I'm Thinking About Having A Talk With My Mother...

October 8, 2017 By: Deric Kennedy

What’s up folks! Welcome back to The SCEM VIEW, with Deric. As you know, I’m pursuing a master’s degree in Strategic Communication at Troy University and this show (blog) was created to explore and discuss various topics and content in my Strategic Communication & Emerging Media (SCEM) course. Glad to have you back! So, before we move on to this week’s show, here’s a quick mention of last week’s. During week seven, my COM 6630 class explored the world of branding and online reputation. We hit topics like “The Fundamentals of Personal Branding” and learned a personal brand is your reputation or image. But it isn’t a reputation or image that accidentally crops up about you. A personal brand is the reputation and image that you intentionally create, manage and communicate about, in a way that an audience finds engaging. I found the information to be both insightful and beneficial in many ways. I applied most of what was discussed to my career as an actor/creator and what I concluded was, as an actor, you’re a product just like any other company, business, organization and so forth.  Products need to be branded so their audiences know what to expect when they decide to “purchase” it or cast you!

And folks, that now brings us over to week eight. This week COM 6630 is discussing children, the future of media and regulatory issues. As expressed by Dr. Padgett, it seems that each generation grew up with a new technology. Your great grandparents could tell you about the early days of radio. Your grandparents could tell you about the early days of television. Your parents could tell you about the early days of the Internet. Each of these technologies impacted not only the current generation, but those that followed. And I couldn’t agree more. Technology is one of the most powerful force in the world today. Some may argue but I believe that would be a wasted effort. It’s been used to start revolutions, to bring down political leaders, to launch careers, and much more. So just what are we talking today? Well, we are discussing the whole bit but more specifically, my concerns with my five-year old brothers, and other kids, use of technology.

I recently checked out an article entitled, “Is the Internet HurtingChildren,” on cnn.com, and different statistics showed the influence of technology on children’s lives. As mentioned by fellow COM3360 mate Amy Rader, Chelsea Clinton and James Steyer gave the following statistics:

• More than 7.5 million American kids under the age of 13 have joined Facebook, which technically requires users to be 13 years old to open an account.
• By 2 years old, more than 90% of all American children have an online history. 
• At age 5, more than 50% regularly interact with a computer or tablet device.
• By 7 or 8, many kids regularly play video games. 

Amy says, “These statistics show how much technology is embedded into the lives of children and why there have been so many studies to research the effects of technology on children’s brain and development.” I must admit, these numbers didn’t exactly ease my apprehension one bit. In fact, they support my belief that just maybe these kids are too heavily influenced and occupied by technology and it may not be the best thing for them. Certainly, all technology can’t be bad for children, right? My younger brother Johnathan is now five and he’s in kindergarten! Yeah yeah yeah, I know, how cute. He grabs his tablet as soon as he returns home from school and it’s the last thing in his hands before he falls asleep. Fortunately, his leisure time is pretty well balance for now. It is common among those in his generation for spend most of their “playtime” indoors and on technology and various devices, but he actually enjoys playing outdoors! Though this may be so, I still believe that he, like so many other kids growing up in this age, are possibly experiencing more negative impacts than positives ones. I decided to make a comparison sheet. One side supports a decision to encourage less time using technology, social media and electronics. The other supports a decision to discourage the amount of time spent using the aforementioned.

To help me with this, I found a blog post entitled, The 4 Ways Technology Affects our Children’s Thinking, by K5 Learning. The blog urges parents to be pro-active in helping their children reach their full academic potential.  They listed four ways technology affects our children.

1.       Attention

2.       Information Overload

3.       Decision-Making

4.       Memory/Learning

As stated in the article, research has shown these areas have the greatest impact on children. Importantly though, all of these areas are ones in which you can have a counteracting influence on how technology affects your children. Negative indications are that attention spans are shorter, personal communication skills are reduced and there's a marked reduction in the ability to think abstractly. I, myself, thought of a much longer list but I will cover those points at a later time. The article shared pro’s and con’s. It mentioned reading develops reflection, critical thinking, problem solving, and vocabulary better than visual media. While video games, social media and other screen media improve visual-spatial capabilities, increase attentional ability, reaction times, and the capacity to identify details among clutter! Furthermore, technology better prepares our children for jobs, such as air traffic controllers, than jobs that are more analytical, such as accounting. This was a great point. Anytime I observe my younger brother using his gadgets, I immediately assume they’re having a negative affect on him in some way but this article actually highlights so pretty good points and actually helped shift my perspective a bit. It was definitely beneficial- for my brother particularly because I was close to urging my mother to take his tablet and other electronics out of fear that he was somehow harming himself with all of this technology.

So, what do we know? We know the effects of technology on children are complicated. What I have concluded is as long as technology is used in moderation, children should be successful in the future, especially in a world becoming increasingly more technological. And lastly, whether technology helps or hurts in the development of your children’s thinking depends on what specific technology is used and how and with what frequency it is used.  And well, that’s all the time we have for today folks. Join me right back here next week for more SCEM View, with Deric.