Overuse of Technology

Overuse of Technology

(Picture taken from here)

Overuse of Technology Affects Your Children Physically, Mentally, and Socially. Not necessarily in a good way either.

Statistics:

• •        Mobile access to the internet is common among American teens, and the cell phone has become an especially important access point for certain groups:
• ·         About three in four (74%) teens ages 12-17 say they access the internet on cell phones, tablets, and other mobile devices at least occasionally.
• ·         One in four teens are “cell-mostly” internet users — far more than the 15% of adults who are cell-mostly. Among teen smartphone owners, half are cell-mostly.
• ·         Older girls are especially likely to be cell-mostly internet users; 34% of teen girls ages 14-17 say they mostly go online using their cell phone, compared with 24% of teen boys ages 14-17. This is notable since boys and girls are equally likely to be smartphone owners.
• ·         Among older teen girls who are smartphone owners, 55% say they use the internet mostly from their phone.-Information retrieved from Pew Research Center (Internet, Science, and Tech)

A wonderful article on the effects that the internet has on your brain can be found here:

If you would like to look at it from a religious standpoint here is a great point of view

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2011-10-006-things-as-they-really-are?lang=eng

And if you want to hear more from Elder Bednar’s talk you can here.

The issue is that when children are overusing technology, they are losing ties to the family, to friends, and others. The internet physically changes a person’s brain, it has been scientifically proven and it is not in a good way. It alters the way you physically take in information and it is not good from a learning standpoint. We need to protect our children from these things. We need to monitor how much time our children are spending online or on different forms of technology, and we need to make sure they get plenty of face-to-face time with family and friends. Not only that, we need to make sure that we are there for our family, and not just in the room with them on our own forms of technology.

Call to Action:

So! In the spirit of changing things up so that our children do not face bad consequences from overuse of technology, I would like to extend us all a challenge (us because I will be doing this too)

-First, I think we should try to limit the amount of time we spend on forms of technology, at least while at home. Let’s say we try to spend 3 or less hours on technology, whether it’s the computer, television, cell phones etc.

-Second, let’s spend more time with our family and loved ones. Let’s set aside three or four hours (or however much time you may be able to on your busy schedules) to have family time! Or roommate time, or friends’ time etc. Turn off the technology! Go outside and play with your children. Stay inside and play some fun board or card games with one another, or occasionally you can use technology and watch a movie together, just make sure that you are completely there with whoever you are spending this time with and not distracted with other things.