Bad Effects Of Technology On Children

Technology has always been a big part of our daily lives even before technology was not considered something electrical. However, more recently technology, specifically entertainment technology, plays a bigger part than ever before. Originally when entertainment technology was just appearing in households with items like the television and the AtariⓇ it was fine to watch the television with the family or to have the kids play video-games. Nowadays it is common to see parents giving their children a phone or tablet to keep them occupied during a meal, or sending teens off to play videogames in their rooms. Even parents letting their children sit in front of the television for hours on end is the norm. More recently social networks like Twitter, …show more content…
A bad idea considering where are these consequences could be the loss of the parent-child bond. There was a study done on toddlers and preschoolers while they read books, watched TV, or play games with their mothers. It was shown that while watching TV there is less interaction between the child and the parent. It was also found that when the child or parent spoke the others response was often unrelated causing an an uneffective conversation leading into the loss of a learning opportunity. While this may not seem too significant it actually is as this results in less of a parent-child bonding and more of a supervised activity (psychologytoday.com). It is obvious that while watching TV sitting down and not doing anything for hours on end is common. This occurrence is often called sedentary behavior in the scientific world. A study to show a link between blood pressure and sedentary activities such as amount of TV watched was was done using 111 children ages 3 to 8. The study performed by a kinesiologist at Michigan State University named Dr. Joey Eisenmann in collaboration with researchers in Spain showed that there is a direct correlation between the amount of television watched and blood pressure. Furthermore other sedentary activities, reading, using the computer or videogames, showed no increase in blood pressure comparable to the TV watching (time.com). Notably, the study did not show any relation between sedentary behavior and obesity. However, in an interview done by Lehigh Valley Health Network with Jarret Patton, MD, they asked if eating or snacking while watching TV contributes to child obesity. Patton responded that while watching TV can lead to mindless eating a lifelong and difficult to break habits, there is no direct correlation from obesity in children and TV