The Traditional Childhood in the High Tech World
The Problem with the High Tech Child
The upper middle class childhood bears almost no resemblance to the childhoods of the past. Today children start watching TV at a very early age. They start structured school by age three, usually in the preschool setting. By the time they enter kindergarten, they are playing video and computer games. Later they are listening to iPods at excessive volumes, and talking on personal cell phones. They are texting, surfing the Internet, and socializing on sites like Facebook without parental supervision. This is the modern childhood and it is mostly spent indoors.
The traditional childhood is essentially they way things were in the 1950s. Children spent much more time playing outside, getting exercise (and vitamin D from the sun). They socialized with other children, not with cryptic text messages or Facebook posts, but face to face, they way people are meant to. They read many more books than they do today, and parents read aloud more. Toys were not electronic, which means the child used his imagination a lot more and didn't just pointlessly push buttons that produce jingles or flashing lights.
The United States is in the middle of a huge social experiment on our children. Is the modern childhood good for kids? I think I have a unique perspective on this question. I teach college students mathematics course so I know what the current generation of high school graduates are capable of. I am also of the last generation to grow up without the Internet (it became popular while I was in college). I will argue below that the high-tech activities, many of which are extremely addictive, produce some very bad habits that are at odds with academics. And, they take up so much time that they totally displace serious pre-college academics. In other words, kids today do not do enough playing, face to face socializing, listening to stories, exercising at the playground, sports, talking to parents and grandparents, experimenting, drawing, thinking, puzzling, exploring, building, and imagining. These twelve actions are paramount, and I claim that the best way to engage in them is in a traditional childhood. Mastering these twelve actions far surpasses any benefit early technology adaption could possible impart. Would you rather your child be a great thinker, or a whiz with a computer mouse? It takes thirty seconds to learn to use a mouse and half a lifetime to learn how to think. I will argue that you should limit technology, emphasize traditional activities, and slowly introduce kids to technology under direct supervision.
Imagine that the high-tech world is the ocean and you are a fisherman. Do you think the best way to prepare your son to follow in your steps is to give him his own little boat and fishing pole and throw him into the ocean? Of course not. He would likely drown. Instead, when he is young you would tell him stories about the sea and thus, in an enjoyable manner, teach him crucial information. You would give him a toy boat and he would play with it in a pond. When he is older, he would come along, help out, and observe you until he is independent. Giving a child video games, iPods, a web connection, TVs, cell phones, and social media is like throwing him into the ocean on a toy boat. A child's mind is just not disciplined enough to handle these highly addictive activities.
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
You might think all the high-tech gadgets your child uses might make him smarter, more creative, and land him a better job. I don't think so. Look at the current generation of new college grads (written Nov 2011). Today's 22 year-olds can not find jobs. Why hasn't the internet created an entire generation of super entrepreneurs. Why are there not a hundred thousand Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Albert Einsteins, Von Neumanns, Gausses, and Isaac Newtons revitalizing our economy. Where is the generation of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers who are supposed to send us to prosperity? The two most complicated inventions: the space shuttle and the atom bomb were both conceived by people growing up without high-tech toys. In fact, so many fundamental discoveries occurred in the past one hundred years without computers. For example, consider Quantum Theory, General Relativity, Maxwell's Laws of Electromagnetism. These are three areas of physics which use quite a bit advanced mathematics. They were completely worked out by the 1930, and are responsible for the drastic change in our technology in the past 80 years. Great things are done in our minds. They start with ideas, and after a lot of focused thinking turn into scientific theories. But the Internet is changing us: Nicholas Carr writes, in an award winning book that Google is Making us Stupid. I would add a few more adjectives: lazy, unimaginative, unsociable, of short attention span, undisciplined, unable to focus, excessively consumer gadget-iPhone-oriented, requiring instant gratification.
Should we throw out our computers? Absolutely not! They are here to stay. On the whole, they provide tremendous benefit to society. What I am saying is that the internet (and all the technologies that go with it) should be a tool for man to use. The way I see it, the Internet has a mind of its own and is using us to make itself bigger. Not by some nefarious artificially intelligence sort of way, just the opposite. It is so useful and addicting that we are welcoming it into every aspect of our lives, where it has more and more influence on the things we do and the way we do them. It is making us dumber. But it doesn't have to. If we raise our children correctly, they can learn to use it, rather than it using them.
Neuroplasticity
At the heart of the problem is neuroplasticity, but it is also the solution. Neuroplasticity is a recently discovered, though widely accepted, scientific theory on how the brain works. Suppose you have a hypothetical job where the only thing you do is put index cards in alphabetical order. In the beginning you will be slow and error prone. However, after doing the job for 6 months you will be extremely efficient and accurate. Why? Practice makes perfect? The answer is neuroplasticity. When you alphabetize your mind is utilizing certain neural circuits. When you keep practicing, your brain actually restructures itself, changes, so it can do the job using less energy. The human brain uses a lot of calories, and if the brain is good at one thing, it is conserving calories. So, the more you do a particular activity, the more your brain changes to accommodate that activity. The opposite is also true: the less you do an activity, the less suited your brain becomes to do the diminished activity. When a child learns to read, he doesn't just store a lot of rules like a computer. He actually reconfigures his brain to read. This is why kids take a year or two to become proficient. The longer one does a certain activity, the stronger the connections in the brain become to support the activity.
Neuroplasticity also has a dark side. When someone uses the Internet, they are basically reading and writing many short snippets of text. Constant interruptions distract the user. The user does not focus on anything substantial. Instead, a hundred trivial tasks are performed. Does many trivial tasks amount to anything serious? No. The Internet discourages deep, focused thinking. It discourages problem solving. Why think about anything when you can just google the answer. So, neuroplasticity converts the person to a shallow, easily distracted thinker. The Internet and its related activities are extremely addictive. So you spend more and more time, and a vicious cycle ensues until you spend all your time online. Now you go to college. Do you think you can succeed in an engineering curriculum containing, at the very beginning, 25 credits of advanced math and 16 credits of physics. Studying science requires deep, focused thinking. It is the opposite of how people think when they use the web. Innovation occurs when people think long and hard. The addicted Internet user not only does not have the mental circuitry to handle challenging subjects, he does not have the ability to turn off the Internet long enough to try to change. The older one gets, the harder it is to change behaviors. Our minds are still plastic, though not as plastic. A child's mind is like Play-Do, the young adult, like modeling clay.
The thought of neuroplasticity changing your brain to mush is a little disheartening, but properly used, I think it is really a good thing. It means you don't have to accept failure or mediocrity. If a child is failing in math, don't just hire a tutor to help him pass his exams. Rather, higher someone who can help him learn to think properly, to help him rewire his brain so he can start helping himself. If your child reads poorly, teach him better techniques and eventually he will master the skill. The key is to challenge the child. If the mind is not challenged, it stays the same or declines. A challenge forces the brain to work harder, and then neuroplasticity looks for shortcuts, so it doesn't have to work so hard. The result is a reconfigure to a more efficient state. The correct way to think about learning and teaching is through a molding the modeling clay approach. We waste so much time and money simply trying to fill children's heads with facts. Instead, the game should be to convince the child that academics is worth putting effort into. In other words, teachers need to be salesmen.
Benefits of the Traditional Childhood in the High Tech Age
Why does a low tech childhood help in a high tech world? Because it can better teach creativity, wisdom, patience, respect, empathy, focus, deep thinking, imagination, perspective, communication, and confidence. The idea is to first impart these virtues to the child, and when, and only when the child has matured, slowly bring him into the ocean of our high tech world. Along the way (as the child ages from the terrible twos to the terrible teen age years) wet their feet in the technology. Expose them but don't immerse them. Sparingly let them see a few videos, once in a while. Let them play with some educational games on your iPad. Show them Wikipedia and the really worthwhile ideas the Internet has engendered.
Read Aloud Books
The first and most important step is to read aloud. Books are the instruction manual for life. Children learn from observation, but only so much observation is possible. The other way they learn is indirectly, from stories. Almost every book contains ideas and lessons, and over many years, ten thousand books, read aloud, translate to a mind that is familiar with many ideas and social situations. Empathy, the art of knowing what goes through other people's minds, can be learned from novels by identifying with the the point of view character. When you enjoy fiction, you place yourself in the character's shoes? Why else do people cry from sad books (or movies)? How to deal with school bullies and many other social conflicts can also be learned from the countless novels and picture books that address these issues.
TV and Video Games
People have hypothesized that the television media, itself, is harmful to the mind. Whether it is or not, is not so important. I think the main problem is content. Most television and videos encourage the three minute scene attention span. Watch some kid's shows and see how often the scene and perspective changes. This technique uses our instincts to watch out for moving things, and it is the opposite of deep thinking. In fact, little thinking goes on in front of a TV. With neuroplasticity in mind, regular TV will optimize some one's brain to be a couch potato, which is totally at odds with serious academics. Once in a while, preselected videos shouldn't do any hard. Don't let them watch regular television. Movies are good when the child is ill and you want him stay in bed. Or, when the parent is having a parenting crises. If you have a parenting crises every night, you might need to hire an extra baby sitter.
Computers, iPods, and Smart Phones
Computers are making their way into school. They are really great because now teachers don't have to grade papers any more and while the kids are glued to the screen, the teachers can finally get some piece and quiet. I am just joking a little! Computers do provide individual attention and learning speed. On the whole, though, I do not like computers in the classroom. I feel that students should be discovering the material by themselves while they are learning. The teacher would be a mentor, nudging the students in the right direction while the students do most of the work. The way things are setup now, the teacher does all the work and the students act like sponges, trying to absorb material. In high school and college, computers are very useful, but I don't think they do anything at the younger level other than drill and kill (do a problem, then a similar problem, and so on until the problem is no longer interesting or challenging).
At home, once in a while let them play a computer game. Show them how to use available technology and let them master the trivial aspects, like how to control an iPod, the mouse, touch screens, a keyboard. By the time they grow up everything should be voice controlled, like Star Trek and the new iPod (Nov 2011) and I seriously doubt they will use keyboards or mice.
Cell phones should be for emergency use only. Or to contact the guardian. If your child spends all her time electronically socializing, she won't do anything worthwhile. She won't read, study, or think. Just blog. Let her use the house phone, and let her socialize in-person. Only though in-person communication does a child learn to read expressions. Young kids are getting arthritis of the thumb from texting too much. They are hunching over phones ruining their good posture, walking in streets not looking where they are going. Adults are even driving while texting. With so many people distracted on mobile devices, who is doing any work these days?
The Best Toys
I believe that the best toys are generally ones that don't tell you what to do. My favorite are the Lego products. If your child is young enough to put small toys in his mouth, start with a large set of Duplo Legos. Duplos are oversized Legos that are too big to choke on, and they are compatible with standard Legos. When your child is older, try a large set of thousands of small legos and pick up a few model sets. The models have special pieces and instructions for building pretty neat objects, like cars, trucks, and buildings. The sets are useful in teaching building techniques, and the pieces can later be incorporated into the standard Lego pieces. There are many, many other times of building toys out there. Try them all out. Some allow you to build models that are powered. The idea is to get your child to start creating things. Many electronic games are too structured and they force you to think inside the box, like a video game.
The other classic toy is the doll or action hero. Someone pointed out to me that they are really the same thing, but after thinking about it for a little while, a large battle fought out with action heros seems to involve a lot more planning than doll scenarios. Being a guy, I don't understand why girls love dolls so much, but they do, and they use them to make up stories. Every kid seems to do this, so it is probably something that kids need to do to develop properly. Once again, make sure more addictive electronic distractions don't interfere with these role playing games. I have a list of some of my favorite toys here.
Get Your Kids to Play Outside
The biggest tragedy in the last 20 years is the loss of outdoor time. In recent years people have become terrified of the sun, even though every life form on earth pretty much depends on it. When you are exposed to strong sun (where your shadow is shorter than yourself) and you are not using sunblock, your skin produces a potent hormone called vitamin D. Without sufficient vitamin D, all sorts of bad things happen. Even families who don't fear the sun don't go outside because they are playing video games and watching TV. This is a shame because exercise is so important. I think kids should play on the monkey bars, run around, play ball, and play sports whenever the weather is decent. Many kids today are very overweight because they are not made to sit around all day in front of computer and TV screens. We are made to move around and exercise. Not only are kids sitting around too much, but they also sit with poor posture, like an old person, hunched over a console. This will lead to a stiff neck and back pain at a much earlier age than normal. I see so many young people with the head forward posture (their upper spine looks like the letter S), even while they are not using their laptops. Make sure that your child uses an ergonomic setup, so they are not hunched over a screen. See OSHA's recommendations.
The new technology that came out of the computer revolution has many benefits to mankind. It brings people close who are very far away, speeds up the sharing of ideas, brings down oppressive governments, and levels the playing field in so many different areas. These are the macro benefits. But, on the micro level, it means many people will lose their jobs due to increased automation and efficiency. Many of our current jobs will be automated, or outsourced to cheaper countries, and where will it leave us? No one knows exactly what the jobs of the future will require, but assuredly, they will need creative thinkers and problem solvers, skill that computers currently do not have. If we let our children be raised and taught by computers, we can never expect them to think outside of the box. High tech gadgets in the hands of children are extremely addictive, and at best they distract from learning rigorous academics, and at worst they make learning near impossible.