When attempting to grasp the challenges affecting today's youngsters, reminiscing about the good old days when we were growing up is a memory trip well worth taking. Children used to spend the entire day outside, riding bikes, playing sports, and constructing forts, just 20 years ago. Children in the past invented their own type of imagined play that didn't require expensive equipment or parental supervision. The sensory world of children in the past was focused on nature and was uncomplicated.
Previously, family time was typically spent performing tasks, and children had daily goals to meet. The dining room table was a gathering spot for families to dine and converse about their days, and it also served as a hub for baking, crafts, and schoolwork after dinner.
Families nowadays are different. The influence of technology on the family in the twenty-first century is eroding its basic base and triggering a dissolution of core values that formerly kept families together. Parents increasingly rely extensively on communication, information, and transportation technologies to make their lives faster and more effective while juggling a job, home, and community life. Families have hardly recognized the major influence and changes to their family structure and lives due to quick advancements in entertainment technology (TV, internet, video games, iPods).
According to a 2010 Kaiser Foundation research, elementary-aged children use entertainment devices for an average of 8 hours per day, 75 percent of these youngsters have TVs in their beds, and 50 percent of North American families keep the television on all day. Business Tips Write for Us Blog is a fantastic method to share your knowledge and experience.
When we consider emails, mobile phones, internet browsing, and chat lines, we can see how omnipresent technology has become in our homes and families. The "big screen" and takeout have replaced the dining room table talk. Children today rely on technology for the bulk of their play, severely restricting creative and imaginative tasks, as well as required challenges for their bodies to attain appropriate sensory and motor development.
Sedentary bodies overwhelmed with chaotic sensory stimuli cause delays in reaching child developmental milestones, which has an influence on basic reading foundation abilities. Today's youth are hardwired for speed, and many enter school struggling with self-regulation and attention skills, which may lead to substantial behavior management issues for instructors in the classroom.
So, how does technology affect the developing child? The sensory and motor systems of children are still growing and have not developed to adapt to the sedentary, but the frantic and chaotic character of today's technology. Physical, psychological, and behavioral illnesses have increased as a result of rapidly evolving technology, which health and education institutions are just now beginning to notice, let alone explain.
Obesity and diabetes in children have become national epidemics in both Canada and the United States. Overuse of technology has been related to diagnoses of ADHD, autism, coordination problem, sensory processing disorder, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders, and these diagnoses are on the rise.
Parents, teachers, and health professionals would benefit from a closer look at the critical factors for meeting developmental milestones, as well as the impact of technology on those factors, to better understand the complexities of the issue and develop effective strategies to reduce technology use. Movement, touch, and connection to other humans are the three most important components of a child's healthy physical and psychological development. Sensory input such as movement, touch, and connection are all important for a child's motor and attachment systems to develop. Devastating repercussions emerge when movement, contact, and connection are denied.
