan (1996) said,
“We are living through one of those rare, perhaps once-in-a-century events....The advent of the transistor and the integrated circuit and, as a consequence, the emergence of modern computer, telecommunication and satellite technologies have fundamentally changed the structure of the American economy.”
Role of digital technology
People are using technology in their life daily in various forms. Technology is used at individual, business, and political levels. The role of digital technology in different fields is explained below:
Contactless artifacts: In the past, it is very hard for the businesses to conduct the meeting with their partners and other firms. People can also buy all the stuff via maintaining physical contact with the seller. But, as technology came, the meeting and shopping experience for people and businesses have changed. The digital revolution also brings other benefits like working from home, internet shopping, self-service, and many more. These all help customers to buy from home and also the employees to work from home ( Bansmann, Fechtelpeter, Anacker & Dumitrescu, 2018). For example, in this pandemic period of COVID-19, without technology, it is impossible to survive. Employees can only work remotely because they have access to technology and people prefer a contactless shopping experience. While shopping, people use more self-service checkouts because they want social distance.
Transformation in Organizations: Organizations are adopting technology for different purposes. If organizations are not accepting it now, then in the coming years they will not survive. Technology impacts the whole supply chain of the company because it reduces the middlemen to complete the business operations. All business work and records are stored with the IT methods and for the proper governance of the business, IT is used. To take competitive advantage, it is suggested for the companies to adopt digital technology because it encourages efficiency in the organizations ( Bansmann, Fechtelpeter, Anacker & Dumitrescu, 2018).
Designing and manufacturing: IT also brings Computer Aided Designing. In CAD, the designs are made by using computer software so it lowers the cost regarding the designing. This is used in many industries including automobiles, aerospace, architecture, and many more. Designers can design the 3D models with the help of computers and the manufacturing work is also done with the help of technology. This technology brings efficiency in the operations and the target set by the company for production can be completed in less time. For example, designers need to put the draft of the product in the software and then select the units of that specific product. The machines and computers finish all the manufacturing by saving resources and cost for the company because the tasks that humans completed in hours, machines can complete in minutes ( Bansmann, Fechtelpeter, Anacker & Dumitrescu, 2018).
Human life: People are using technology in their daily life and they are addicted to this. The devices that people are using in their houses are the invention of digital technology. For example, refrigerators, toasters, ovens, televisions, air conditioners, heaters, and many more. It is very hard for people to live without these devices because these make their life very convenient. Furthermore, the advanced sources of transportation are also the invention of modern technology.
Learning: The role of technology in learning is unforgettable. Learning becomes more useful and easier with technology methods. Also, it helps the students to access the study material of international colleges and universities. So, the quality of the education also improves. In the pandemic period, students are only able to finish their courses because the option of online earning is available for them. If online learning was not developed, then students will unable to study in COVID.
Child’s development by Digital Technology
Digital technology, in several ways, helps in the development of the children and it is explained in the following paragraphs:
Quick learning: This is one of the biggest advantages of technology in the development of children. Parents can download the various applications from the web and then utilize these by teaching their children how to use them. The applications regarding the alphabets and numbers act as a foundation for the learning process of the children and they have an understanding about these before starting their schools. So, this makes students smart and more intelligent than others who never use these applications and devices (Blackwell, Lauricella, & Wartella, 2014). Children can also learn from smart classes. Smart courses are part of technology-related education, and students can study through PowerPoint presentations that incorporate a graphical presentation. This allows students to absorb and retain information more easily without having to cram and studying with digital technology aids scholastic achievement. Students can also save time and money by learning online, allowing them to put their time and money to better use. Also, when teachers are using online teaching, they have access to more students and this is less expensive. So, more and more children can learn from these online classes.
More engagement: Children may use digital technology to improve their involvement and engagement in a variety of activities. For example, there are several programs for young children aged 2 to 5 years old that teach them basic numbers, shapes, and colors. The games teach kids how to look for comparable items and urge them to perform basic math (Elkind, 2016). They also played so many games with others, so games try to help them the importance of engagement and co-operation. Teachers find many activities that help children to show more engagement. One example of this is the application of Kahoot in online classes. Teachers send the link to all students to participate in the game and when the game started it has multiple-choice questions covering the basic concepts of the subject. For each question, students are getting marks and after every question, the scoreboard tells that who is at the top position. This game fills students with enthusiasm and to score best they are using their skills. Thus, this kind of application helps to increase engagement and participation among students.
Career development: With the development of technology, more career opportunities will be available for children when they grow up. As they know how to use technology from their childhood so in the future they learn all the new technology very easily. With the evolution of the technology-induced scenarios of digitized work, all companies are going digitalized and they are demanding more technology experts. Their existing workers lack some skills but the children who will join these companies are getting all knowledge about the usage of technology from their childhood because there whole life is impacted from technology (Bansmann, Fechtelpeter, Anacker & Dumitrescu, 2018). So, when they completed their studies they do not need to struggle to find a suitable job because they are developing their skills from their childhood. So, technology helps to shape the future of children.
Development of the multitasking skills: Children who studied with the help of the online methods are doing multitasking. Their teachers encourage them to write and listen at the same time. For children, multitasking is not easy for them so their teachers provide them various lessons on how to be good at it. As the usage of digital technology among children is rising, they are also learning how to perform more than one task at the same time. Children are learning their math and shapes from the games and also while playing games they are using their skills to perform calculations. The games suggested which simple ways children can use for multitasking. Children also learn dance online and they can do the same steps while watching the YouTube videos that assist them.
Learning moral concepts: Rowe (2021) explained in her article that children who have access to mobile phones and know how to use technology can bring positive changes. These children socialize with other people by using applications like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and many more. From these applications, they also learn how to develop their relations with their family members as well. So, technology is a great tool that helps children to learn the importance of moral values from their own. Furthermore, the information that is available can only be used by digital citizens, and children who know how to operate electronic devices from their childhood can fully utilize it. On the web, various resources are available for children to learn the ways for communication and which social media are useful for them to interact with their teachers and their elders. Also to teach the students about privacy and how to use the information available on the internet, nations are providing them the knowledge of the law of the country. In this way, the government of different nations is teaching the children the laws and rights that they have while using the internet.
Freedom: With the help of technology, children try to learn new concepts of their own and they are free to think about their new ideas. They came up with different and cool ideas from others and then work hard how to turn that idea into reality. To turn their dream into reality, they take the help of the internet. They take the advice of other young entrepreneurs and complete their dreams. As children have more enthusiasm and creativity than others, they are quick learners and chase their dreams ( Ryan, 2018).
Excellent academic performance: Advance and digital methods are used for learning purposes. As schools are adopting digital and online learning for educational purposes because it is impossible to teach children vis physical interactions in the pandemic period. In the beginning, everyone feared that quality of the education will decline if online sources are used for education because in online learning teachers can not supervise the students especially for the children who need to meet their teachers physically so they can learn the behavior and other rules of the schools. But, the outcomes of this digital technology are different as expected. Children have unlimited opportunities to vast their knowledge level because they have unlimited resources to use which includes games, videos, direct contact with their teachers and other instructors. From the YouTube videos, they can learn the things that they never did and they do not have any instructor who should teach them in reality. According to Elkind (2016), digital technology helps children to learn extraordinary skills which other children do not know and when they utilize these skills in their class, they become excellent students of the class.
Child’s development harmed by digital technology
There are also demerits of digital technology and the explanation of these are given below:
Losing eyesight: This is the major problem that children of all ages are facing. As they are spending more time with screens, this badly impacts their eyesight. According to Armstrong (2019), the demand for corrective lenses and eyeglasses has grown in Australia as a result of children's inability to see well owing to excessive use of digital displays. In Australia, myopia rates have grown by a factor of two since the 1970s. According to the research, roughly 31% of the overall population is affected, and this number will grow to 55% in 2050 if youngsters use digital displays extensively. This study also discovered that as children spend less time doing physical and outdoor activities, their genes also get impacted from this and this gives birth to other serious issues.
Also, children faced digital eye strain as the result of the excessive use of mobile and other devices. This also includes blurry visions, headaches, and irritation in the eyes. In the US, according to The Vision Council over 50% of children are facing this eye disorder because their screen times are very high ( Karp, 2019).
Bad impact on physical development: Nowadays, children are doing less physical activity because they keep themselves busy on their mobile phones and on the Internet. They rarely go out to play. Due to less physical activities, children are getting obese, and also when children eat while watching these screens they are also getting other problems which are high calorie, low-nutrient food, and less sleep as they need to take. The study discovered that those who spend more time on social media, consume fewer fruits and missed a healthy diet. In the US, the study found a direct relationship between the hours children spend watching television and obesity. Also, if children are watching more television in their childhood, they will be overweight in their adulthood. Also, obesity increases hypertension, increased cholesterol levels, inflammation, and metabolic syndrome. The interesting discovery of the research is that children consume the third part of their daily intake while watching the screen and in front of the screens children consumed more beverages. When they start watching something interesting on the screens it is hard for them to shut it down very easily and they continue to watch it late at night and thus it impacts their bedtime. The lack of sleep is also very dangerous because this leads to changes in the ghrelin and leptin hormones which increase hunger and children prefer more calories rather than a nutritional diet (Robinson, Banda, Hale, Lu, Fleming-Milici, Calvert & Wartella, 2017). So, the years when they develop their bodies, they waste this time while eating outside. So, due to technology children are not able to properly develop their bodies in the right shape with a proper diet.
Depression and frustration: Depression in children is rising for the past decade and social media is the cause for it. As children spend all their time on social media, while playing with their friends or using it for communication purposes, they feel deprived of their surroundings. Also, when they observe other children having superior things, it hurts their self-esteem and they adopt some illegal activities to achieve the same. These activities enhance stress in their life and they seem to be puzzled in their life.
Furthermore, technology demands intellectual skills from children but everyone knows that it is hard for children to concentrates on more than one attribute before 5 years of age. When the app demands from them to be multidimensional, they become frustrated because they can not do anything to resolve it (Elkind, 2016). Their mind needs time to be fully developed.
Low cognitive development: Social and mass media impact the cognitive development among children. Televisions negatively impact the cognitive development of children aged less than 2 years. Their development is low for language and they can understand their parent’s language less if they are spending more time with television. It takes time for them to process all sorts of information in their brain. Their low development also creates hindrances in the development of their verbal skills (Anderson & Subrahmanyam, 2017). Children keep themselves busy with electronic devices and they also limit their interactions with their parents and siblings. The age that they should use to develop their brain by learning from their surroundings, they are learning the usage of the social media and that is the reason why children are not able to develop their cognition.
Furthermore, parents did not realize that how technology is causing harm to their children, and also they bought expensive and latest technology devices for their children. At that time, they believe that these will help their children to develop their cognition skills but it is not the reality. Their excessive usage of the internet also leads to an increase in children's watch inappropriate material and this includes pornography. The study done on 1501 children discovered the fact that children are more interested to watch porn and sexual content over the internet. The shocking finding of this study is that 87% part of the children aged 14 years come in the category of those who search for sexual images on the internet. They became addicted to this and the adverse consequences of their bad habits lead to anxiety, depression, and less emotional attachment with their parents. The reason that why children search is because more than 90% of children can access this material and also their parents provide them all internet facilities (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2005).
Low concentration: Due to the excessive use of the technology and internet, children are not able to concentrate properly on their studies. As children are watching the screens for a longer time and also slept late at night, this is one of the major causes that lower down the learning and focusing capability of children. There is no doubt that online learning helps the students, but it is also the biggest distraction for the children while they are studying. When children are studying online sometimes some links pop up on the screen and children found it interesting. So, to satisfy their curiosity they open up the links and end up with nothing except wastage of their time that they shall utilize in their studies.
Sahlberg & Piccoli (2020) explained in their article about the impact of technology on the learning capabilities of children and 2000 students and teachers participated in the survey in Australia. The teachers told that the performance of the students declined as they use more technology. The study also discovered that from the past 60% of students were participated less in physical activities. The teachers concluded the study by saying that digital technology is acting as a distraction among children and reducing their capability to learn things quickly. Due to all these children are participated very little in the school functions and took less part in the school marathons because they know they have to work hard and also need to use their bodies but modern children are not mentally and physically ready to do all the hard work with the physical activities.
Cyber Bullying: People are trolling people over the internet especially children by sending them their images and other images with the help of the internet. Due to cyberbullying, the emotional and mental state is adversely impacted. The cases of cyberbullying are increasing among children because they are using the internet a lot and do not know how to use it in the right way. Children also post their private information and images and other people use them to earn money from this. Due to the pandemic period, children need to attend their classes online and when they are searching for study-related material they do not know which websites are credible, and by mistake, they end up contacting the wrong people over the internet..
21st century technology trends
The number of children that use technology is on the rise in the 21st century and the number of mobile subscriptions also increased. The mobile subscriptions are more than the total population. According to the Ofcom (2019) report children aged between 3-4 are watching television 14 hours per week, 52% of them using the internet, 1% of them also have a social media profile and from the total 1% also possess their mobile phones. The data about the age group between 5-7 showed that 5% of them have mobile phones, 42% possess tablets, 67% them using the internet, and 4% have a profile on social media. The result of the report explained that children are using technology at a small age and the things that they learned in their childhood, learn easily and quickly because children can develop their brains at this stage rapidly.
Also, the brain of the child learns new things from the experience and this term is called brain plasticity. In early childhood, children are facing very high brain plasticity because they are observing others and learning every day new things. These new things help them to learn how to make decisions and the development of cognitive skills (Ofcom, 2019).
Is digital technology good or bad for the children?
As stated above digital technology has advantages or disadvantages for the development of children. As technology is increasing day by day so children can not survive without it. The children from undeveloped countries can only compete with the children of the developed nations when they are fully aware of the technological use in their life. Technology provides a shared platform of opportunities for all children and those who have skills can grab the opportunities and in the future, they end up as the owners of multinational companies because technology helps them to develop their skills. There are also other ways how technology helped in the development of children. With the help of technology, children know how to show outstanding academic performance. All children from their very childhood know the operation of all electronic devices. When they will grow up, they can use their skills to attain success in their respective career field with the help of technology because all workplaces of modern times are turned into digital. People who are unaware of the use of technology are learning nowadays because they know they can not be successful at the workplace without having the skills related to technology. So, for present and today’s children technology is kind of a basic need.
On the other hand, technology also has some bad impact on the mental and physical health of children. Children got addicted to electronic devices and it leads to depression, anxiety, headaches, blindness, insomnia, cancer, and many more other serious health issues. No doubt technology brings many positive changes but the excess of everything is bad. Rather than using the internet for study and information purposes, children are using it more for entertainment. They are spending their ample time on the internet in place of playing outside and doing physical activities. Also, the time that children should spend with their family they are spending it while playing games and chatting. So, children started to use technology in the wrong way and this makes technology the biggest hindrance for the development of the children.
Solutions
To increase the efficiency of the technology, several measures should be taken. These measures need to help children so the drawbacks and the harms that it caused for the development of the children, should be reduced. Parents, siblings, schools, and other parties have some responsibilities to make technology helpful for the development of the children, and these are explained below:
As modern parents have hectic schedules and they are depending upon online sources, electronic devices, and the internet to keep their children busy. But, parents need to set limits that for how long their children should spend time over internet and parents also need to encourage their children to do some physical exercises because when children are spending their whole day inside the house by using electronic devices, it makes them mentally sick. The other disadvantage of spending the whole day using the internet is that children are getting fat. So, this is required that parents need to fix the limits for the usage of electronic devices for the mental and physical development of their children, and also they should never allow their children to watch and play video games and television at night because children did not get proper sleep if they are spending their nights watching the screens. By limiting the number to watch the screens, parents can also protect the eyesight of their children and can save them from facing the digital eye strain (Karp, 2019).
Doing fewer physical activities is a very serious issue. According to famous optometrist Dr. Jim Kokkinakis, this is a very bad scenario. Parents and educators should work to preserve their children's lives by teaching them in a variety of methods, such as encouraging the younger generation to spend more time performing physical activities rather than using phones and computers ( Armstrong, 2019). Teachers and schools also can work together to reduce the bad impacts and can create an environment for the safe usage of the internet and electronic devices. Teachers can help the safety of the children by providing them credible links and sources to study so children should not open any other link and distract themselves from the study. Teachers should support the children by giving them detailed information about the procedures of online safety to protect personal information. Furthermore, for the safety of the children and to make children safe users of digital technology the e-safety topic should add into the school curriculum. This subject helps the children to learn the importance of positive online behavior and they also become digital literate (Hinduja and Patchin, 2018).
The government of the nation can do some initiatives to reduce screen times and the use of the internet. For this, they can organize events regarding games and those who scored the best positions will be rewarded with money. Thus, by using money as a motivator, the government can encourage children to participate more in the games and do physical activities for the physical development of the children. Thus, by encouraging children to participate in various physical activities government also makes them ready for an upcoming competition like the Olympics.
Conclusion
In short, digital technology is a major part of children’s lives and they can very hardly survive without it. There is not even a single place where digital technology has not been used and it revolutionized life. Digital technology helped the development of children but meanwhile at the same time it poses some threats. Technology helps children in learning, showing more engagement, learning multitasking and moral values, excellent academic performance, and in other areas. At the same time, the excessive usage of the technology also leads to adverse consequences in the development of the children. The harms that it can lead to the development of the children are low physical and mental growth, less concentration, low cognitive skills, losing eyesight, cyberbullying, and others. Despite, the harms that it is doing for children, technology is crucial for the development of the children. The harms that it caused are the results of over usage of the technology and these can be reduced by following proper measures.
