“Mom! I can Spell your name!” Look at him: he’s only four years old and he’s fearlessly riding the wave of the future. Depending on my preferences, he’d be running outside with other neighborhood kids, getting dizzy spinning on a swing, or climbing a curly Slide Sun and Air cool, right?
The problem is that we can no longer rely on the “village” to help us raise our children. As a result, unsupervised outdoor playtime is generally off-limits for young children and risky for teens. It’s sad, but not a complete disaster because today’s children have options that were not available to previous generations. And that’s exactly how it should be.
What hasn’t changed is the way some adults still have difficulty keeping up with children. “Oh God! The average teenager texts 3,339 times a month!” I’m not sure I’d send fewer messages per month on such antiquated lines as email, but am I supposed to be surprised that tech-savvy young people are great communicators? No, they just do what they like, as children usually do.
Yes, there is a lot of buzz on the web about how screen time harms children. Some research links it to psychological problems, poor social skills, obesity, sleep disorders, repetitive stress injuries, and even death. Those are all real risks and I won’t argue otherwise. However, I don’t think the screen is the problem. As always, I blame the brains in charge (that’s us, mom and dad).
[Read the rest of Kay Holt’s article at GeekMom!]
