Who is Watching the Children?

Reminiscing(...) about the good old days when we were growing up is a memory trip well worth taking when trying to understand the issues facing the children of today. A mere(...) 20 years ago, children used to play outside all day, riding bikes, playing sports and building forts. Masters of imaginary games, children of the past created their own form of play that didn’t require costly equipment or parental supervision(...) . Children of the past were continually on the move, and their sensory world was nature-based and simple. In the past, family time was often spent doing chores, and children had expectations to meet on a daily basis. The dining room table was a central place where families came together to eat and talk about their day, and after dinner it became a centre for baking, crafts and homework. Today’s families are different. Technology’s impact on the 21st century family is fracturing its very foundations, and causing a disintegration(...) of core values that long ago were the fabric that held families together. Children now rely on technology for the majority of their play, grossly(...) limiting challenges to their creativity and imaginations, as well as limiting necessary challenges to their bodies required to achieve optimal sensory and motor development. Sedentary(...) bodies bombarded(...) with chaotic sensory stimulation are resulting in delays in attaining child developmental milestones, with a subsequent negative impact on basic foundation skills for achieving literacy. Hard-wired(...) for high speed, today’s young are entering school struggling, without the self-regulation(...) and attention skills necessary for learning, eventually becoming significant behaviour management problems for teachers in the classroom. The impact of rapidly advancing technology on the developing child has seen an increase in physical, psychological and behavioural disorders that the health and education systems are just beginning to detect, much less understand. Child obesity and diabetes are now national epidemics(...) in both Canada and the USA causally related to technology overuse. Diagnoses of ADHD, autism, coordination disorder, developmental delays, unintelligible(...) speech, learning difficulties, sensory processing disorder, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders are associated with technology overuse, and are increasing at an alarming rate. An urgently needed closer look at the critical factors for meeting developmental milestones(...) , and the subsequent impact of technology on those factors, would assist parents, teachers and health professionals to better understand the complexities of this issue, and help create effective strategies to reduce technology use. (Reading text adapted from huffingtonpost)