Many daycare providers ask the question: How does access to technology (television, video games, computers, etc.) affect young children in my daycare? What are acceptable limits per day with regard to access to technology? We picked the brain of Cris Rowan, pediatric occupational therapist and sensory specialist with expertise on the impact of technology overuse on child health and academic performance, and CEO of Zone’in Programs Inc. In our interview with Cris Rowen, Rowen describes how technology impacts child development and solutions to its impact.
OwnADaycare: Isn’t technology supposed to make our lives and the lives of our children easier and more efficient?
Cris Rowan: Technology is the single most destructive factor to child health ever witnessed by humankind, and has gravely put the sustainability of our children’s future in peril. Children who are high users of technology may not outlive their parents. Sedentary aspects of technology use, combined with inherent isolation from other human beings, is resulting in a host of physical, mental, social and academic impairments that the health and education systems are just beginning to detect, much less understand.
Connection to technology is disconnecting human relationships. Preferring devices over time spent in human connection, reflects a society that has lost the significance of the “pack”. For hundreds of years humans hunted, gathered and farmed in groups. Work was highly physical, and isolation from the tribe meant certain death. Survival required members rely on each other, resulting in the formation of close relationships and attachments.
Now, socialization is minimal. The family dining room table has been replaced by the “big screen” with vibrating cell phones, classrooms are rapidly becoming “virtual” as playgrounds disappear, and workplace cubicles become a haven to increasingly depressed, anxious and compulsive employees. The actual values we used to build the foundations and structures for home, school and work systems are disappearing before our very eyes. Communication, discipline, caring, playfulness, independence, and exploring nature don’t seem to be important constructs anymore – we simply just don’t have time.
While technology may appear to be making life easy, processing multiple incoming stimuli is overloading the brain and actually reducing overall productivity. Have we evolved to accommodate this sedentary, yet chaotic existence? With brains moving faster and faster, and bodies moving slower and slower, the sustainability of the human species is truly in peril.
OwnADaycare: What types of access to technology should daycare providers allow young children? In other words how can they use technology in the preschool or daycare setting to a child’s benefit?
Cris Rowan: None! Children in daycare and preschool settings are there to enhance developmental skills for pre-literacy. Children who are sedentary are not stimulating their sensory and motor systems required for literacy. Movement stimulates the vestibular and proprioceptive sensory systems integral for eventual attainment of core stability, motor coordination, eye tracking and optimal arousal for paying attention.
OwnADaycare: How many hours per day or per week should daycare providers allow children access to technology?
Cris Rowan: None! The overwhelming research showing the detrimental effects of technology on the preschool population indicates that the use of technology in daycares and preschools should be prohibited by licensing bodies.
OwnADaycare: What are some things daycare providers can do to address the impact of technology on child development?
Ensure children receive adequate amounts of the critical factors for child development e.g. movement, touch and human connection. Ensure playgrounds adequately stimulate the vestibular, tactile and proprioceptive sensory systems, while also encouraging social communication. I have a webinar on my website www.zonein.ca on how to create sensational yet safe playgrounds.
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