There is a generation of people, mostly the younger, who are completely different from the preceding one. A lot of today’s people are living in the digital age. Technology has become a way of life and people today just automatically absorb all things automated. Now it is nigh impossible for many to imagine a world that existed without all of the gadgets, electronics and numberless operations that computer technology provides.
Children now devote some 40 hours per week to television, video games and the Internet. Researchers are very concerned about the impact that technology is now having on children. Children are being consumed by the effects of modern technology.
Technology overall is indispensable, but it must be guided; if not, it can severely impair children by weakening social, emotional, physical and cognitive development. Technology affects social development in children in many different ways. Children acquire electronic games, personal computers, and cellphones at very young ages.
Surveys indicate that about 82 per cent of children are online by the Seventh Grade and experience about 6.5 hours per day of media exposure. Most children communicate more through electronic devices and spend less face time with family members and peers. Text messaging and emails provide limited or no access to other people’s emotions, and the rich language of non-verbal communication and interaction is lost.
The quality of family time is compromised when children are using technology. Families are not talking very much during meal time, because of distractions like watching television, listening to music, checking emails, answering the phone and text messaging. This has become so disgusting (and disrespectful as well), that many adults have long given up on curbing it, even teachers at colleges and universities.
Social development is part of the nexus that includes family, as well as the many others in school, church and just about anywhere else. So when technology replaces human contact, it creates problems for proper social development.
Educators are now predicting that the current teen generation are heading themselves for a sort of mass loss of personal identity. By spending inordinate quantities of time in the interactive, virtual, two-dimensional, cyberspace realms of the screen, they are opining that the brains of the youths of today are headed for a drastic alteration.
A host of teenagers, ages 12 through 17, send 50 or more text messages per day and one-third send more than 100. This is no different from addiction that calls for instant gratification. Technology enables things to happen quickly, and as a result, children are growing up, expecting immediate fulfilment. They always want instant gratification.
If children want to hear a song, they can hop online and download it. No longer have they to wait for Saturday or Sunday to watch their favourite television shows – there are a host of channels offering children’s programming 24/7. This conditions them into inappropriate behavioural traits, when waiting is necessary. Impatience and anger are inextricably linked.
The natural brain chemical called dopamine is involved by all forms of addiction. The area of the brain crucial to the dopamine hits is called the accumbens nucleus, which is associated with the prefrontal cortex, an area at the front of the brain. Excessive dopamine hits might reduce activation in the prefrontal cortex, and in doing so, will tip the balance away from awareness of the significance, of actions. The focus is all about ‘good feelings’.
It turns out that involvement in any addictive technology offering activates the basal ganglia portion of the brain, that is, the region that releases this said dopamine. This is actually the same region of the brain that is affected by cocaine.
Soon, communities could very well be hemmed in by a group of people who will display a range of unwanted traits: obsessiveness, self-destruction, self-denial, withdrawal tendencies, loss of control and depression. The instinctive challenge is to find ways to change this course, while still reaping the advantages technology offers.
