ADSactly Tech News: Are Kids Addicted to Technology?
How did people communicate before mobile phones, text messages and online messaging services? Was life more simple or more complex?
In regards to technology, do you think have we gone too far already or not far enough? If you look around it is easy to see that most people in modern societies own a smartphone. Who uses email nowadays? People communicate with Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
In this article I'd like to focus on a very important aspect of society, its children. Most people associate the word “addiction” to problems alcoholism, gambling, or drug abuse. But some addictions are hard to detect. Have you ever worked with someone that always seems to be at the water-cooler conversating with different co-workers or a buddy that's always got their headphones on in their own world. What about a child hovering intently over the electric-blue glow of a smartphone? I'm talking about “addiction” here.
A conference sponsored by Common Sense Media was held on Feb. 7th, 2018. At the conference the question of whether kids are actually addicted to technology was debated feverishly.
Robert Lustig, a professor of pediatrics focused on endocrinology at the University of Southern California and author of The Hacking of the American Mind, said at the conference the answer to the question was a resounding, yes.
“It’s not a drug, but it might as well be. It works the same way … it has the same results,” he said.
Lustig has spent a lot of time studying what happens to brains when they’re addicted, be it to sugar or heroin. What he has uncovered may shock and amaze you. It turns out that the brain responds to technology much in the same way it responds to other addictive substances.
“Technology, like all other ‘rewards,’ can overrelease dopamine, overexcite and kill neurons, leading to addiction,” he said.
Overuse of technology can cause stress in the brain, which can result in the brain releasing massive quantities of cortisol, which can kill neurons on the “memory” center of the brain (the hippocampus). Another harmful affect is that stress can inactivate the brain’s prefrontal cortex, or the “executive” part of the brain, which normally limits dopamine and our sense of pleasure or reward.
Here's the kicker! When the brain gets used to a higher level of dopamine, it fiendishly drives the body to seek out and increase consumption of the addictive substance or habit.
Adolescents happen to be extremely susceptible to almost every psychiatric disease. I'm talking about diseases like schizophrenia, anxiety, addiction and depression.
This is because of the fact that the prefrontal cortex happens to be the last part of the brain to develop and to “myelinate,” or develop a sheath that protects neurons. Sorry if I'm getting too scientific here guys!
The explanation to the question of whether children are in fact addicted to technology is a tough one to answer scientifically but I'm making my best effort here to help readers come to their own conclusion!
ADSactly readers should note that according to modern medical science, teens are particularly vulnerable to negative side effects of overuse of technology and this apparently can be proven with the following evidence of brain imaging and kids’ behaviors. What this all amounts to is the fact that there is indeed scientific evidence that technology is hurting them. Due to these worrying findings, it seems more than obvious that society needs to address this, adults need to take responsibility for this and they need to take action.
“Any force in our lives, whether it is substance or behavior that is ubiquitous, toxic, abused and has negative impacts on society requires some form of societal intervention,” he said. “Technology addiction clearly meets the bar.”
Robert Lustig pointed out that the most recent update to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-V, published in 2013, expanded the definition of what constitutes addiction to include behavioral addictions like gambling as well as substance addictions. Among the nine criteria for dependence? Craving a given item, habit, or substance; use of that item resulting in a failure to complete major tasks (like work), and use of that item creating hazards (like, say, checking your phone while driving).
“This is tech addition plain and simple,” he said. “If you think it has to be a drug addiction, you are wrong.”
I think the above statement and quote is convincing enough to see that there is indeed a problem here. The extent of the problem is certainly up for debate but let me ask you this. If you knew that allowing your child to have and use a smartphone at a young age would have a truly negative result in their development and the potential for success and happiness they would later on have in life, would you still allow them full access to that smartphone?
Jenny Radesky is a developmental-behavioral pediatrician who wrote the screen time guidelines for the American Academy of Pediatrics. When asked about the potential for addiction to technology in regard to children she had the following to say: “From the early childhood perspective, we don’t use the word ‘addiction’ clinically or in research because it is early childhood,” she said. “We use the idea of ‘functional impairment,’ when media use is getting so heavy that the content is influencing a child’s behavior.”
I don't have children myself but I've been a teacher and have certainly noticed social behaviors changing over the past years. Kids used to play around with each other in class and spend a lot of time conversating with those around them. This does certainly seem to be changing as I see them pull out their phones to talk with their 'digital friends' much more often as days go by. The change in this behavior alone worries me.
Following this track of thought, there is plenty of research that shows that screen time interferes with fundamental factors in healthy child development: sleep, healthy eating, and so-called “serve and return” moments between parents and children. This term refers to the speed at which parents respond to babies seeking assurance and connection with eye contact, smiles, and conversation, and which help lay the foundations of baby’s brains.
Technology addiction isn't just something to be worried about in children, the issue also massively applies to adults. Imagine how a parent who is severely addicted to technology interacts with their child. What type of trained behavior is being taught without the parent even knowing it?
One focus of Radesky’s work is young children’s self-regulation and executive function skills—that is, whether children are able to concentrate, prioritize, and learn to control passing impulses. These skills are predictive for many health, social, emotional, and cognitive outcomes. She worries that parents might be using technology to replace or reduce critical family routines and parenting practices—say, by calming a child who is hurt or upset by letting them play a game on the phone instead of talking to them or giving them a hug. That could impair the development of children’s ability to regulate their own emotions. (Radesky is embarking on a large research project to examine this issue more, among others.)
I would say one of the biggest qualities I've noticed in students of recent class years is that their attention spans seem significantly shorter than students of previous years. Distractions are real and technology presents exponentially more of them with today's obsession on social media.
Others seem to agree with my thoughts on this. For example, Douglas Gentile is a psychology professor at Iowa State University who has spent a lot of time researching the effects of media on children for decades. In an interview with NPR he said that initially he viewed the issue of addiction to technology from a position of deep skepticism. “Addicted to video games? That can’t be right,” he said. “I’ve been forced by data to accept that it’s a problem.”
Taking a step backwards I should note that Radesky whom I referred to above felt that young kids weren't automatically destined to become addicted to technology just because they owned and used a smartphone or a laptop computer but she did think that it’s fair to talk about technological design as addictive or habit-forming.
Clearly many games are developed with the goal of enticing a child and keeping them coming back for more. “I find that especially problematic when it comes to young kids, because young kids have no meta awareness about when a technology is trying to lure them in,” she said.
The idea that companies should change the design of their technology to make it less addictive was a key point at the conference, as was the subject of what policies could better regulate a monopolistic industry geared toward hijacking our kids minds. Tristan Harris, a former in-house ethicist at Google, argued that tech has to change its design—for the sake of humanity. “I see this as game over until we change course,” Harris said.
I think Harris is spot on in regard to the statement he made above. There clearly is a problem any way you look at it. From both a scientific and behavioral point of view the issue of technology addiction can be seen in both adults and children. Attention spans have decreased and a desire for instant gratification has been intensified among all age groups. Unless we 'change course' as Harris put it, these problems will only get worse as future generations become more engrossed with their technological addictions.
What do you guys think about this issue? Do we have a moral and ethical obligation to step in and address the apparent issues presented in regard to childhood addiction to technology?
I'd love to hear the @ADSactly community's thoughts on this topic!
Thanks for reading.
Authored by: @techblogger
In-text citations sources:
“It’s not a drug, but it may as well be”: Expert opinions on whether kids are addicted to tech - Quartz
Image Sources: Quartz, Pexels
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