The year 2016 is shaping up to produce a bumper crop of couch potatoes. Thanks to their Christmas gifts, more young people will be staring endlessly at screens instead of interacting with real people or going outside to play.
The number one, and seemingly only, gift kids wanted from Santa was something digital. The hot ticket items this holiday for kids six and up were iPads, iPods, smartphones, computers, games and gaming devices. They weren鈥檛 asking for bikes, basketballs or skateboards.
This means more time spent inside, less human contact and less activity all around.
With a young son myself, I鈥檓 lucky so far, that he has no interest in playing video games. But many of his friends do.
There will come a day when he does take an interest in Minecraft (or as the parents like to call it 鈥淢ind crap.鈥�) Some of his little five-year-old friends already know how to text emoticons. When he was two he went up to the TV and swiped the screen in an attempt to change the channel 鈥� something he learned from looking at photos of himself on mommy鈥檚 smartphone.
I am the one to suggest we play outside, not him. Once outside, he is happy to climb a tree, ride a bike or play hide and seek. I鈥檓 not putting on my tinfoil hat, saying the digital world is ruining our children. I just wonder what it all means for their social future and frankly for their waistlines.
We are having to schedule in activities rather than have them happen organically.
In my day (see how old I sound) our parents didn鈥檛 have to tell us to play outside, because we were out there every dry day until the street lights went on. Nobody made up games for us and kept us entertained, nobody helicoptered all over us.
As youngsters, we disagreed sometimes, but only had each other to work it out. An iPad may be able to show kids their house from space, but it can鈥檛 teach life skills.
There is a lot of worry these days about number of kids coming to kindergarten who are not socially ready and are unable to 鈥榮elf regulate.鈥� I don鈥檛 really understand it all, but it doesn鈥檛 sound good.
Raising a child in a digital world is both fascinating and terrifying. While there are so many benefits to the internet, making us a much more global community, reaching out and spreading awareness 鈥� there are just as many downsides. We are only just scratching the surface of what our kids鈥� attachments to their screens mean for them.
In a recent interview with 91原创 school district assistant superintendent Gord Stewart, he worried out loud about kids 鈥榟aving 鈥榥o downtime鈥� from their screens and what that is doing to their well being.
One study, indicates that gaming releases the pleasure chemical dopamine, making the experience similar to substance abuse. Years of gaming can change the reward circuitry in a child鈥檚 brain.
Even regular screen time is associated with changes in the brain involving emotional processing, attention and mood.
Because it isn鈥檛 his natural instinct, I make a concerted effort to get my son outside and in nature as much as possible.
But when the day comes 鈥� as it inevitably will 鈥� that I lose his attention to the draw of a shiny screen I will remind him, all things in moderation.
Or at least that鈥檚 the goal.
