Technology and Children: When It’s Good and When It’s Not

Technology has made great strides even in the world of the little ones. For example, today a child can play at programming a small robot that moves along a board, and a girl can have fun not only putting makeup on dolls, but even creating different cosmetics with her own hands, mixing basic materials as if she were working inside a real chemistry lab. These two examples concern the STEM games, conveniently defined as “Brainy Games,” aimed at stimulating children’s scientific, mathematical, technological, and engineering interests and, through fun, teaching them the basic principles of today’s world.

Speaking of technology, however, the thought also immediately turns to the tablets, through which children learn many things, including, for example, English almost without realizing it, simply by playing with apps.

When they do not have a specifically educational purpose, hi-tech toys even more easily win the preferences of the little ones. This is the case for toy drones, which offer many opportunities for fun, even just flying indoors.

Yet, faced with so much innovation and convenience, there is also the flip side of the coin, not even so hidden after all, which unfortunately threatens the very carefree childhood that these products promise to make free, stimulating, and safe. As Regaliperbambini.orgstates, a site specialized in the toys and children’s products sector, toys and other hi-tech products can prove dangerous, especially if parents do not carefully monitor how their children use them, or worse, if they consider video games, tablets, and the like as valid babysitters to entrust their children to.

Children and hi-tech products: what to watch out for

As with any other aspect of their children’s lives, parents are therefore called to monitor the time their children spend on different activities, intervening and reorganizing their days where priorities need to be reestablished. Let’s see what the risks are, case by case.

Sedentariness

First of all, it is worth addressing one of the most obvious and well-known consequences of too much time spent in front of tablets and video games, namely the lack of physical exercise. Healthy physical activity is essential for everyone, even more so for children, who are going through the age of physical development. The parent must absolutely prevent the boy or girl from neglecting movement, isolating themselves in a virtual world that risks making them lose touch with reality, and above all seriously endangers their health, exposing them to being overweight, and in severe cases even to obesity, as well as all the accompanying circulation problems.

Video game addiction

When the time spent playing video games (whether on PC, TV, or tablet) becomes excessive to the point of compromising the time devoted to objectively important things (not just studying, but even eating and sleeping), we could be facing a problem of addiction. The so-called “Gaming Disorder” was recently added by the WHO, the World Health Organization, to the list of diseases existing worldwide. A choice intended mainly to raise parents’ awareness of the risks of too much time in front of video games.

Security problems

And what about the very convenient smartwatches for kids, which, besides being digital watches with some games, are always connected and promise parents to inform them at any moment about the child’s location? The very wonderful principle that should make children safer can be violated and used in turn by a hacker to find out where the child is, exposing the child to an enormous amount of dangers.

Also at school

The risk nowadays is to consider technology a positive thing regardless, often without first experimenting, without evaluating, without stopping to think about what the negative aspects might be. And this does not only concern parents who choose to buy a Hi-Tech gift for their children, but our entire society. Recently, for example, the Minister of Education Valeria Fedeli introduced the use of mobile devices in schools as teaching tools (for example, tablets instead of books). The novelty certainly has the merit of getting children immediately in touch with the modern tools with which they will manage their future, but at the same time some pedagogy experts argue that the choice was made without first presenting research to support it. On the contrary, according to the very few studies available today on this very recent field, they argue for example that using keyboards for typing generally produces a reduction of brain connections, with the child effectively “desensorializing” and having, for example, more difficulty in effectively using a pen to write.

While we wait for new studies and research to help us better understand how to manage and use the incredible potential of technology, it is indeed best to proceed with caution, especially with children.