Avoid digital media. They make you and your kids thick, stupid, aggressive, lonely, sick and unhappy. It believes German neuroscientist.
If children continue to use digital media as now we will in the future see more dementia and their life will be drastically shortened, believes the German neurologist Manfred Spitzer.
– Restrict use in children, it is the only demonstrably has a positive effect. Every day a child spending without digital media, won time, he said.
Children are dependent on digital media such as tablet in increasingly younger age, and use only increases.
Spitzer believes that the introduction of this in kindergartens and schools rather must be limited sharply, and that very young children can not use digital media and without being harmed by it.
Being addicted
We use ever more digital media and are logged constant. Meanwhile we introduce the use of the internet and digital “gadgets” in their children’s lives from the very small.
– It is dangerous, because children learn much faster than adults, and thus takes on all the negative aspects digital media faster, says Spitzer.
Last year he released the book “Digital Dementia – everything about how digital media affects you and your kids”, where he confronts digital media.
He believes young people lose the ability to think for themselves and are former dementia, because their brain is weakened by using the internet, smart phones and tablets.
– The brain shrinks because it no longer becomes full utilized, the pressure subjected to destroy nerve cells and newly formed cells do not survive because they are not in use. Digital dementia proves significantly through failure to harness and control mental abilities fully, knowledge about what just happened, where you are, and ultimately also who you are, he said.
Teacher much new
He says that the brain changes permanent by how it is used, and that where children previously learned to count, read and write on paper, an increasing use of data to teach them this weaken knowledge.
Not all look equally black on the use of digital aids. Four kindergartens in Asker, located in Borg zone, is on a Scandinavian project, Ilek River, where they use tablet active. Here the clear advantages of introducing the smallest to digital aids.
– Children learn in different ways, and we must maintain better everyday. Children in kindergarten will meet digital tools as a source of play, communication and retrieval of knowledge, says Fredrik Ekren between manager Borg zone kindergartens.
– We see that tablet inspires and awakens the curiosity among the children in a new way . It is a concrete, visual and dynamic medium that children communicate with and through and look much over.
– Using Tablet as a language tool, we give a new dimension in the development of language and knowledge. The tablet gives us better opportunities to let the children describe their own lives. There we learn adults much of which we can use further in the daily company of kids, he said.
User apps actively
Kindergartens use multiple applications that they believe strengthens children’s learning.
– The one called “Book Creator”, it is a digital book. The children take pictures from tours, adventure and other thrilling from the nursery and put words on their own experiences in the book. It gives us the opportunity to see children’s language development from pronunciation to sentence structure. Educationists and parents can follow their children’s progress by watching the digital book, tells Ekren.
Spitzer believes that language learning is impaired by the use of digital media.
– They are harmful to learning, and thus also for small children’s mental development. Learning letters by pressing a keyboard leads to poorer ability to recognize letters compared with writing practice with pencil. It has been observed in many studies. Manual writing means that we learn better, says Spitzer.
Spitzer tells how perception, thoughts, experiences, feelings and actions leaves called memory slots.
– Use of computers in early kindergarten age can lead to attention disorders. In childhood it can cause reading disorders. In school age, signs of increasing social isolation, and it is less physically active. This goes forward by US and later also German studies, he said.
Counter fingers
– In virtually all cultures, children learn to count using your fingers: They are always visible and available and can therefore always be associated with the number of things that will be counted, said Spitzer.
He stressed that this method has great significance for how we handle numbers.
– Studies have shown that the children in kindergarten who are good with their hands, later become adept in mathematics. It is thus training the fingers that improves math skills.
The hand also plays a role when one learns specific individual things, knowledge and numbers.
– Whoever want kids to be mathematicians or specialists in information technology, should also ensure finger rules than laptops in kindergarten. And whoever written language seriously, should rather go in for pencils than keyboards, he said.
– If you give children pocket calculators, they will forget how the rains in the head. It also applies to writing. A Chinese study showed that when the third graders learned how to write Chinese characters on a keyboard, they had forgotten more than fifty percent just two years later, he said.
Speaking aloud
Children in Asker also uses an application called “Puppet pals.” Here they experience to speak loudly through controlling shapes and create own adventure tied to the theme they take up in the nursery.
– They listen, look at each other, laughing, waiting their turn and are creative in interaction. And finally they see what they have created, which is both fun and educational in several areas, as we see it, says Fredrik Ekren.
He stressed that it is important to ensure the quality of applications and have adults actively participate with their children to achieve success with tablets in kindergarten.
– It is important to find a good balance between traditional methods, and to use technology as a supplement in education.
Being poor school
Spitzer says that research we see in the media like to show that students with computer results were better in math and reading than a student without a computer.
– Investigating the other hand these figures closely, comes another image appears. If one takes into account the influence from home, such as income, education, parental occupation and number of books in the household, and school, as class size, teacher training, and money to learning and teaching materials it turns out actually that a computer in the house leads to poorer school performance, and computers at school has no influence on school results.
He says that such studies have existed for more than fifteen years.
– But nobody takes them into consideration. Precisely those who are always telling us that we should learn from history – politicians and educators – do not follow their own solicitations.
– The brain of an adult fundamentally different from a child’s developing brain. This simple fact is ignored by virtually all “experts” who express themselves on the topic of digital media in education sector. There is simply no one takes this into account.
Equally harmful as alcohol
The researcher says that one is dependent on the internet in the same way alcohol and nicotine.
– Non-drug-related addiction affects the same areas in the brain that drug addiction. Dependence appears in that one longs for the one is dependent, not control his behavior, you get withdrawal symptoms and have a high probability of falling back into the same behavior again.
He believes that digital media counteracts ability to self-control and therefore stress triggering. Stress can in turn lead to morbidity as overeating, obesity, aggression and loneliness.
– Whoever enters that such media should enter the nursery or primary school, must take this into account.
The opinions of his is often seen as radical.
– It is always hard to accept uncomfortable facts. In the Middle Ages got parents kids to calm down by giving them a cloth was soaked in a mixture of alcohol and opiates. This produced addiction and poor mental development. Digital media does the same. So in a few years, I hope people will say “you did what?” When a mother puts her child with an Ipad.
tendentious research dissemination
Spitzer believes there is no research that conclusively demonstrate that digital media is good, but that many shows that it is harmful.
– It is about lobbying. The biggest and richest companies in the world, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook wants to become richer by making our kids addicted to their products. Just as the tobacco industry lobbying managed to sow doubt about the harmful effects of tobacco had for decades, making informasjonstekonologiselskapene the same, only more efficiently.
He reminds that you almost never find objective information about data and education.
– Study after study shows that e-learning does not. Smartphones are a huge distraction, they prevent learning, but there is no one talking about.
Not everyone thinks Spitzer has the right in its black paint of digital media.
– Spitzer presents in his book what is emerging as a highly tendentious research dissemination, which only studies that claimed substantiate his opinion and politicized standpoint are highlighted. The fields and large studies looking at children and young people’s use of new media is completely absent, says Elisabeth Staksrud, teaching director and associate professor at the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo.
– it shows active on the causal relationship between children’s use of the Internet and computer games, in a highly politicized context. Thus the book an expression of opinion from someone who is neither an expert on children or on media use, rather than an interesting scientific contributions, she states.
Smart logging off
Spitzer noticed why more people choose to unwind. It has become more common to turn off the phone and actually be present in the moment, and one can see a change where people are actually aware of their own mobile and internet use.
– It is definitely a good start . It is comforting to see that people are not completely ripped off, even the biggest lobbying in the world, when it comes to what is good for them and not.
He admits that there is something positive with digital media, but believes that the use must be restricted and controlled, and children should stay away to a far greater extent than today.
– Adults user informasjonstekonologi to get worked more efficiently by transferring more mental activity – brain work – to a machine. When children transfer the mental activity, they learn less. And when it happens on a large scale, in some places up to seven and a half hours per day, the mental development suffer. And if this continues over a long period of time and over a large extent, we must really worry us, says brain researcher.
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This case was first published on klikk.no.
