How does technology influence children's lives?
How much tech is good for kids? And can tech be really good for them? Do we deprive kids of their creativity, imagination, and connection to the living world around them exposing them to technological progress? Thank you for your answers.
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Oct 11, 2019
The slice of technology most used by children is made up of the social media. If you look at the founders, directors, and C-suite executives across all social media companies, you will realise that their children are not on social media. At least not in as public a capacity as the children of the masses.
Now if you examine social media, you will notice that they are designed to keep viewers engaged so as to squeeze the most amount of Ad impressions out of them. The benefit of social media hardly overlap's with the child's benefit.
However, the parents can strategically introduce technology into their children's lives to be optimally beneficial and minimally harmful. If parents don't set up this plan, then their kids are operating on the corporations' plans which cannot possibly be better.
Here are a few pointers towards technology regulation in children's lives:
1) Half day technology blackouts, every day. This counters technologies geared towards addiction, without completely depriving the child of possible access benefits.
2) Once a month, zero technology day. The key is to plan this day to be so much fun outside that the kids look forward to it instead of dreading it.
3) Once a week round-up of the best things the kids did on social media, or using technology. This keeps parents in the loop regarding the kids' priorities. It also keeps the kids conscious of how productive or unproductive their time is. And finally, it puts on autopilot the fact that children will try to actively seek valuable things to do on social media. I would attach allowance/pocket-money privileges to this round-up.
And unless a child is old enough to go through 1, 2, and 3, in my plan, I would not allow them to use technology without supervision.
Hope this helps.