Technology Overload

I asked my Dad recently how he spent his spare time during high school. His response was very similar to what most middle-aged adults answered.  My father played basketball in the park with his friends, rode his bike, helped his dad repair cars, etc. Now, if you were to ask a high school kid the same question, it would be very different. Many teenagers would say, “Have all-night Netflix marathons of their favorite shows, watch TV, play video games, or text friends”. All of these have one thing in common; they all involve the use of technology. Kids and teens in our society truly are addicted to technology and let it control their lives.


Over the last generation, the amount of technology that kids use each day has increased to an unhealthy amount. This even includes kids as young as two years old. I didn’t even touch game controller until I was around nine years old even throughout my childhood, I hardly secluded all of my time to watching TV and playing video games. I still went outside and played hopscotch with my neighbors. Children under the age of eight spend an average of 25 minutes per day playing video games. Even though there have been a plethora of studies regarding this problem on the new, parents are not acknowledging it the seriousness of the problem at hand.


Between the ages of one and four, babies brains developing and are greatly affected by how they are raised and gain fundamental skills. To put an iPad in front of its face and use apps on the tablet to teach a baby shapes and colors is preposterous. Babies need visual but physical objects to hold and examine, not a touch screen.Computer games might be interactive, but typically only between the user and the screen. However, little children need to interact with other people to develop empathy and build social skills. This personally bothers me the most because I have been in situations where I would babysit kid under the age of six play educational apps on their iPad’s and iPhone’s. The time spent with on screen media dramatically increases from the toddler to preschool to school-age years. Children under two should have a screen time average of 53 minutes per day.


Teenagers on the other hand, can not live day without having a smart phone, watch Netflix, go on the internet, and or play video games. They live their lives in front of a screen and are in some ways losing touch with reality. When I walk through the hallways in school, I have never gone through the hallways and seen less than 10 people without a phone in their hand. Since we have the capability to go on the Internet on our phones whenever we want, it is very easy for one to spend all of their time searching the web and not paying attention in class. On the weekends, many teenagers sit at home or go over to their friend’s house to watch Netflix for hours at a time.  I think back to what my father said he did during his free time and I am just in awe of how different it is in today’s society.  My father never played video games when he was younger.


Studies have shown us that technology have had multiple advantages in kids such as improvement in hand-eye coordination, visual attention, and language skills. However the amount of technology young children use is immense. The kids of the 21st century have the capability to achieve unimaginable feats, but we first need to drop our phones, game controllers, and laptops and start to understand that they can not let a phone, laptop, or TV screen take over their lives.