Technology is great to a certain degree. If I look back nearly 25 years ago when I joined the Air Force the most tech thing I had saw were the F-15s on the flightline. A few years later I saw the first UAVs and the F-22. I had a house phone, a tower computer, carried a beeper for alert and as a photographer I shot and processed film. When I took college courses I went to a classroom and took tests and wrote essays with paper and pencil.
Most of us think of tech today as the newest phone that shoots better photos than my first camera, has more computing power than my tower computer, and allows me to listen to music, check email, access apps and do a whole lot more. This makes life easier when it comes to certain things. Some think of it as the Ring doorbell security system. Others think of controlling their house via Alexa. Regardless of how you view technology most people see the advantages and some see how the increase in technology through Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can present a challenge for humanity.
My son is 17 and a high school senior. He has grown up with technology. From the trips to the store when he played on a tablet to the DVDs he could watch every time we drove anywhere he was constantly being stimulated. As he has grown, computers and phones have been a big part of his life. When COVID-19 began his high school shut down and then he had more time to play games on Nintendo Switch or the computer. He was able to stay in touch with friends through games or texting.
The shift to home schooling with limited teacher interaction put the teaching on the parents and reduced the responsibility of the student. The ability to fulfill class requirements through a virtual connection was beneficial to keeping students active and moving along in class but each home is different. In the classroom every student has the same desk and same teacher. At home internet may be slow and other distractions may keep students from doing as well as they could. Additionally, putting more responsibility on students to figure out things by watching YouTube videos or other resources isn’t adequate teaching.
According to an article by Nissim-Matheis (2021), “ Even if your child wasn’t struggling with attention, initiation, or follow through prior to the pandemic, your child may be struggling now. Virtual learning, half-day in-person schedules, and social distancing have created a COVID-fueled attention problem that is pervasive and real.”
“Many of my students are struggling to get started on their assignments even if they are motivated. If they are able to get started, they struggle to maintain their focus to work through their assignment and complete it. If they complete it, they may forget to actually hand it in. The number of potholes that are faced by our teens is immense and students who were once “on top of it” are also struggling.”
Once in-person school stopped, stores closed, any many people were relegated to telework or even worse let go from their jobs children spent nearly every minute with their parents. Many parents used technology to fill the gaps when they were partially present or fully present. Letting a child be online for hours on end playing video games or watching videos didn’t do much for learning.
The study of technology in schools has highlighted both the positives and negatives but doesn’t do much to look at the long-term effects.
In adolescence and young adulthood, the presence of technology in learning environments has also been associated with (but has not been shown to be the cause of) negative variables such as attention deficits or hyperactivity, feeling lonely, and lower grades. Multitasking is not something our brains can do while learning, and technology often represents not just one more “task” to have to attend to in a learning environment, but multiple additional tasks due to the variety of apps and programs installed on and producing notifications through a single device (Mohammed, 2019).
When students go from one screen to another to another and don’t have a break from technology their brains are continuously stimulated which impacts their learning and development.
We are living in a confusing age. On one hand, parents would like to educate their children using the latest tech inventions. On the other hand, parents also fear that their introduction could foster addictive behavior or expose children to inappropriate content (Chen, 2018).
A survey conducted in 2020 by C.S. Mott Children's Hospital highlighted that 86 percent parents believe that their adolescent children are spending excessive amount of time playing video games.
The health survey from Mott revealed some results from the parent survey. Some of these were that twice as many teenager boys are spending more time gaming compared to teenage girls. On an average according to the parent survey, adolescent boys are spending around three hours a day playing video games. Around 9 in 10 parents surveyed said that the children were spending too much time gaming so much so that their daily and family interactions are affected.
The survey shows that gaming is interfering with sleep in 44 percent cases, with social interactions in 44 percent cases, with friendships with peers who are not gaming with them by 33 percent, with homework in 34 percent and with extracurricular activities in 31 percent cases. For this poll the team looked at 963 parents of at least one teenager kid aged between 13 and 18 years (Mandal, 2020).
When children disconnect from video games and go to sleep the cycle starts all over the next morning by logging into a computer and conducting their school work. Students today are considerably more tech savvy than two or three generations behind them but each generation has their own knowledge, skills and abilities.
Gen Z have been named the “first global generation,” growing up in a society where global content and information are generally more freely available, and where one-click shopping for goods from anywhere in the world is taken for granted. This may set them on the path to pioneer nomadic careers and develop new ways to make money online.
With the option of jobs being done remotely and online the disconnect from the computer will be more difficult for those that do nearly everything virtually.
As online learning becomes more prevalent students may ask why the in-person option is worth it.
Technology is great for many things but we shouldn’t throw out the old ways of doing things because they are harder or less convenient.
Resources:
Chen, Q. (2018). The hidden costs of letting your children be raised by screens and smart devices. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/the-hidden-costs-of-letting-your-children-be-raised-by-screens-and-smart-devices.html
Mandal, A, (2020). Kids spending too much time gaming. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200120/Kids-spending-too-much-time-gaming.aspx
Mohammed, S. (2019). Is technology good or bad for learning? https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/05/08/is-technology-good-or-bad-for-learning/
Nissim-Matheis, L. (2021). Understanding Teens' Invisible Struggles During COVID-19. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/special-matters/202104/understanding-teens-invisible-struggles-during-covid-19
