Are your kids Glued to Mobile Phones

Recently I visited# primary school kids in my village primary

 school.It was a pleasant experience.Children did not have

 smart  phones. 

In my city school I have met more children under the age of five

 than  I can count, where when I spoke to  them or ask them 

a question, they reply without making  #eye  contact

I read years ago that one of the major problems  with

#phones is that parents no longer make eye contact with their

 children. This is a big problem because learning# language,

 connecting with others, and attention spans are all super

 influenced by eye contact which is missing because of use

 of smart phones.

My sister is a teacher of third grade kids and she  said none 

of them make eye contact with her. Furthermore, after

 spending a whole year with their classmates,she noticed

 her class kids don’t know more than half of  the names of

 their classmates. That didn’t happen in our school days,

 We knew every kid of our class.

To correct this unpleasant situation, my sister now makes her

 third graders say hello to each other, every single student 

in the class, by name every morning  while making eye contact.

 

I’ve also noticed in cities hardly any  kid play outside.   When 

we were small  my #neighborhoods were filled with kids  outside.

We used to ride bikes or play  sports . Now  to my  surprise

 all outside places of playing are  empty everywhere .All these

 odd happening have strong reasons  and my submission

 why it is so is following.

 1.I know a lot of parents of little kids  use # iPads as a 

 babysitter. I see how tempting it is, it keeps children

 quiet at dinner or when they’re # bugging their parents.

 But, I think it’s not a right approach to do so.It is going

 to have some detrimental effects on  creativity or social

 interaction skills of small kids.

2.Another observation which made me think deeply is when

 kids  come  to middle and high school, I  noticed they’re all

 glued to  their phones. They take social media with them 

everywhere.  It’s like they never leave school talking to

 friends online.

3. First of all, that’s super distracting.  I myself wouldn’t 

have focused as  well in school  if I had a smart phone at

 that time. Second, phone indues # anxiety.

 High school was enough  hard for me, I distinctly remember 

when  I used to go home, home at  night I was a # uncool kid.

 I can’t imagine having my whole  life on display in #smart phone

 when my little #brain was  still developing and I had so much

 anxiety.

My observations written in this article might sound

 like I’m a very old woman who hates on technology.But friends 

these are my observations.Its high time we should think# positive for

about our next generation while using smart phone technology 

for  teaching. 

 Moral of story-I just feel that the current generation is

 a #science experiment  as being the first generations raised

 by technology, and  I think we’re starting to see the

 effects of it.Let us be# responsible citizen/parents and use

 technology  for making positive impact on# next generation.

Sukarma Thareja

Alumnus IITK

India