By KHADICHA MUKAMBETOVA
These days one year old kids know how to use technology. This is wrong; babies shouldn’t know how to use an iPhone or how to work an iPad.
Many adults have smartphones and tablets, and their kids of course would be very interested in a touch screen device. Kids get engaged in games, videogames, videos etc. The total of active apps that are available to download is 930,417. 5,268 of those were downloaded just for this month that is 188 per day. We all know of a child or children that are under 5 that know how to work a smartphone or someone that is hooked to playing games. These two ladies were interviewed for an article from The New York Times. “The little one loves to go through the pictures and name who’s in them, see her grandma and her nanny,” said Tina Deutsch, a mother of two and four year old girls. If you think about that, why doesn’t she look through printed out pictures or an album? And then, there these type of parents, “I know if I need Zoe to be quiet for an hour, I can hand her the iPad and I won’t hear from her,” said Dr. Laurel Glaser, a Philadelphia physician with two daughters, Zoe, 5, and Maya, 1.
Now, there are parents that download apps for education that are very useful for a child. But a kid that is under five shouldn’t know how to use smartphone, it’s a way of getting them started, they get so into it, then years later they want one themselves. Younger kids should spend more time in reading books, learning how to draw by hand and many more activities that don’t involve technology. Kids learn and understand more when someone reads to them or shows pictures. See the thing with technology for kids who play games, is that they get so much of it in their head and get addicted, it builds up more imagination. For example, if a kid is playing a game that involves violence, then the kid acts just like in the game, imagining that he/she are fighting someone. When looking at printed material, the brain and eyes understand exactly what distance at which to focus. When looking at a video screen, the eyes are constantly changing focus, making the eyes very tired.
I believe kids can learn faster and better from books, and writing by hand, communicating in person, and being more active in life. Even though it may be too late to change that for the kids who are growing now, it may be a thought for the young ones that will have kids later in life.