We all understand that our children live vastly different lives in relation to sophisticated technologies and social media than we or even the children growing up ten years ago did. The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) reports that preschool-aged children spend an average of 32 hours a week watching one kind of screen or another. And a recent study done by the Kaiser Foundation showed that children between the ages of 8 and 18 spent on average 53 hours a week engaged in various kinds of technology. These numbers reflect an inordinate amount of screen time, resulting in children having fewer face-to-face interactions with others, more distractions, less time for quiet, and fewer opportunities for different kinds of play, exploration, and interaction with the natural world.
As both the library media specialist at Chiaravalle for the past 11 years and the mother of four sons, aged seven to seventeen, I find myself continually engrossed with the questions and discussion about what it means for our children to be growing up in such a highly-connected, screen-saturated world. How does a reduction in face-to-face experiences with people and the rest of the living world affect children physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually? Are we providing our children with both time and places to be free for a while from the noise and distractions of our high-tech world? What are we doing to help them develop the inner-life and critical thinking skills that will allow them one day to give mature and ethical direction to the immense power that technology holds? How do we find balance in our own busy and “connected” lives, so we can support our children finding it in theirs?
The rate and speed with which technology and social media have permeated our lives have left little opportunity to pause and ponder the effect that our engagement with these digital tools and media is having on our children and us. I believe, however, that it is essential that both educators and parents take the time to think about and discuss these kinds of questions. I welcome the opportunity on this blog to begin a conversation with the Chiaravalle community.
The kind of critical thinking and reflection that I think is important is by no means anti-technology. For my seventeen-year-old son who is nonverbal, innovations in technology have opened up the world, providing him a means to access and express himself to his wider community that was simply not possible before the iPodTouch and texting. I see the ingenuity and joy that my seven-year-old demonstrates as he makes videos of his tortoise and the family cat.
More generally, I witness every day in my work with students the potential of these tools to foster learning, creativity, and investigation; to address the particular learning needs of children with varying strengths, challenges, and interests; and to connect and entertain. I see the sense of competency and autonomy that children gain through their interactions with technology.
That said, I also believe that we must be vigilant about acknowledging and understanding the impact that technology and media can have on our children’s development and social functioning. It is essential to remember, as humans throughout time and cultures have, that the introduction of new tools and innovations alter the way we live in the world and engage with each other. The experiences that our children have with today’s technology influence how they learn and how they think.
Numerous recent studies are showing the negative effects of children spending more time playing video games and surfing the internet and less time engaged in other kinds of activities and unstructured play on both their cognitive development and health (Alliance for Childhood). Researchers are finding that being bombarded with a constant stream of electronic information reduces our ability to pay attention, remember, and to move from one task to another efficiently (Clifford Nass 2009).
Children need to be provided with many opportunities to learn multiple steps of a process or operation, to focus on a single task without interruption, to coordinate and strengthen their bodies, and to contemplate and reflect. We want our children to be able to sustain their attention and delay gratification. And I would hope, being the school librarian, that we want our children to be able to read deeply, meaning they achieve an emotional connection to the text and greater depth of interpretation. If we don’t give them the opportunities to develop and practice these skills and abilities, they won’t learn and acquire them.
Both common sense and research supports that long hours in front of screens do not provide children with the these opportunities. David Sobel writes, “When children in and out of school are using computers, they are not doing something else. If we understand what they are not doing as well as what they are doing, we will be in a better position to decide what place computers should have in children’s lives.”
I believe it simply comes down to what kinds of experiences we want for our children. And our understanding that through their experiences, children develop their skills and abilities and become who they will be. We also know that emotionally engaging encounters with the real, living world enrich childhood. Do we value childhood experiences such as combing for rocks in the sand, climbing trees with a friend, watching the robin eat the worm? Do we want our children to know the blissful state of losing oneself in a book? Do we want them to play checkers and paint pictures? Do we want them to know quiet and stillness?
Parents, however, should not feel alone in guiding their children towards a balanced use of technology and creating these types of experiences. Lowell Monke, in his essay “Unplugged Schools” argues that one of schooling’s most important tasks is “to compensate for, rather than intensify, society’s excesses.” And MIT Professor Sherry Turkle states that it is essential that a K-12 education provide children with time for stillness and contemplation.
In a myriad of ways, a Montessori education can be a great counter balance to technology excess. The Montessori classroom provides experiential and sensorial hands-on learning. It allows for practice, exploration, and reflection. Through completing a work cycle independently, children are afforded opportunities for sustained engagement and focus. In the classroom, the sophisticated processes of critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and kinesthetic coordination appropriately mature out of children’s interaction with concrete materials, caring adults, and their peers.
Perhaps most fundamentally, the Montessori philosophy understands the primacy of interpersonal relationships. In Education and Peace, Maria Montessori wrote, “The individual rarely lives a lives a life entirely apart from others; rather he is meant to associate with many others.” Research strongly indicates that face-to-face relationships with people are critical experiences for young children. Through their interactions with screens, children cannot learn the subtle but very sophisticated ways to “read people”, the fine distinctions inherent in how we use language, and, perhaps most significantly, empathy. They learn these important skills by being around and interacting with people. And through their interactions with others, our children learn to appreciate the value of deep human engagement and interdependence.
If you are interested in further reading, here are a few recommendations:
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other Sherry Turkle
Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age William Powers
iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind Gary Small & Gigi Vorgan
In the Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains Nicholas Carr
Mind in the Making:The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs Ellen Galinsky
Your Child’s Growing Mind: Brain Development and Learning from Birth to Adolescence Jane Healy
I also suggest viewing the PBS Frontline Broadcast of the documentary Digital Nation: Life on the Frontier http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/