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Is your child a technology geek?

BRAIN STRAIN
Last Updated 04 April 2012, 12:25 IST

Constant digital stimulation can create severe attention problems. If your child watches videos on an iPod Touch, listens to music on a DVD player and plays games on her laptop simultaneously, she may be 100 per cent tech savvy, but runs the risk of severe psychological trauma, writes Vatsala Vedantam

Raghav is watching a basketball tournament while visiting friends with his parents. He is listening to the conversation around him, while his eyes follow the match on his iPad.  Amit reads Harry Potter on his Kindle while having dinner with his family.

Anya is playing tic-tac-to on her digital slate while her grandmother tells her a story.  She interrupts her game occasionally to ask a question. Ajeet completes his homework on his laptop while enjoying his favourite comic on TV.  Even baby Ramya paints on her mini computer, while her mother ladles food into her mouth. She eats mindlessly as she concentrates on mixing the colours.   
Voila! Meet these whiz kids of the digital age. They are “smart” in more ways than one. They can fix your troublesome printer in minutes. They can add, subtract, divide and multiply four digit numbers in a trice on their calculators.  Give them a gadget. They will unravel its mysteries effortlessly. If they are older, they can even ride a two wheeler with one hand while booking cinema tickets on their smart phones with the other, and yet keep an eye on the traffic as they weave their way on busy roads to reach school or college. They are the children of the 21st century. Not for them musty books in the dark recesses of libraries. Reading books is passé. They shun dictionaries. Why bother about spelling or grammar when your computer can spell check for you? Why struggle to learn the Tables when your calculator is there?  Why listen to teachers  when the internet can give you all the knowledge that you want? If you have to complete a project, you do not waste time anymore collecting information from books or by visiting places. Just “google” and get all that you need. Here is what a professor of English at Santa Clara University says about this modern trend of trashing books in favour of electronic gadgets.

“This digitalisation of print may be inevitable, but we are losing something precious in our culture. The very physicality of books plays a basic role in the learning experience.” He also points out that physical books slow us down, and we need to slow down. How right he is. The Internet can never replace physical books, just as a photo of a Ravi Varma painting  can replace the original. Our children will suffer a great cultural loss if they explore the world of knowledge only through the click of a mouse. If they are not encouraged to go out there, interact with people and discover things around them, they become mere zombies who downloaded all that information while staring at a monitor. They can play all the games on an electronic gadget. But, they will lose out on making friends, learning to compete with others, sharing fun with their peers. We have robbed them of rich experiences when we provide them with electronic gadgetry instead of real toys, real books and real friends.  

It is common nowadays for college undergraduates to use iPads in the classroom. Gone are the days when they diligently listened to lectures and made notes of them. Or, if they were students of science or architecture, prepared  elaborate drawings and designs, using just pen and paper. Now, they multitask in the classroom as well, alternating between  the lecture and their favourite music channel via their head phones. Studies have shown that this unhealthy trend leaves a student ill equipped for academic tasks that need real concentration. He loses the will and skill to concentrate because multitasking overexcites the brain, making it difficult to focus when he is bombarded with “bursts of information.”  They make him obsessive. He cannot spend even a few minutes without texting messages or talking on his cell phone. The same electronic gadgets also diminish his ability to relate meaningfully to family or friends. After all, “the way we become more human is by paying attention to each other. It shows how much we care.”

Students who listen to an iPod, watch television and complete assignments at the same time are known to regress academically.  Scientists feel that the human brain can process only a single stream of information at a time. It can barely process two streams simultaneously or assimilate them. A telling example is a road accident where the driver loses his concentration while talking on the cell phone. As for young children, whose brains are still developing, this kind of constant digital stimulation creates severe attention problems. Parents and teachers worry about this new mental condition. Child psychiatrists label it as Attention Deficit Syndrome and prescribe drugs! If your child watches videos on an iPod Touch, listens to music on a DVD player and plays games on her laptop simultaneously, she may be 100 per cent technology savvy, but runs the risk of severe psychological trauma. The lure of such excessive digital stimulation at a young age comes  with its own risks.

Alternate schools are now trying to eliminate such “modernisation” by regaining environmental friendly games and  activities. They encourage children to play outdoors with others, to explore natural surroundings, and restore the old forgotten pleasures of simple games unrelated to electronic gadgets. As parents, let us not deprive our children the joy of learning naturally. If they are wedded to technology alone, they may appear savvy and smart. But they have lost something  precious on the way.

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(Published 04 April 2012, 12:24 IST)

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