When my nephew was around one year old, he had trouble staying calm on long car rides. The solution was to distract him from the length of the trip, and the easiest method that my brother and sister-in-law used was to bring along a portable DVD player so he could watch Elmo and Baby Einsteins. In our world of technology, such a method doesn't seem like a big deal. Movies and shows geared towards younger children can be fun and educational, teaching basic knowledge and skills that help brain development.
Or do they?
As it turns out, such technology can be very harmful to developing children and can actually impede brain growth and create future mental problems. Strong correlations between developmental disorders, such as ADD and ADHD, and television have been found. However, while this information has been around for a while, many parents are still unaware of the harmful effects of such exposure and often mistakenly put their trust in children's shows to enrich the lives of their children, when really these shows only accomplish the opposite, especially within the first three years of life.
According to the Urban Child Institute, exposure to television before the age of three can contribute to the development of attention and behavioral disorders, sleep problems, and can cause a delay in language, social, and academic development. The reason for this is because television programs do not encourage slower thinking skills or focusing skills. Our ability to focus on things is programmed from an early age. Our brain creates neural pathways for attention span, and the deeper these pathways are, the easier it is for us to focus on things for extended periods of time. Such pathways are formed through our childhood experiences. For example, as a kid I could sit and play with my stuffed animals for hours at a time, focusing all of my attention on them and nothing else. Babies can stare at mobiles for a long time as well because they have yet to develop the concept of boredom. Therefore, their neural pathways are able to grow normally.
Kids television shows, on the other hand, do not promote such focus. Take Baby Einsteins as an example. Sure, the background music is Mozart, but the visual content is the camera jumping from one shiny toy or funny puppet to the next, with only a thirty second gap between each clip. The kids barely have time to focus before they are forced to look at another flashing light or spinning top. If a child is exposed to this sort of jumping around for too long, then their neural pathways never get the change to gain depth or grow properly. Hence, attention and behavioral disorders are birthed because the brain was never given the change to develop correctly.
We live in a world of technology, and sometimes it is very easy and more convenient to let television or games on our phones become a babysitter to the kids in our lives. Speaking as a babysitter, flipping on a PBS program is definitely less work and energy than actually getting down on the floor and playing with blocks or going outside and using our imagination. However, the cost of that convenience is way too high if it means that the effects could be both damaging and long-term. Our kids deserve better than that. So allow them to be creative and entertained without the use of a TV or phone. Let them use their imaginations, make them go outside. Because technology is a wonderful thing, but the healthy mind of a child is much better.
