How Are Cell Phones Affecting Your Child

Kids these days can name their cell phones and tablets before they name their parents, and guess what? They are not to be blamed. We see the hype on the social media about how 7 year olds are more tech savvy than we are now. About how they play candy crush when we played tag.

Let’s not forget, things are this way because they are convenient for parents. It’s easier for parents to hand them a cell phone to play games rather than asking them what they did in school. It’s easier to let them press buttons all day instead of tell them stories and playing scrabble with them.

But look at it this way; will it really be as convenient when you learn that your 16 year old has trouble concentrating in normal conversations? That sleepovers with cousins for them are just staring in their phones all night? Is it convenient to realize that you raise a socially awkward individual? That your child that was naturally healthy, cannot solve basic math equations?

Mental Health

A new study suggests a potential link between the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and cell phone use.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a group of behavioral symptoms that include inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsiveness.

Common symptoms of ADHD include:

• a short attention span or being easily distracted
• restlessness, constant fidgeting or over activity
• being impulsive

For the study, researcher Yoon Hwan Byun of the Department of Medicine at Dankook University College of Medicine in Korea evaluated more than 2,400 elementary school children for ADHD symptoms and cell phone exposure through the use of parental reports.

Two years later, Byun interviewed the participants again and found that children who used cell phones for voice calls were more likely to develop symptoms of ADHD than those who didn’t. The study found that all children who played games on phones were also at increased risk for ADHD symptoms. Furthermore, the children who stopped using cell phones during the study period had a much sharper decline in symptoms than those who continued using cell phones.

“Therefore, preventing the use of mobile phones in children may be one measure to keep children from developing ADHD symptoms regardless of the possible roles of mobile phone use in ADHD symptoms,” said Byun.

Studies

Increased use of the internet and mobile phones are undermining pupils’ capacity for independent study and promoting poor grammar, it was claimed.

The study, based on a sample of around 260 pupils aged from 11 to 18 at a secondary school in the Midlands, raised fresh concerns that modern technology was having a disruptive effect on young people.

According to a research, students who don’t use their cell phones in class, write down 62% from the lecture as compared to students that do.

“A five-year-olds brain, healthy or otherwise, is encased in a thinner skull and contains more fluid than an adult brain. According to studies carried out by industry modelers in Switzerland and France, the bone marrow of a child’s head absorbs 10 times more radiation than that of an adult, while that of infants and toddlers will absorb even more. Few parents realize that infant apps such as One Fish Two Fish, Peekaboo Farm, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star may do much more than amuse and distract babies.

Relationships with Family

Many researches show that teenagers these days have emancipated from their parents, if not physically then at least emotionally. They are more interested in keep in touch with their friends, making friends with people they have never met, playing games, forming romantic relationships.

Researches also show that as compared to before, the relationship between parents and teenagers has changed. In the previous generations there were lines drawn between parents and children. Studies show that those boundaries have been blurred with the dawn of technology. Where there used to be rules and punishments before, that is replaced with negotiations.

Because of the unrestricted nature of mobile phone access, mobile phones have occupied the very intimate and private space of a person. Thus, the family feels the impact. The attachment to this device, both physically and emotionally, is on a gradually increasing scale that is resulting in a dilution in the family relationships.

Parents need to take all these warnings seriously. Their kids need more bruises on skin than on their nerve. More laps than apps. They need more love from parents and lesser from their iPhone. They need to learn to share things with their siblings and play peekaboo in real life. Give children their childhood back!