As with all things in life it’s about balance. At 14mos my daughter was able to play games on my tablet that helped her learn to count and the alphabet. She could read by the time she was in pre-school (age 4) which put her way ahead of most children. I don’t think it should replace toys but smart devices present an opportunity to educate that a parent can’t realistically replicate using traditional techniques.
Yeah. I get. But put off by the whole “technology is making you a bad parent” thing. We have seen significant changes in society over the past few lifetimes. The current generation of adults and adolescents have some of the strongest most dexterous thumbs of all human history. Video games. Think about it- before relatively recent society- what did AVERAGE people do with their hands? Not so long ago in history the ability to even write wasn’t all so common.
Now think about what people do with their hands today. Typing or using a touchscreen are more common for most people than writing with a pen or pencil- and with the direction things are going that’s only likely to increase. There is in fact an increasing amount of lack of need for the average person for many physical skills that have traditionally been used daily. Should we necessarily be ready to move to a “Wall-E” esque evolution of humans in our lifetime...? No. It’s good for kids to be active and play just as it is for adults- but as a species we change over time as do our lifestyles.
The whole idea of resisting change because we are used to or grew up a certain way... it’s dumb. That’s like people who complain about kids using calculators. When I was a kid- it was true that you wouldn’t always have a calculator on you. In 2019- almost everyone does. It’s not even a case of this or that being universally better- it’s that various methods have pros and cons. I learned to draft on a slide rule. That’s not a common skill anymore. It’s come in handy once or twice. Kids who learned drafting on computers can run circles around me at computer drafting though. Go figure.
People may mention some abstract of health but.... as kids we spend a good portion of the day on our butts sitting. As adults we tend to spend even more of the day sitting on our butts. And it’s been shown time and time again that even 2 hours of activity after a day sitting on your butt doesn’t do the good that 10 minutes here or there would do if you weren’t on your butt all day. Future generations will be bad at things we are good at- and good at things we are bad at. But ask yourself how many jobs most parents what for their children require holding a pencil?
I could also read at 4 and this was achieved using traditional techniques. I think you used your smart devices wisely on your daughter, but this isn't the only way and on the big picture tablets and such have been proven to have bad consequences on children, which is what this post adresses. Cool for your daughter though! I hope she'll have access to all the mind-developing tools she can enjoy :)
@guest : I'm all for not uselessly resisting change but for us as a species this particular change is really fast, and a lot of signs indicate that our bodies can't keep up (I'm thinking of the rise of heart problems mainly, but also vocabulary loss, memory loss -and I know we've lost a lot of our memory capacity since the 16th century (thanks Gutenberg) but in some cases it seems to become an issue in the everyday life for some people).
The truth is that it is a minority of people who would generally enjoy living in any future. Today the memes are about being glad to have been a kid in the heyday of Pokémon and without social media watching you. Before that it was being glad to have been a kid when you could play outside unsupervised and not worry about offending people. If Abe Lincoln had a twitter account- there are good odds it would get suspended for hate speech because even the great emancipator wasn’t up to our modern standards as “progressive” as he may have been because if he was 200 years socially advanced for his time- he would have been an outcast in society.
People might just get dumber. We might start having chronic health problems- develop weak hearts. Things like that. The human race might, over many generations lose almost if not all vestige of physicality. We might one day become cyborgs- born in incubators and unable to function mentally or physically in daily tasks without the machines and implants that give us those functions. The rich will be separated from the poor by the quantity and quality of enhancements they can afford- and eventually hell- we may decide physical bodies are for chumps and all join a collective digital consciousness. That’s far out and far off of course. Or we might go extinct from climate change and super diseases before it really gets a chance to matter.
The proliferation and legalization of drugs like weed probably isn’t helping our collective average short term memory either I’d imagine. But it’s all give and take- balance. All signs say the future is electronic. Kids who get some exposure to digital tools at a younger age are certainly advantaged on that front in their futures. The boomers grew up with basically little or no electronics. Their parents likely without tv or some even radio. Gen X and immediately after grew up with video games and other media- a first in human history, and surely a cause for social and even biological divergence from their predecessors.
But there is another issue at work as well- parents generally can’t parent anymore. Not full time. The social norm has been a model of nuclear family, and barring that at least procreation. People want kids, have kids- because they are supposed to, or because they’ve been told that is what they want. But the modern parent is a person. They have hobbies, go out, want “alone time” and so forth. They also exist in a much more populated, fast paced, and competitive world.
Stay at home parenting is not so common nowadays- often not practical. Where it does exist parents (no condemnation to the statement) generally still have their own distractions in the forms of living their life and playing with their toys and their digital media. The days of just letting your kids run around outside with friends are long gone- there are legal and financial consequences to go along with the dangers of modern society- and ultimately, to raise a child with strict discipline in life requires a strict discipline in life most people don’t have for themselves.
Most people I meet can’t even manage to properly train and care for a dog- the discipline required is either too much care for them or they just don’t have the time for the routines and follow up. So I can’t blame parents for using what tools they have for keeping a child occupied, entertained, and hopefully educated. Overall I do not personally care for raising kids on tablets and the like. I don’t think kids should get cell phones until MAYBE high school or college. But... that’s me and my life. I know, circling back to the beginning of this essay- I likely won’t care much for the future. I haven’t for at least 20 years. But people in the future tend to do fine in the future because to them... that’s normal.
My daughter by the time she was in kindergarten because she didn't do preschool could put the alphabet in order, recognize capital letters to lowercase letters compare them up, new hat account to 100, to do simple math, new hair colors and shapes, could not only recognize her name but write it as well, knew how to tell time, know the names of multiple animals and fruit and vegetables and could put the correct written name to the animal or fruit and vegetable, and by the time she reached first grade she could multiply.
She learned all that from me teaching her without a computer or tablet or anything.
She had toys tons of toys but she also had TV in a computer that we let her watch videos on.
By the time she was in kindergarten she knew how to get on a computer and start her own little videos. We restricted her educational stuff for games she played.
Them saying the kids weren't able to hold a pencil is actually not uncommon. I have seen many kids start kindergarten out that way.
@guest : I'm all for not uselessly resisting change but for us as a species this particular change is really fast, and a lot of signs indicate that our bodies can't keep up (I'm thinking of the rise of heart problems mainly, but also vocabulary loss, memory loss -and I know we've lost a lot of our memory capacity since the 16th century (thanks Gutenberg) but in some cases it seems to become an issue in the everyday life for some people).
She learned all that from me teaching her without a computer or tablet or anything.
She had toys tons of toys but she also had TV in a computer that we let her watch videos on.
By the time she was in kindergarten she knew how to get on a computer and start her own little videos. We restricted her educational stuff for games she played.
Them saying the kids weren't able to hold a pencil is actually not uncommon. I have seen many kids start kindergarten out that way.