Children and gadgets

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In some families, as soon as a child learns to sit, he is seated in front of a screen. The home screen completely supplanted grandmother's fairy tales, mother's lullabies, conversations with his father. The screen becomes the main "educator" of the child. According to UNESCO, 93% of today's children 3-5 years old look at the screen 28 hours a week, i.e. about 4 hours a day, which far exceeds the time spent with adults. This "harmless" activity suits not only children, but also parents. In fact, the child does not bother, does not ask for anything, does not hooligan, does not take risks, and at the same time receives impressions, learns something new, joins modern civilization. When parents buy new videos, computer games or set-top boxes for a child, parents seem to care about his development and try to keep him busy with something interesting. However, this seemingly harmless occupation is fraught with serious dangers and can entail very sad consequences not only for the child's health (quite a lot has already been said about visual impairments, lack of movement, damaged posture), but also for his mental development. Nowadays, as the first generation of "screen kids" is growing up, these consequences are becoming more evident.

The first of these is a lag in the development of speech. In recent years, both parents and teachers are increasingly complaining about delays in speech development: children begin to speak later, speak little and badly, their speech is poor and primitive. Special speech therapy help is needed in almost every kindergarten group. This picture is observed not only in our country, but throughout the world. As special studies have shown, in our time, 25% of 4-year-old children suffer from speech development disorders. In the mid-70s, speech deficit was observed in only 4% of children of the same age. Over the past 20 years, the number of speech disorders has increased more than 6 times!

However, what does television have to do with it? After all, a child sitting at the screen constantly hears speech. Doesn't saturation with audible speech contribute to speech development? Does it matter who is talking to the child - an adult or a cartoon character?

The difference is huge. Speech is not an imitation of other people's words and not memorizing speech stamps. Mastering speech at an early age occurs only in live, direct communication, when the baby not only listens to other people's words, but responds to another person when he himself is included in the dialogue. Moreover, it is turned on not only by hearing and articulation, but by all its actions, thoughts and feelings. In order for a child to speak, it is necessary that speech be included in his concrete practical actions, in his real impressions and, most importantly, in his communication with adults. Speech sounds that are not addressed to the child personally and do not imply a response do not affect the child, do not prompt action and do not evoke any images. They remain an empty phrase.

Modern children for the most part use too little speech in communication with close adults. Much more often they absorb TV programs that do not require their response, do not react to their attitude and which he himself cannot influence in any way. Tired and silent parents are replaced by a screen. But the speech emanating from the screen remains a poorly comprehended set of other people's sounds, it does not become "one of our own". Therefore, children prefer to be silent, or they express themselves with shouts or gestures.

However, external spoken language is only the tip of the iceberg, behind which is a huge block of internal speech. After all, speech is not only a means of communication, but also a means of thinking, imagination, mastering one's behavior, it is a means of realizing one's experiences, one's behavior, and consciousness of oneself in general. In inner speech, not only thinking occurs, but also imagination, and experience, and any idea, in a word, everything that makes up the inner world of a person, his mental life. It is the dialogue with oneself that gives that inner form that can hold any content, which gives stability and independence to a person. If this form has not developed, if there is no inner speech (and therefore no inner life), the person remains extremely unstable and dependent on external influences. He simply is not able to hold on to any content or strive for any goal. The result is an inner emptiness that needs to be constantly replenished from the outside.

We can observe clear signs of the absence of this inner speech in many modern children.

Recently, teachers and psychologists more and more often note in children an inability to self-deepen, to concentrate on any lesson, a lack of interest in business. These symptoms were summarized in the picture of a new disease "concentration deficit". This type of disease is especially pronounced in learning and is characterized by hyperactivity, situational behavior, increased absent-mindedness. Such children do not linger on any activities, are quickly distracted, switch, feverishly strive to change impressions, however, they perceive diverse impressions superficially and fragmentarily, without analyzing or connecting with each other. According to a study by the Institute for Media Pedagogy and Ecology (Stuttgart, Germany), this is directly related to screen exposure. They need constant external stimulation, which they are used to receiving from the screen.

It has become difficult for many children to perceive information by ear - they cannot hold the previous phrase and connect individual sentences, understand, grasp the meaning. Hearing speech does not evoke images and lasting impressions in them. For the same reason, it is difficult for them to read - understanding individual words and short sentences, they cannot hold and connect them, as a result, they do not understand the text as a whole. Therefore, they are simply not interested, it is boring to read even the best children's books.

Another fact noted by many teachers is a sharp decline in the imagination and creative activity of children. Children lose the ability and desire to occupy themselves independently, to play meaningfully and creatively. They make no effort to invent new games, to compose fairy tales, to create their own imaginary world. The lack of their own content is reflected in the relationship of children. They are not interested in communicating with each other. It has been noticed that communication with peers is becoming more and more superficial and formal: children have nothing to talk about, nothing to discuss or argue about. They prefer to press a button and wait for new ready-made entertainment. Own independent, meaningful activity is not only blocked, but (!) Does not develop, and does not even arise, does not appear.

But, perhaps, the clearest evidence of the growth of this inner emptiness is the increase in childish cruelty and aggressiveness. Of course, boys have always fought, but recently the quality of children's aggressiveness has changed. Previously, when sorting out the relationship in the schoolyard, the fight ended as soon as the enemy was lying on the ground, i.e. defeated. It was enough to make me feel like a winner. In our time, the winner with pleasure kicks the lying one, having lost all sense of proportion. Empathy, pity, helping the weak are less and less common. Cruelty and violence become something common and familiar, the feeling of a threshold of permissiveness is erased. At the same time, children are not aware of their own actions and do not foresee their consequences.

And of course, the scourge of our time is drugs. 35% of all Russian children and adolescents already have experience of drug addiction, and this number is growing catastrophically. But the first experience of addiction appears precisely in connection with the screen. Going into drugs is a vivid evidence of inner emptiness, the inability to find meanings and values in the real world or in oneself. Lack of life guidelines, internal instability and emptiness require their filling - new artificial stimulation, new "pills of happiness".

Of course, not all children have the listed "symptoms" in full. But the trends in changing the psychology of modern children are quite obvious and cause natural anxiety. Our task is not to frighten once again the horrifying picture of the decline in the morals of modern youth, but to understand the origins of these alarming phenomena.

But is it really the screen and the computer to blame? Yes, if we are talking about a small child who is not ready to adequately perceive information from the screen. When the home screen absorbs the strength and attention of the baby, when the tablet replaces play, active actions and communication with close adults for a small child, it certainly has a powerful formative, or rather deforming, influence on the formation of the psyche and personality of a growing person. The consequences and scale of this influence may affect much later in the most unexpected areas.

Childhood is the period of the most intense formation of the inner world, the construction of one's personality. It is almost impossible to change or make up for lost time in this period in the future. The age of early and preschool childhood (up to 6-7 years) is the period of origin and formation of the most general fundamental human abilities. The term "fundamental" is used here in the most literal sense - this is what the entire building of a person's personality will be built on and supported.

In the history of pedagogy and psychology, a long way has passed until the moment when the originality and features of the first years of a person's life were noticed and recognized, when it was shown that children are not small adults. But now this peculiarity of childhood is again pushed into the background. This is happening under the pretext of "modern requirements" and "protection of the rights of the child." It is believed that a small child can be treated in the same way as an adult: he can be taught anything (and he can and should assimilate the necessary knowledge). Sitting a baby in front of a TV or computer, parents believe that he, like an adult, understands what is happening on the screen. But this is far from the case. I recall an episode in which a young father, left with a two-year-old baby at home, clumsily fussing around the house, and the child calmly sits in front of the TV and watches an erotic film. Suddenly the "movie" ends and the child starts yelling. Having tried all possible means of consolation, dad puts the baby in front of the washing machine window, in which colored linen is spinning and flashing. The child abruptly falls silent and calmly looks at the new "screen" with the same fascination as he used to watch TV.

This example clearly illustrates the originality of the perception of a screen image by a small child: he does not delve into the content and plots, does not understand the actions and relationships of the characters, he sees bright moving spots that attract his attention like a magnet. Having got used to such visual stimulation, the child begins to feel the need for it, looking for it everywhere. A primitive need for sensory sensations can obscure the entire wealth of the world to a child. He doesn't care where to look - if only it flickered, moved, made noise. In about the same way, he begins to perceive the surrounding reality …

As you can see, children's “equal rights” in using the media not only does not prepare them for their future independent life, but steals their childhood and prevents them from taking the most important steps in personal development.

The above does not mean at all a call to exclude television and computers from the lives of children. Not at all. It is impossible and pointless. But in early and preschool childhood, when the inner life of the child is just taking shape, the screen carries a serious danger.

Watching cartoons for small children should be strictly dosed. At the same time, parents should help children comprehend the events taking place on the screen and empathize with the heroes of the film.

Computer games can be introduced only after the child has mastered the traditional types of children's activities - drawing, construction, perception and composition of fairy tales. And most importantly - when he learns to independently play ordinary children's games (accept the roles of adults, invent imaginary situations, build the plot of the game, etc.)

It is possible to provide free access to information technology only outside preschool age (after 6-7 years old), when children are already ready to use it for its intended purpose, when the screen will be for them precisely a means of obtaining the necessary information, and not an imperious master over their souls and not their main educator.