Twenty years ago when I was a kiddo, life was a much different place. Instead of Xbox’s, we had Power Rangers. Instead of Spongebob Squarepants, we had Steve Urkel. Cell phones were not popular, but now we have ten different options within the mobile device realm. While we do not get into the “is it evil or good” to have these changes, specifically in technology, we do have some facts for you from the infographic below.
- Children under 2 spend 53 minutes a day watching television.
- 73% of parents say they want to limit their children’s TV watching, but many do not put up barriers or rules to prevent it.
- More than three fourths of teachers use media and technology as a teaching tool in schools.
[HT Social Media Today | Image via Early Childhood Education Degrees]
Is this pervasiveness of technology evil or not?
sempei13 says
Children under 2 spend twice as much time watching tv and videos as reading? You mean to say that kids that can’t read spend more time doing what they CAN do than what they won’t be able to do for 3-5 years? Shocking!!!!!
The ancient Greeks were afraid of the influence of books. This is just technophobia. Information is information. If a person learns something in a book it is no more valuable than if they’d learned it on television or from the *gasp* internet.
BTW, it doesn’t matter what people think something does. It matters what it actually does. The last two sections about parental and teacher concerns just mean that they read infographics like this one. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What about all the kids that are programming now? What about all the budding videographers and musicians? What about the kids who were stuck in school until their parents found Kahn academy? No mention of the good things, just the bad.
End of rant.
Paul
seventy8Productions says
To point at the reading part of it, I believe that includes parents reading to their children, which is sad that parents do not interact with their children… To the second two sections, have you read John Dyer’s book From the Garden to the City? A great read that heavily influences my idea of technology’s effect on people.
To the end of all of this, I understand what you say, but my BIGGEST push back is how much we use technology to babysit our children. It is not addressed above, but we need to be interacting with each other and for our children, we MUST show them direct love instead of handing them an iPad.
sempei13 says
You make a great point, but the infographic isn’t talking about parenting style, but the technology itself. Notice that I could let my 11 year old read books 12 hours a day and this would be seen as virtuous, but if my daughter and I watch a 2 hour movie and discuss it, that’s 2 hours in front of a screen and 2 hours of talking, not 4 hours in a shared activity.
I don’t disagree that parents should parent, but it almost sounds like the “evil screens” are knocking down the doors and making kids watch them, not “parents shouldn’t let technology babysit their kids.”
seventy8Productions says
Ummm… I didn’t interpret it that way, but I can understand how someone with that bent would. I guess it’s a matter of manipulating the content to have it say what you want it to, but I actually gathered more towards the “people are worried about the safety of their children” than “technology is evil.”