1. INTERVENTION OF GADGETS IN A CHILD’S LIFE
Introduction
Have you ever imagine how worry you are when you left your mobile phone at
home? Just imagine how difficult when you lost direction without a GPS
device. How lonely is your evening without a television set. That is to show
how a gadget plays an important role in our modern life. In view that gadgets
are in hands of many parents in the world today, so children too had been
exposed to these devices at their earlier age possible.
Do gadget at early age phenomenon is beneficial to our children’s physical and
mental development or it has a negative effect towards them? This is what I
would like to discuss today.
According to Wikipedia, gadget is a name of technical item whose precise name
one can’t remember. Dictionary.dot com defines that gadget is a mechanical
contrivance or device any ingenious article.
While according to Unicef , children mean a person below the age of 18.
Types of gadget
There are many types of gadgets from big to small, from cheap to expensive and
many more specifications and applications suitable to your needs. Types of
gadget that easily available to children are Television set, cellular phone,
computer, video game such as Play Station and X Box, digital camera, iPad and
Tablet.
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2. Television set
A magic box that can be found in every house nowadays is television set.
Long ago, a TV has only 3 channels to watch with very limited children’s
programme. I still remember when I was small, every evening my sister and I
will go to our neighbour’s house to watch our favourite cartoon show. But
nowadays, there are TV channels that you can subscribe and they also offer a
whole day cartoon show for children. Just because parents do not want their
children threatened by any strangers or crime outside the house, they prefer to
subscribe this TV channel to make sure their children are safe at home. Does the
TV really gives a good solution and never have other adverse effect to a child?
We always being highlight with the fact that TV will give problem to our eye
sight. But did you realize that TV can give more than a pair of spectacles to
your child? The American Academy Of Pediatrics says children under two
years old should avoid all screen time because too much screen time may
restrain their developing bodies. If they are always on TV and not doing those
gross and fine motor skills, those muscles are going to remain weaker. This
motor skills especially the fine one, is very essential to a child because it is the
beginning of their pencil and writing skills. When a child sits in front of TV for
their two hours favourite show, I don’t think they will just sit down there empty
handed. Of course it will be fun to have pop corn or chips and do it over and
over again carbonated drinks while watching. This junk food can lead your
child to an obesity problem when they do it over and over again. Now, we go to
another interesting fact about whole day TV programme. Have you heard a
word ‘echolalia’? It is a term for child who memorised speech especially from a
TV show. Some parents thought that their child is start learning language from
TV but they forget the risk that echolalia is extremely indicates a child with
autism. Research which had been done in Head Start Kindergarten Programme
shows that a child who stares at TV screen for few hours can cause tiredness to
their eye muscle. Focusing on a flat screen also does not stimulates eye muscle
because the eye balls never move from left or right and other directions.
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3. Cellular Phone / iPad / Tablet
This communication device has been very popular and a must to
everybody who can talk. Last time it is only use to make or answer a call when
you are roaming at any place which have coverage signal. But nowadays the
phone had been modified with many useful and sophisticated applications that
suitable to anyone needs. It is call a smart phone and it is a trend to have this
gadget among youngsters today. But is it a trend also to give this gadget to your
small one?
If smart phones have made our lives easier, there is a flip side too.
A leading laser eye surgeon says, a smart phone can cause vision impairment.
Femalefirst.co.uk reports that Surgeon David Allambym has revealed that smart
phones have caused cases of myopia (short-sightedness) among young Britons
to surge.
New research found that the average smart phone user holds the device 30 cm
from their face, with some people holding it just 18 cm away, compared to
newspapers and books, which are held 40cm away from the eyes. According to
Allamby, excessive screen watching at a close proximity keeps the genes that
control myopia activated well beyond the age that short-sightedness would
historically have stabilized, around the age of 21. Allamby says today's
generation of children are most at risk of myopia, with children as young as
seven being given their first smart phone. If your child likes to snap photo with
your phone camera, they should understand and agree not to take, send or
forward inappropriate pictures to others. They should also be willing to agree
not to send mean or threatening text or voice messages to others – and they
should let you know if they receive any communications of this nature.
Different than a TV which a child will sit down and focus, smart phone offer a
never ending video game that your child could not stop their desire to reach
the next level. This will make them addicted to the mobile device and drown in
their own fantasy. They do not alert with what is happening around them and
sometime even busy playing games while crossing the road, going up the
staircase and even while the teacher is teaching them in class.
When we talk about smart phone or mobile phone, we cannot put aside the
words frequencies, magnetic and radiation. A mobile phone is a two-way
microwave radio with intermittent and destabilizing pulses, unlike microwave
ovens that steadily operate at the same frequencies. The weak and erratic
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4. microwave radiation from smart phone and tablets cannot directly break the
bonds that hold molecules together, but does disrupt DNA, weakens the brain’s
protective barrier and release highly reactive and damaging free radicals. A
five-year-old brain, healthy or otherwise, is encased in a thinner skull and
contains more fluid than an adult brain. The bone marrow of a child’s head
absorbs ten times more radiation than an adult, while those of infants and
toddlers will absorb even more.
Every major well-designed study ever conducted has found that those who use
smart phones regularly for half an hour a day or more for a decade have a
doubled risk of brain cancer, and those who began using mobile phones as
teenagers have four to five times more disease in less than 10 years. Exposure to
radiation from smart phones may also play a role for a growing spate of serious
problems, including attention and hearing deficits, autism, behavioral changes,
insomnia, ringing of the ears or tinnitus, Parkinsons, Alzheimer’s, and a broad
array of disturbances to the nervous system.
Now let us take a look at another gadget that hook on your child ears for almost
24 hours in a day. The gadget is called an MP3 or iPod. You can download as
many songs as you want and hear them via a headphone connected to the
device. The iPod audio player is vastly popular with young people. But hearing
loss among this segment of the population is rising, and many attribute it to the
way they are listening to the iPod. A 2005 study by Newsday magazine showed
that children and teens who are most inclined to use iPods, are experiencing
noise-induced hearing loss at a rate of 12 percent. This is higher than the 10
percent benchmark applied to the general population.
Now, when we look at all the gadgets that we had discussed above, all of them
have negative effects to a child physical, mental and social-emotional
development. If we think smart phones application for babies can make our
little one a genius? Not really actually. Scientific studies by neuroscientists have
shown that for 100 billion neurons (brain cells) to be wired to form neural paths,
a young child needs to interact with human beings and things in their
environment. In other words, for the brain of children 3 years and below to
develop, interaction with people and real things are required.
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5. From the social side of view, gadgets make things worse to our children socialemotional skill. Children who exposed to televisions and gadgets early in life
tend to get addicted to it. They busy with their own interest and could also
become socially isolated. It is noticed that youngster may be expert at texting
but poor at real communication with someone face -to-face.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, there are more disadvantages than benefits for children to be
exposed to electronic gadgets at their early age. While it seem to offer a lot of
convenience and benefit, but when it comes to a kid, a significant drawback is
the fact that many gadgets can lead to a child physical, mental and socialemotional development.
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