Should We Be Screen Savers?
—or limit them drastically for kids? Research is starting to indicate that excessive screen time makes kids less empathetic and focused. The eye movements involved in scrolling may connect in the brain differently than the side-to side movements used in reading hard copy. Studies on note-taking show that notes taken by hand promote better comprehension and recall than do notes taken on a keyboard.
When asked “If you had 3 days to master information using a screen, or with hard copy?”, students split about evenly on their preference. The students who preferred hard copy ended to be students who were making higher grades.
We know that the greater the amount of time spent on social media, the higher the incidence of hospitalization for depression and self-harm, especially among girls.
The little payoffs and screen changes given every few seconds in video games overstimulate children and make them harder to engage if a task does not reward them immediately. So says Dr. Dmitri Christakis, a pediatrician at University of Washington School of Medicine. (1)
Schools tend to want to show off the bells and whistles of technology, but these come with a price…