Children have access to far more information than we did growing up. With just a few taps on a screen, your child is able to browse unlimited videos, photos, and information about almost any topic imaginable. Finding out how many stars are in the galaxy is a cinch with Amazon’s Alexa waiting for your child’s command. But is all that information at hand a benefit to your child’s ability to focus, think, and learn?
This quick guide provides an overview of how technology changes the ways children obtain and process information. Read on to understand the pros and cons, as well as the main considerations for parents.
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Children and Technology: Impacts on Thinking and Learning
How does technology affect a child’s ability to pay attention, think, and learn?
Pros:
- Educational apps provide fun, dynamic, and engaging learning opportunities for your child.
- Technology allows your child to access information they wouldn’t otherwise be able to easily find.
- The abundance of information strengthens your child’s research skill, teaching them how to find details and meaning in all the clutter.
Cons:
- Information overload makes it difficult to stay focused. Technology may be causing our kids to have shorter attention spans.
- With information so easy to obtain, there’s little reason to remember or retain that knowledge.
What Parents Need to Know About Children and Technology
Though it’s apparent that technology is impacting the way children find and absorb information, it’s not so clear whether the changes are bad for kids. Jim Taylor, Ph.D. at Psychology Today believes that technology isn’t necessarily making our children stupid, it’s teaching them to pay attention and think in different ways.
Instead of teaching children to memorize and retain a lot of information, technology rewards children for remembering how to locate that information, Taylor said. Knowing how to research by navigating endless distraction and less valuable data is becoming more important in this Internet age. What’s more, not needing to hold all of that information in the brain may help your child’s ability to think critically or at a deeper level.
Head on over to the Jellies blog for more resources about children and technology. We tackle popular tech parenting topics like The Trouble With Kids Video Apps and our Child’s Screen Time: Everything Your Need to Know.