Should Children Have Restrictions On The Use Of Technology?

The Importance of Considering Age Group

Discusss about the Use of Technology among Children.

For quite some time, the question as to whether to expose children and young people to the usage of digital technologies has raised several concerns. However, there has almost been none to give a precise answer for the same question and come up with a sufficient evidence to support their arguments. While many of the scholars and researchers have been giving a somewhat dangling evidence on why they have opted to proposition or opposition, some have tried to come up with good explanations as to why they stand for their option. Children are one of the most vulnerable creatures because they can easily be lured or influenced. That is evident from the prevailing of adverts directed to children. They tend to be more successful than those directed to the adults. As a result, therefore, that is an implication that the use of both media and digital technologies may have adverse effects to children if they are not controlled because children are more receptive than the adults.

However, other schools of thought argue that exposure of children to the use of digital technologies is beneficial in that the children grow with modern technology in them. As a Result, they are able to become innovators and inventors in the nearby future. They also argue that modern technology helped children grow with an open mind and are able to think for themselves and provide solutions for the problems facing the world. This paper is focused on answering the question as to whether children should have restrictions on the use of technology. It is meant to show how the use of digital technologies has changed the culture of children.

The best answer to this question can be arrived at by looking at a specific age group to determine what it means for children and young people. For the purpose of this study, the age group regarded as being children is the young people from the age of 8 years to 18 years and data will be acquired from previous relevant researchers. Ask why this group was found relevant? Children within this age are now beginning to realize and know things. Within this age, less is known to them and thus they are absorbing a lot of content (Cappa, 2014). Children within this age are the ones that are prone to influence since it’s a time they are beginning to get to know how things work. They are easy to influence and technology may easily have impacts on them. Contrary to the adult or more aged population, they are constantly absorbing information on a daily basis thereby proving to be more prone to change and influence than any other population segment (RudÅ¾ionis, 2013). Another imperative consideration to make is what type of technology the study will choose. In the modern day world, there are several technology outlets ranging from mobile phones, computers, social media, mainstream media among others. The study has opted to explore technology in terms of use of mobile phones, consumption of mainstream media content, the use of social media and virtual connectivity as well as the use of computers and its related provisions such as video gaming among others.

Adverse Effects of Digital Technology on Children’s Behavior

In giving a convincing answer as to whether these children should have restrictions placed upon them for the use of these technologies, it is wise to look at what the possible impacts of the technology used to these children might be. For instance, it has been argued that technology used by these children has led to reduced activity of children. Children are spending most of their time in digital technologies leaving very little time for concentration in other chores. These children are sitting glued to TV programs for long hours to an extent that they have forgotten that there are other duties that can be taken. This aspect has made our young people very lazy as they are not ready to do anything else other than sitting and watching TV programs (Anderson, 2016). This fact has an impact on general productivity since the next generation is at risk of reduced performance due to a negative attitude towards work. These children have been hard to convince that that consumption of digital technologies alone without consolidation with other ordinary duties may not be helpful. While their guardians have tried to take all corrective measures, they have proven almost unhelpful since the use of modern digital technologies is quite addictive. Spending most of their time consuming media content means that they also have little or no time to live with their patents and get instilled into them good behaviors and ways of living (Serpell, 2016). These children grow up to be antisocial and focused on their own issues ignoring the presence of the rest of the population. That implies that children baked by the use of technology outlets grow to be less useful in the contemporary world because of the behaviors borrowed from the content they consume.

Exposure of these children to modern digital technologies has also brought about behavior change towards immorality. Some media houses have poor program line up where adult programs are run even during the day. Consumption of these adult programs by children has been held responsible for the bad behaviors being exhibited by most of the children. According to a research that was carried out by (Diebolt, 2014) concerning the nature of children behavior and consumption of media content, it was found that the behavior of children has changed over a period of time. Children, as a result of being exposed to adult programs, have begun exhibiting behaviors of sexual immorality, something that has negatively affected the society (Becker, 2015). Some few years ago when technology had not percolated many parts of the world, children could grow with moral values but in the current society, these morals have been corrupted.

Potential Consequences of Social Media Use

The use of social media and virtual connectivity has also proved to have adverse effects on children. Children have grown up to be less productive people because of using most of the time spend chatting and getting new friends. These children have believed in virtual rather than physical and factual ties (Aylward, 2016). They have opted for making online friends as opposed to real physical friends who can be talked to and consulted in several matters. That has made these children less friendly to people around them, even their parents. Spending a lot of time on social media has brought about less concentration in studies. Children who were expected to maneuver in academics and probably become useful people later in their lives have had their dreams killed by their social media use (Campbell, 2016). Instead of setting enough time for studies at home, they opt for social media until they can no longer excel in academics (Copley, 2016). Even in the class, they are not attentive to what they are being taught but are just there waiting for studying time to come to an end so that they can go back home and get to social media. The same applies to video gaming where they have nothing else in mind other than playing games.

The main significant thing that has led to behavior change for these children is that most of the digital platforms have content that is not legislated. Digital platforms have content that can be retrieved any time of the day including sexual arousing programs such as porn, something that has negatively influenced their behavior (Gonczol, 2016). It is due to this reason, therefore, that having restrictions placed upon these children for technology use is justifiable. It has been evident that the use of technology by these children has a lot of adverse effects that threaten the usefulness of these children in future. Restrictions, such as supervision on which content is consumed are justifiable (Windschitl, 2017). Children should be allowed to majorly consume content from the mainstream media because in most of the times the content producers are professionals who adhere to certain stipulated codes of ethics and thus accountable for what they display. Social media, as opposed to mainstream media, has amateur content producers who distribute any content without regarding audience segmentation or applying age restrictions (Crough, 2014). Media outlets should be stopped from showing adult programs during the day. Again, these children should be limited in terms of what technological outlets they are using. These should be narrowed down to only those that are not harmful to them.

Narrowing Technological Options

Conclusion

It is indisputable fact that the use of technology for children has proven to have very adverse effects. They are turning out to be unproductive people. The hopes that the world is going to have useful people tomorrow is slowly escaping as children continue being exposed to the use of technology. They have spent a lot of time engaging in unhelpful activities and consuming unregulated content that has negatively affected them. They have become immoral and are not embracing what used to be regarded as a code of conduct and societal ethics due to the diverse content they are consuming on daily basis. It, therefore, becomes imperative to put restrictions on the use of technology for these children because if what’s happening persists, there is a threat that there will be none to rely on in the nearby future

References

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