Abstract:
If you ask people who were born before the 1990s on what their childhood was like, much of their responses will be the same. They will recount the hours spent frolicking in nature and the energy spent running around the schoolyard with their friends. However, the same can’t be said for today’s children. Affected by the rise of technology in this digitized generation, the children of today lead very different lives that tend to be worse off than in generations before. As digital entertainment technology, such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, and television, become more and more commonplace in today’s households, children are often at greater risks than ever before. From reports of medical specialists, psychologists, and biological research done by renowned scientists, this research paper will explore the plethora of adverse health affects that children now suffer from starting at young ages.
Lin, a 4 year-old child, far exceeds his parent’s use in the amount of time spent on the iPad. On his quest to locate his favorite Power Rangers episode, Lin’s small fingers navigate through endless YouTube videos. After finding the precise clip, Lin marvels in joy with his eyes glued to the screen for a mere 41 seconds before his fascination dissipates. He proceeds to open the gaming application Tetris and clicks away at the ever-morphing cubes. Not even completing one round, Lin switches over to camera application and is fixated by his own charming smile. Two o’clock rolls by, and it’s his afternoon napping time. In an attempt to confiscate the tablet, Lin’s mother is met by the ballistic, combative Lin. Pouting his lips, crunching his hands in angered fists, Lin screeches out loud and savagely guards his territory like a predatory beast. At a loss and unable to placate Lin, his mother succumbs to his iPad frenzy and continues on with her own tasks.
Like Lin’s mother, global parents of this digital generation are becoming increasingly perplexed and worried of their children’s unhealthy obsession with entertainment technology such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, television. From its sleek design to interactive interfaces, entertainment technology is appealing to a spectrum of all ages, most notably to children (Faw). Thanks to the accessible size and simple touch screen features, children are readily able to use smartphones, tablets, and laptops alike. Per data from 2016, nearly 92% of children have digital footprints at the age of 2 and by the age of 5, they are spending a staggering average of 4.1 hours on daily screen time (Faw). Starting at the age of 8, children spend nearly 6-7 hours on daily screen time, followed by further increases as they age. Nevertheless, the high-tech corporations continue to exacerbate this digital epidemic by enhancing marketing efforts via incredulous addition of deceptive phrases, such as “educational” or “cognition- improving” to their products, in order to increase the amount of time the product spends in the eyes of children, the sole measure of the product’s efficacy and success.
It is undeniable that technology is integral to the functioning of the fast-evolving modern society. However, unbeknownst to many technology users is the long-term impact that technology use has on children, particularly in the eliciting of harmful, irreversible physical and psychosocial health effects.
All humans are born with the lifetime supply of neurons at birth. However, the connectivity changes between different neurons, known as synaptic connectivity, occur during the most malleable and critical years of a child’s development from birth to five years of age. Much of, if not all of these connectivity changes are dictated by early life environmental factors (Stiles).
Per Dimitri Christakis, a Seattle Children’s Hospital physician-scientist, a child’s brain development during the critical period is directly linked to the stimuli genre received during the first 3-4 years of life, when the brain size triples (Zimmerman). If a developing child is exposed to an excess of rapid-movement stimulation, as found in many entertainment videos like Baby Einstein, then the child’s neural synaptic activity will condition him or her to expect and consistently seek hyper-stimulating activities, which Christakis puts, “for the child, then, the slow-pace reality of life will be met by extreme boredom and avolition” (Zimmerman). Known as the neural overstimulation hypothesis, such conditioning associated with entertainment technology’s visual stimulation predisposes young children to attention deficit disorders in later years of development. Seen in multiple neural-medical longitudinal studies, the constant bombardment of visuals offsets the delicate cerebral cortex and basal ganglia balance, an area that is critical in attention and distraction regulation.
Let’s investigate this:
Baby Einstein, a near billion-dollar franchise, coined by the layman phrasing “crack for babies”, supposedly enhances cognition via synaptic construction. However, as depicted in the clip, roughly 8 scene changes occur in 25 seconds, equaling about 1 change per 3 seconds. Adults who watch this face mental exhaustion and encounter a nonsensical representation of a real farm as they attempt to construct a coherent narrative of what they see. Yet, young children are not trying to make sense from the video, simply because they lack sufficient cognitive processes to do so due to their age. For them, it’s all about the screen change and the visual hyper-stimulation that keeps them engaged to the screen.
In addition to causing attention debilitations, the hyper-sensory visual stimuli can induce chronic levels of stress. Per account of pediatric occupational therapist Cris Rowan, children report of “persistent, diffuse body shaking, increased respiratory and heart rate, and a general state of unease.” (Rowan) This response, known as the sympathetic nervous system “fight-or-flight” activation, is only elicited in times of immediate assault or danger (Teiceira). Young children may appraise what they are watching on their gadgets to be reality and mount inappropriate responses due to lapses in perception of the digital world versus the real world. This chronically primes the body to exist in a hyper-vigilant state while displaying high levels of adrenaline and stress hormone, cortisol. A plethora of medical research has causally linked cortisol levels to decreased immune system efficacy and susceptibility to mood related disorders such as depression, bipolar mania, and even suicidal ideations in later years (Cowen).
Entertainment technology is known to inhibit the development of the parietal lobe of the brain, an area that regulates our touch and spatial sensing. In the paper, “The Impact of Technology on Child Sensory and Motor Development”, Rowan resonates with this and adds that, “young children require 3-4 hours per day of active rough and tumble play to achieve adequate sensory stimulation of their proprioceptive tactile systems for proper development”. However, those 3-4 hours of recommended touch-stimulating activity are now being used to touch around with tablets and phones, which is not sufficient for proprioceptive tactile development.
Look at the kid climbing the tree.
We see the complex synchronization of his body with his mind and tactile senses. With each movement of the limbs and the legs, there are neural sensory propagations that finely coordinate information diffusely over his body. Children who virtually experience tree climbing by watching through technology miss out on this multi-modal experience. Sequestered to only thumb-to-eye interaction, digital children are deficient of complete, integrative muscle-body-brain activity.
According to Dr. Ashley Montagu, children that are deprived of adequate levels of touch and play exhibit heightened agitation and anxiety, which may induce depression early on (Rowan). This phenomenon was proven true via experimentation with rats. To simulate the human proprioceptive touch processes, researchers looked at a rat mother’s licking and grooming behavior. Test results indicated that rat offspring reared in low licking and grooming environment demonstrated higher levels of corticosterone – the rat analog of the human stress hormone cortisol – than compared to offspring reared in high licking and grooming environment (Caldji). Though studies are performed in rats, findings are still completely valid and can be extrapolated to human subjects because both mammalian species share extremely similar developmental pathways. As mentioned before, increased levels of cortisol directly translate to chronic stress and susceptibility to depressive mood disorders.
Lastly, the blue light emitted by the screens of entertainment technology is incredibly deadly to the physical development in children. In the recent decade, we’ve seen a massive increase in entertainment technology use with 42% of children having access to television in their bedroom (Conrad). In the modern digital era, we have replaced the act of reading a traditional book before bed, to using our tablet, phone, or watching television in justification that such action will “help” us sleep. Ironically, electronic use acts in the exact opposite manner. In June of 2011, the American Medical Association issued a blanket policy that “exposure to excessive blue light at night via electronic media, can disrupt sleep or exacerbate sleep disorders, especially in children and adolescents” (Eng).
As the industry is evolving to be more energy-efficient, screens of entertainment technology devices are endorsing blue light use more readily because blue light is both brighter and more energy-efficient. However, studies have shown that blue light alters our circadian rhythm and suppresses the production of the hormone melatonin, which helps promote sleep (Sutter). According to Harvard School of Medicine sleep specialist Dr. Steven Lockley, blue light is also abundant in broad daylight; exposure to blue light at nighttime deceives the brain into thinking it is daytime, triggering alert and wakefulness instead. Per Dr. Lockey, the close proximity of blue-light emitting devices to the face exponentially intensifies the blue light absorption by the human eye.
Thus, evidenced above, there is an indirect, linear relationship with electronic use and sleep duration. When children do not get enough sleep, their blood serum levels of the human growth hormone, HGH, plummet, delaying growth of all the body parts – from bones to muscles to nerves. Other life processes may serve in HGH production, but sleep is the single, most influential factor (Falwell). While Generation X and Y toddlers received on average of 10-13 hours of sleep daily, toddlers from Generation Z see a marked decrease to average 8-11 hours of daily sleep. Studies from over the years have demonstrated that chronic lower HGH hormone is attributed to a whole array of metabolic disorders, cardiovascular dysfunction, immune susceptibility, and anxiogenic impairments (Verrillo).
Children used to physically converse with their friends face to face. When we adults reminiscence of childhood times and nostalgically stroll down memory lane, we recount those endless hours spent hanging out with the neighborhood clique way past acceptable curfew. We remember the days spent hogging the family phone to notify friends of the new bicycle purchased with hard earned allowance money. A relic of the past, such aspect of childhood is almost nonexistent now. In this digital dynasty, meaningful physical conversation is increasingly swapped for succinct shorthand that is ubiquitous in smartphone texting and instant messaging applications of Facebook or WeChat.
A 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center found that in American children, loosely classified as those under the age of eighteen, 55% of the study subjects reported to communicate daily via text messaging, while only 25% and 19% admitted to conversing in person and over the phone respectively. Upon further analysis, the results indicate that while a majority of girls interact with friends via texting or messaging, boys communicate through gaming chats via computer games or gaming consoles. Despite the differing medium of entertainment technology used to communicate, one similarity is alarmingly apparent in both genders – that is, the phasing out of traditional face-to-face conversation.
Psychologist Dr. Mel Ortega from the Child Mind Institute expresses her worries that the increased dependency on mobile communication may foster a wave of social aversion. During clinical consultations with child patients, she notes that, “the kids I see will check their phones constantly as if they received a text message to avoid making eye-contact or talking to me – they’ll use phones as an avoidance strategy” (Bindley). Because so much contact and activity occur via some medium of technology today, the current digital children lack proper practice in face-to-face interaction. As the art of physical conversation requires persistent practicing, how will modern children engage with those in the professional realm whom were born into prior generations – people who pride themselves in their competent social skills due to the lack of technological distractions in the past? Will they simply stare off into their gadgets to avoid eye contact while riding in the elevator or while waiting in line?
Some may say that increased non-physical communication may actually promote social networking and enhance one’s social capital. Due to the fast transmission speed with modern technology, users can communicate with one another from all over the globe in mere seconds. However, when analyzing such claim, a good aspect to consider is the quality of said interactions. Though the quantity of social interactions may increase, will the quality also follow suit? Or will the quality be hindered by the lack of emotional saliency and intimacy that is observable only in standard face-to-face contact? Rather than fostering social networking, technology may in fact promote antisocial networking.
One study done by UCLA precisely examines this. In the experiment, two groups of middle school age kids attended a summer camp. While one group of students was prohibited from using technology at camp, the other group had complete access to their gadgets. The students were tasked to identify emotions from looking at photos of faces or watching videos of interactions (Lewis). For the group without any digital media use, scientists found vast improvements in the identification of nonverbal emotions. Suggested by this study, humans readily pick up on social cues such as facial expression, voice tone, body language, fidgeting, and eye contact from direct face-to-face communication. These cues translate to emotional saliency that supports development of social relationships and rudimentary social skills needed to act appropriately in spontaneous social situations.
The nuclear family was once the traditional stronghold of support and love. In this digital generation, parent child relationships are deteriorating from the heavy usage of digital technology. Children are constantly browsing tablets, messaging on phones, surfing social media on laptops, or watching movies on television. There is an imminent growing technological divide between parents and children because parents simply lack technological literacy that children have mastered. In “Is Technology Creating a Family Divide”, Dr. Jim Taylor asserts that because of this incompetency by parents, “it is more difficult for parents to assume the role of mentor and provide guidance to their child.” Parents are less able to regulate their child’s technological lives, weakening their authority and command in the eyes of their children. This ignites the rebellious fire within growing children, and causes them to rise against traditional parental authority. This false pretense of superiority that children feel may in fact damage their relationships with authority related superiors, like bosses at work, in the future.
Digital media through shows like The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, and Family Guy further exacerbate the dynamics between child and parent. Through these shows’ satirizing humor, parents are depicted as unintelligent, irresponsible, and largely incapable in managing their own lives, let alone lives of their children. Given that learning largely occurs through direct observation, what will happen when children, who spend lots of time watching these shows through digital technology, begin to subconsciously identify with these latent messages manifested by popular culture?
The increased distancing from parents is very unhealthy for the psychosocial development of children. Because of reliance on entertainment technology, children do not form that strong of relationships with parents nowadays. There is a less fostering of positive values ranging from love, trust, to security, which are all essential to forming proper social attachments.
An easy, idealistic solution to all these adverse health effects in children is readily apparent – that is, apply the precautionary principle and eliminate technology exposure altogether. However, in our digitized society, such idea is absurd and infeasible. Digital entertainment technology, through mediums like laptops, phones, tablets, and television, provides the basic infrastructure to society, analogous to how the biological heart provides life for the living. If we cannot eliminate technology, what can we do then? Resistance is futile as screen time abstinence is near impossible. The key lies within exacting moderation on technology consumption, specifically, in how long children should use technology for, and in which way they should use it.
According to the statement by American Academy of Pediatrics, young children below two years of age should absolutely not be exposed to technology, while older children should receive a maximum of 2-3 hours of daily screen time until the age of 12 (Rosen). Any amount past these outlined hours will elicit harmful physical and psychosocial consequences. Recently, more nuanced revisions have also been incorporated which recommend truncated splits of the screen time, rather than sitting through hours in one sitting. In addition, studies have found that parents intentionally occupy their children with technology, which potentially leads to overexposure. In a 2015 survey of 1,000 British mothers of children 2-12, over 850 mothers admit to relying on technology to babysit their children, so they can selfishly pursue their own activities (Jary). Though understandable that adults also require downtime from their own children, relying on technology as a babysitting mechanism is quite immature and, to some degree, portrays the apathy parents have towards children. Thus, if parental behaviors are modified, the duration of exposure to technology by children can be reduced.
The way children use technology can also be moderated to bring forth beneficial aspects of human nature. Rather than letting young children be bombarded by chaotic visual hyper-sensory stimulation of Baby Einstein videos, why not swap that out for VR technology designed by companies like Ryot? These VR goggles can serve as transportation devices to fully immerse young children in 360-degree footage to connect them to the plight of disaster-struck victims from afar. We can start cultivating global awareness and fostering empathy within children starting at a young age. Collectively, we are all children of this Earth, and technology use through VR can provide the framework to usher a new era of humanitarianism and global citizenship that begins with the youths of today. So perhaps before you let your children watch PowerRangers or SuperMan tomorrow, a wiser option would be to give them VR goggles and let them vicariously experience the plight of those living in malnourished, underserved communities from third world countries. After all, if children are getting sensory stimulus with technology anyways, why not adopt more of a cost-benefit approach, and push them in directions that will increase their benefits to offset the harm.
Ultimately, just as deadly as disease outbreaks, this current digital epidemic with entertainment technology is extremely alarming and poses significant risks for today’s generation of children. As technology is becoming established as a household commodity, parents seriously need to consider and be aware of the harmful drawbacks or else children will seriously be maimed. Once these damages are done, no amount of medical treatment or care can reverse the effects. Physical impairments are evident starting as early as the first 2 years of life for technology alters the brain’s connectivity and predisposes children to attention deficit disorders like ADHD. Because the human brain is so delicate at young ages, the visual sensory stimuli emitted by the screens will promote anxiogenic and stress-inducing metabolic profiles that trigger the onset of chronic disorders later in life. More importantly, the more children use technology, the more their social skills and social connections with others will be jeopardized. Unfortunate as it may be, there just isn’t that much we can do to effectively remediate this epidemic at this point. With technology tapping into every aspect of society, we cannot just simply call for of complete abstinence. What we can do is to limit screen time exposure and redirect children to different technological mediums to at least elicit some benefits. Perhaps the future may hold solutions that we very much need, or perhaps, the future may exacerbate this situation even more.
Work Cited:
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CW105 - Caution: Enter the Future 