Sociology Consequence of Overusing Technology
What are the Consequence of Overusing Technology on a Child’s Creative Development?
The growth of internet technology after 1983 gave way to various advancements around the world due to easy accessible information. Low cost internet enabled devices like smartphones and computers have reached billions of individuals giving them access to all forms of information right at their fingertips. However, on one hand where the technology has been a boon for societal advancements, it is also causing variety of problems converting users into victims. And one potential victim are the children who are spending majority of their time addicted to the world of internet. There have been arguments that internet is spoiling the time of children, converting it to unproductive hours, and impacting their creative development. It has been argued that overuse of technology impacts the ability of the children to be creative. However, there are counter arguments to this as well. There are studies that have pointed out that internet is not that bad after all (Jackson et al, 2012). With the appropriate use of internet, it is possible that the children can be more creative. In the contemporary environment, majority of work is now being done through internet enabled technological devices. Technology has brought significant ease in whether it is learning new things or getting any kind of help. It has become a replacement of paper and pen and study materials for children. It is the active versus passive involvement with the technology that defines whether creativity of a child will get impacted instead of the technology itself. Moreover, the development of environment has gone to such an extent that technology has become inseparable part of human lives whether it is an adult or a child (Verstraeten, 2015). Thus, even properly defining the term overuse has become difficult. What can be termed overuse a decade earlier may be normal these days. Therefore, it would be worth claiming that the technology may have positive consequence to the creative development of a child.
It is not the technology itself but the way it is used defines whether it will be harmful for anyone. Tools are always innocent. It is its utility that determines if it is useful or fatal. Children are innocent and are mostly driven by emotion than rational decisions. Their faculties cannot be developed to assume that they will use whatever they get as intended. Children are inherently curious, they naturally gravitate towards things that are new and exciting. And the technology presents to them an excellent world that brings extensive amount of new things that constantly pique the interest of children. However, internet presents to the children myriad opportunities, good or bad. Internet is filled with good stuffs as well as bad stuffs. On one hand where children can grow their knowledge, understanding, and creativity by doing positive activities such as reading a book, playing puzzle and strategic games, or taking online test, on the other hand they can deteriorate their creativity by passively watching videos that do not need their active involvement, or by surfing through social media channels. Creativity comes when mind is applied actively (Hoffmann & Russ, 2012). When children solve tough problems, they apply their mind and look for solutions. This warrants engagement of their brain to identify creative ways to solve those problems. Therefore, it can be stated that what children are doing on the internet or through any technological device is more important aspect for their creativity than the technology itself. However, due to their inclination towards interesting stuffs, they often end on the wrong side of the internet, wasting their time mindlessly wandering around. And thus there is no doubt that their creative ability gets impacted. Spending hours and hours behind activities that do not actively utilize brain is certain to bring no fruitful result in terms of mental development.
Furthermore, children often fail to make mature decisions, and thus they need supervision from their parents. However, in the present scenario, parents are very busy with their jobs, struggling to fulfil their lifestyle, and they fail to spend substantial amount of time with their children. This leads to the children having lots of free and unsupervised time where they end up doing things they are not supposed to be doing. They choose activities that seem interesting to them rather than something based on their positive end result. Parents could have played significant role in directing the interest of their children towards the right thing to ensure that these children naturally look for good things over the internet.
There are significant number of recent studies that have shown that internet enabled technological devices can be a great enabler in helping children in building their creativity and learning ability. Technology is being used rampantly in several schools around the world to assist teachers and students learn better. Interestingly, the outcomes to these implementation are being found to be positive. Faculties are able to educate children in a better way through technological assistance, and children are able to learn things easily through the combination of audio and visual learning. Study conducted by Ott and Pozzi (2011) led to the understanding that the use of online games can be a creative enabler and an excellent educational tool for children. The study assessed children who played digital games for three years. Another study supporting the argument was conducted by Jackson et al (2012), who considered videogames to assess various creativity measures. The researchers claimed that “videogame playing predicted all measures of creativity” (Jackson et al, 2012; p. 370). They asserted that higher videogame playing has been found to be greatly associated with higher creativity among children. Study by Wheeler, Waite, and Bromfield (2012) conducted a study in which the impact of implementation of information and communication technology devices in primary school was studied. It was identified that it helped the children in their creative cognition, problem solving, and social interaction. Other studies have also found the correlation between the creative growth among the children and the time they spent in playing various digital games and using technology for other activities (Kirkham & Kidd, 2017; ). If one common element that can be observed among all these activities that these studies are also concerned with the particular activities that are being done by the students on their technological devices and not only the use of it. It can be inferred from here that what a child does with the technology is more important deciding factor for it being a digital enabler.
There are circumstances where the technology may not act as enabler to creativity and there are several studies that have been done in this regard. Study by Torrance (1988) found that the success of children in their life was in correlation with the rise of internet over a period of ten years. However, it should be noted here that there is a simple correlation does not entail causation. Thus, with the study of Torrance (1988), it would be difficult to assert that technology was the deciding or only deciding factor in the success of the children. There are several other studies that have claimed that overuse of technology impacts the creativity of the children (Bronson & Merrymen, 2010; Kim, 2011; Rizi et al, 2011; van Den Eijnden et al, 2010). However, most of these studies have considered involvement of children in passive activities during their assessment such as use of social media or watching random videos. A study by Christoff (2009) found that day dreaming among children is important of creative development among children. The fMRI study conducted by the researcher on the children led to the finding that the children who spend most of their time using technological devices does not result into significant amount of mental stimulation necessary for the development of children’s brain. However, one issue that can be identified with the study is that the researchers only considered mundane task being performed by the children. It seems that the study was inherently flawed because even in activities that are technology enabled and are mundane, utilize very minimum active brain involvement such as doing regular household chore. If the researchers had picked interactive activities then result might have been different.
Overall, it can be stated that there exists differences among scholars regarding the consequences of overusing technology on a child’s creative ability. However, with the points presents so far it can be stated that the technology is itself does not determine the impact on the creativity among children. It is the type of use of these technologies that determine whether children will gain creative development. It has been found that there are several studies that claim creative development among children who engage in activities that require them to use their brain to come up with solutions. Various modern video games require mental involvement of children and thus it seems obvious that the children have to think of creative solutions, which consequently warrants creative development.
References
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