The Advancements in Technology vs Child Development Essay Example

Imagine a society run by technological advancements with people who all use technology. Using technology as an advantage to solve everything, and not using critical thinking skills to solve complex problems. Innovations in technology have created a distinct environment for society, which has disabled early childhood development and affected their social skills Technology, such as phones, tablets, and computers, has deteriorated children’s early development by delaying speech development. An increased dependence on technological advancements has created a disturbance in a child’s early development and technology has given humanity the capability to be able to do more while understanding less about what we are doing, affecting our mental and physical state. 

Technology has always been improving over time since 1835 when the Morse code was created by Samuel Morse. The modern advancements of technology in this era is being a problem stating the fact that is making society more unintellectual. Not only is technology making the world inarticulate but it also negatively affects the early stage of childhood development. Technology made itself reliable, for instance, when solving a mathematical problem, when there is a calculator, but when students rely on this form of technology, it hinders their ability to solve problems because they are not using critical thinking skills. Stated by I News, “Computer-based simulations will eliminate our need for real-life experiences”.  

For children at a young age to use calculators instead of leaving the multiplication chart, would make the child brain less exposed to complex buy yet mathematical solutions. Also stated by the I Team “[...]for today’s kids to outsource knowledge acquisition, their base of knowledge is a foundation built on sand. Never having to learn anything because they have the technology to do their learning and thinking for them has left them incapable of using technology to improve upon existing bases of knowledge. 

For children not having a well stable foundation on using critical thinking skills and mostly relying on technology make the younger generation dumber. This contributes to damage to early child development. Most commonly known and well heard of is bad parenting, using an iPad to entertain a child or not a screen time schedule. The iPad method of inserting a child can be very crucial due to the fact, screen time for a child can be bad. 

Once, children start learning with their brains, their critical thinking skills will become better. As research continues on an early stage of child development, recently at a “[...]2017 Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting, scientists found a link between the amount of time toddlers spend using devices...delays in speech development. For every 30 minutes of device time, the team found that 3-year-old-and-younger infants experienced almost a 50 percent increased risk of delay in expressive speech(Manneh). Technology dependence demand should not be handled by infants due to the facts of an increased risk of expressive language delay. With delays in the communication between parents and babies can be a struggle for the infants starting school, since it is impossible for the infant to express their needs. Not only is early child development an impact, but also technology has made teens and adults dumber as well.

Since technology has become a part of a person's daily life, it makes life easier in a way.  The technology was invented to make the lives of people more easy and simple. According to a psychologist “Life has become more complex but we hardly ever notice it because technology has made complexity simpler than ever” (Chamorro-Premuzic). Once the technology has stuck like glue, people try to adapt and catch up with updated technology, seamlessly, overusing technology to take full control over their life. 

Being mindless controlled into technology, brainwashed and controlled, not able to like at a high standard due to technology solving all the complexity. This is highly correlated to teens, In Prensky’s opinion, these mental trade-offs for improved technological support are so profound that modern humans deserve a new trinomial nomenclature: Homo sapiens digital. Prensky supports this with a quote he heard from a teen: “If I lose my mobile phone, I lose half my brain”(I Team). 

Technology has become part of human dignity without it people are nothing, instead of using technology as a new starting point, teens often use technology to do all the work for them. Leading teens to become dumber and less sensitive, and more connected to technology and video games. Although video games can improve eye-coordination and quick problem solving “study published in Educational Psychology found that gaming skills have very little effect on academic performance, whereas reading activities ‘have potentially important associations with cognition and especially school tests”(Lieury). As teens play more videogames and become more addicted to it, the fewer teens read, with less reading time, test scores and IQ test score go down as well, affecting the academic performance as stated. 

With a massive amount of screen time children and teens face on a daily basis, social and communications skills drop, since children and teens don't interact with other human beings. Being attached to technology time to take with other people or have an expressive language delay. Well critically analyzed by the I Team “[..]kids today do most of their socializing through social media, and they haven’t spent a lifetime having face-to-face conversations. They’ve replaced body language with emoticons. 

They can choose what comments to acknowledge and which ones to ignore, something much more difficult in actual conversation. They don’t have to see others’ reactions when they say something offensive or hear the deafening silence after a joke falls flat. By choosing to primarily interact with people through this inferior yet more convenient form of communication, their social abilities have diminished. Social media doesn’t enhance today’s kids’ existing social interactions because they lack the skills and knowledge that are supposedly being enhanced”.

Impacting mostly the teens' ability to spark a conversation and not able to recognize the emotion behind the work teens use to talk or comment, blurs a big picture for teens. The teen's body language communication skills vanish the more dependence technology teens are. Losing ability that is necessarily and eventually becoming dumber.

Although technology can make us dumber as a whole, it can also be very beneficial, in a variety of ways. According to a PBS website, Children with autism ages 5 to 8 who had access to a tablet doubled, on average, the number of words in their vocabulary (UCLA). Technology is not always seen as bad to children. Seen in the study the children's vocabulary expands, with the right amount of screen time for a child it can have a positive outcome. Stated as before technology has a wide variety of ways of being beneficial like, “81% of over 370 Internet experts agree that "people's use of the Internet has enhanced human intelligence" (Pew Research Center). Not everyone uses technology to play video games or surf social media platforms mindless scrolling for hours. Studies also found that children strained with technology can be fatal, 

“A study by scientists from UCLA (published in Computers in Human Behavior), found that preteens who spent five days at a nature camp, with no access to technology, improved their ability to read non-verbal emotion cues significantly. They were better able to react to emotional cues both in real life and in videotaped scenes. Those who were allowed access to technology showed no such improvement”(Manneh). Time away from technology can instantly improve pre-teen understating of nonverbal emotional cues, also improving the lifestyle of the pre-teen. With time spent off the technology, it can improve ability since technology is made to give all the answer and solve all the complexity.

Innovations in technology has created a distinct environment for society, which has disabled early child development and affected their social skills. Technology, such as phones, tablets, and computers, IPad, has deteriorated children’s early development by delaying speech development. An increased dependence on technological advancements has created a disturbance in a child’s early development and technology has given humanity the capability to be able to do more while understanding less about what we are doing, affecting our mental and physical state.