Will Computers Warp Their
Brains? Exploring the Assumptions About Kids and Electronic Media By Wendy Priesnitz
As life learners, we strive to give our children
the freedom to pursue their interests and passions. We see that they
learn quickly and happily – almost effortlessly – when they are caught
up in and enjoying what they are doing. These days, pursuing our
interests and passions can be assisted by the use of computers, smart
phones, and various other electronics, such as gaming devices,
e-readers, and tablets. However, many life learning parents are still
concerned about their children’s use of electronic media.
These concerns are largely fueled by the studies
appearing in the media about children’s electronic media usage. Those
studies usually concentrate on the number of hours spent in front of a
screen in relation to the amount of time spent playing outside, reading,
or studying. Since most kids attend school or daycare, the studies
reflect the institutionalized lives of those children. It’s true that
when children are in front of a computer, they are distracted from
interaction with caring adults, from active play, from hands-on lessons,
and from direct experience of the natural world. But since life learning
children have an infinite amount of unstructured time at their disposal,
as well as the ability to self-regulate and actively follow their
curiosity, the research studies don’t seem to apply.
The Alliance for Childhood released a report
almost a decade-and-a-half ago entitled Fool’s Gold: A Critical Look
at Computers in Childhood. It claimed that a heavy diet of
ready-made computer images, programmed toys, and drill-and-practice
computer programs actually appears to stunt imaginative thinking and
creative idea generation. Indeed, much of the available educational
software would bore anyone, let alone active, engaged life learning
kids! What isn’t recognized is that this is a failure of the
institutional mindset, which has taken a potentially useful tool and
dumbed it down, or used it to administer curriculum, rather than of the
technology itself.
So let’s challenge the assumptions about kids –
especially self-educating ones – and computer usage. Let’s examine
whether or not the conventional wisdom is really wise or if it’s merely
become ossified into accepted truth.
In fact, the tools, techniques, and applications
of technology can support integrated, inquiry-based learning and engage
people in exploring, thinking, reading, writing, researching, drawing
and designing, creating films and making music, inventing,
problem-solving, experiencing the world, communicating, and
collaborating.
The late Seymour Papert, a critic of conventional
schooling and considered the world’s foremost expert on how technology
can provide new ways to learn, contended that problems arise with
educational computer usage only when the machines are isolated from the
learning process and from life, rather than integrated into the whole,
as they are for life learning children.
David Williamson Shaffer is another supporter of
computer usage by children, and video gaming in particular. He is a
former game designer and professor of educational psychology at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. In his book How Computer Games Help
Children Learn, Shaffer points out that when children play games
like Sim City or The Oregon Trail, they learn about urban planning or
the American West as a by-product of the play. But this is just the tip
of the iceberg; Shaffer describes how games give children the chance to
creatively manipulate a virtual world, and how they can teach creativity
and innovation, abilities that are more important than ever in today’s
competitive global economy.
Renowned game designer and futurist Jane
McGonigal agrees about the potential of video games. In her book
Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the
World, she notes that video games provide the rewards, challenges,
and victories that are so often lacking in the real world (especially
the so-called “real world” of school). She believes that the power of
games shouldn’t be used for entertainment alone but that their
collaborative power can be harnessed to solve real-world problems and to
boost global happiness. To that end, she has helped pioneer a
fast-growing genre of games that aims to turn gameplay to socially
positive ends, such as fighting depression and obesity, and addressing
important 21st century challenges like peak oil, poverty, and
climate change.
Entrepreneur, author, public speaker, and
gamification thought leader Gabe Zichermann believes that games are
making kids better problem solvers, even smarter. In a TED talk,
Zichermann asked, “Do kids these days have short attention spans, or
does the world just move too slowly?” He thinks that we should get over
our fear of change and embrace the gamification of education, business,
and everyday life.
Things to Think About
But what about the nagging question about
possible negative effects of violent video games? We don’t know the
answer to that for sure. Much of the research on both sides has been
conducted by or for those with preconceived notions of the outcome or
using incorrect assumptions or flawed methodology. And, like a non-peer
reviewed study entitled Violent Video Games Alter Brain Function in
Young Men that was presented at a Radiological Society of North
America conference, they are reported unquestioningly by the media.
Twenty-two males were studied playing violent computer games for ten
hours spread across one week. The researchers found that “a sample of
randomly assigned young adults showed less activation in certain frontal
brain regions,” adding that “these brain regions are important for
controlling emotion and aggressive behavior.” However, there is no
indication that the individuals involved actually demonstrated any
violent or aggressive behavior. The study was paid for by something
called the Center for Successful Parenting, whose web presence is
vehemently anti-gaming but lacking any information to identify the
people behind it.
In an article in the December 2011 issue of
Nature Reviews/Neuroscience, Douglas Gentile, a researcher who runs
the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University, cited a meta-analysis
led by his colleague and ISU Distinguished Professor of Psychology,
Craig Anderson. It included 136 papers detailing 381 independent tests
of association conducted on 130,296 research participants. And it found
that violent game play led to increases in desensitization,
physiological arousal, aggressive cognition, and aggressive behavior,
while decreasing pro-social behavior. However, Gentile says that the
evidence that playing video games induces criminal or serious physical
violence is much weaker than the evidence that games increase the types
of verbal, relational, and physical aggression “that happen every day in
school hallways.” Of course, that everyday aggression and its
institutional triggers are why many parents choose homeschooling!
The use of computers is also controversial in
terms of literacy. Many people – including Canadian author Margaret
Atwood – believe that the Internet (and in Atwood’s case Twitter in
particular) is a literacy driver, with even the most minimal amount of
screen-based reading contributing to cognitive and literacy development.
However, some researchers worry about “Twitter brain” because brain
cells have been demonstrated to wither in the absence of certain kinds
of in-depth stimulus.
For instance, University of Oxford neuroscientist
Susan Greenfield has warned that Internet-driven “mind change” rivals
climate change as one of humanity’s greatest threats, “skewing the
brain” to operate in an infantile mode and creating “a world in which we
are all required to become autistic.” She and other scientists agree
that more research is needed.
Cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, director
of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University in
Massachusetts, warned of the Internet’s threat to literacy in her book
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.
She is concerned because the hyperlinked, text-messaging screen shapes
the mind quite differently than reading a book. “It pulls attention with
such rapidity it doesn’t allow the kind of deep, focused attention that
reading a book ten years ago invited,” she says, while admitting that
today’s world requires a new kind of thinking.
Some publishing companies are experimenting with
turning children’s books into apps. The result is more like an animated
movie or game than a book, and some reading experts worry that the
immersiveness of the technology can replace the shared experience of a
child learning to read with a parent, turning it into an isolated
pursuit, in the same way that some parents use television as a
babysitter. Technology shows promise in increasing the interactivity,
although building that into an app may not be cost-effective for
publishers.
There are other valid concerns, such as the
physical effects on our bodies of wireless usage, which are easy to find
online. Like cell phone safety, it's a controversial topic that is
becoming less that way as more research is conducted. Currently, the
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IRIC), part of the World
Health Organization (WHO), classifies radiofrequency electromagnetic
fields (RF/EMF), along with more than 250 other things as possibly
carcinogenic. Cell phones and wif-fi devices create RF/EMF.
Another big question involves the more subtle,
longer term effects of computers on people and our culture. Undoubtedly,
electronic media is changing us in many ways. When author Nicholas Carr
asked, in an Atlantic Monthly cover story “Is Google Making Us
Stupid?” he tapped into a well of anxiety around whether or not Internet
usage is negatively affecting our ability to read and think deeply. His
subsequent book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our
Brains describes how human thought has been shaped through the
centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the
printing press, the clock, and the computer. He explains the
neuroscience behind how the technologies we use to find, store, and
share information reroute our neural pathways, with, as Maryanne Wolf
wrote before him, the interruption and distraction of following
hypertext links impeding the sort of comprehension and retention “deep
reading” creates.
Although this reconfiguring of our brains can
have both positive and negative results, it is a reality of the present
and a configuration that children will need to live in an
electronically-based future. So it is clear to me that, like it or not,
avoiding our children's computer use is both futile and doing them a
disservice.
Given the lack of consensus about benefits or
harms, parents must make up their own minds about how much electronic
media their families are exposed to, and at what ages. Here are some
things to consider in regards to your family's use of electronic media:
Since life learning parents are, among other
things, mentors for their children, don’t be hypocritical about your
use of electronics. The same principle applies to other things that
some parents might feel are harmful – from “junk food” to
television: If you want it in your life, you should be comfortable
with in your child’s life. In fact, you might find that your life
learning child is better able to self-regulate their computer usage
than you are!
Parents should participate in their
children’s screen time. Invite your kids to play video games with
you – understand how the games work, how your kids interact with
them, and the thought patterns they involve.
Jane McGonigal says studies show that games
benefit adults mentally and emotionally when we play up to three
hours a day, or twenty-one hours a week. After that, the benefits of
gaming start to decline sharply. We don’t know the saturation point
for children’s usage.
Playing computer games with others can
strengthen social bonds. Playing with real-life friends and family
is better than playing alone or with strangers. And playing
face-to-face with friends and family beats playing with them online,
says McGonigal.
The best games are collaborative, with
strong, complex story lines. A great game challenges and entices the
player to move beyond their current competency. But do not forget
about having fun!
If you are concerned about competition, then
you will find that cooperative gameplay has arguably more benefits
than competitive games. Many games have a co-op mode.
Look for games that encourage or require
players to design and create as part of the playing process. Or work
together as a family to create your own games.
If you want to avoid games with realistic
violence, guns, and gore, especially for young children, look for
ones about sports, racing, music, adventure, strategy, or puzzles.
Help your child understand ergonomics and
best practices for computer use to minimize eye strain, wireless
exposure, and other physical problems associated with computer
usage.
Stop reading research studies about the
effects of electronics on kids. Instead, with your kids, observe how
using electronics affects you and them, and adjust your usage
accordingly.
Writer Pico Iyer recently wrote in a New York
Times essay: “The central paradox of the machines that have made
our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer, and healthier is that they
cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information
revolution came without an instruction manual.” I suspect that our life
learning children can help us find our way to the best, most balanced
use of computers and other electronics in our lives.
The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital
Generation Gap by Seymour A. Papert (Taylor Trade Publishing, 1996)
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science
of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf (Harper, 2008)
What Video Games Have to Teach Us About
Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee (Palgrave Macmillan; 2nd
edition, 2007)
Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's
Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson
(Riverhead, 2005)
Wendy Priesnitz
is Life Learning Magazine’s editor, a life learning/home education
pioneer, author, and changemaker. She is the mother of two daughters who
learned without school in the era before personal computers, and the
step-grandmother of two teens.
