Recently I visited primary school kids in my village# primary
school.It was a pleasant experience.Children did not have# smart phones. In my city school I have met more children under the age of five than I can count, when I spoke to them or ask them a question, they reply without making # eye contactI read years ago that one of the major problems with#phones is that parents no longer make eye contact with their children. This is a big problem because learning# language, connecting with others, and attention# spans are all super influenced by eye contact which is missing because of use of smart phones.
My sister is a teacher of third grade kids and she said none of them make eye contact with her. Furthermore, after spending a whole year with their classmates,she noticed her class kids don’t know more than half of the names of their# classmates. That didn’t happen in our school days, We knew every kid of our class.
To correct this unpleasant situation, my sister now makes her third graders say hello to each other, every single student in the class, by name every morning while making eye contact.
I’ve also noticed in cities hardly any kid play outside. When we were small my #neighborhoods were filled with kids outside.We used to ride bikes or play sports . Now to my surprise all outside places of playing are empty everywhere .All these# odd happening have strong reasons and my submission why it is so is following.
1.I know a lot of parents of little kids use # iPads as a # babysitter.
I see how # tempting it is, it keeps children quiet at dinner or when they’re# bugging their parents. But, I think it’s not a right approach to do so.It is going to have some #detrimental effects on creativity or social interaction skills of small kids.
2.Another observation which made me think deeply is when kids come to # middle and high school, I noticed they’re all #glued to their phones. They take #social media with them everywhere. It’s like they never leave school talking to friends #online. 3. First of all, that’s super distracting. I myself wouldn’t have focused as well in school if I had a smart phone at that time. Second, phone indue s# anxiety. High school was enough hard for me, I distinctly remember when I used to go home, home at night I was a #uncool kid. I can’t imagine having my whole life on display in #smart phone when my little # brain was still developing and I had so much anxiety.
My observations written in this article might sound like I’m a very old woman who hates on technology.But friends these are my observations.Its high time we should think #positive forabout our next generation while using smart phone technology for teaching. Moral of story-I just feel that the current #generation is a # science experiment as being the # first generations raised by technology, and I think we’re starting to see the effects of it.Let us be #responsible citizen/parents and use technology for making positive impact on next generation. Sukarma Thareja
Alumnus IITK
India
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