Children’s use of technology most affects a person’s cognitive development by eliminating the time that children have for other activities like proper sleep, a basketball game in the park, or just a face to face chat with a group of friends. Technology is not a proper substitute for a play ground, parks or a chat with friends where a child can find unlimited opportunities to learn valuable information about how they fit in the real world. A child’s cognitive development is not harmed directly by technology so much as it is harmed indirectly by abstaining from physical activities, failing to get proper sleep, or not interacting with peers.
A study by the Kaiser foundation illustrates the enormous time children spend multi – tasking each day through technology, “Today’s youth pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into those daily 7 1/2 hours – an increase of almost 2 1/4 hours of media exposure per day over the past five years” (Henry J. Kaiser Foundation 2010, p. 1). It is not to suggest that technology plays no role in increasing a child’s cognitive development; it is to suggest that there is a widening gap between the time a child entertains themselves with technology and the moments that he or she allocate to alternatives activities.
The benefits children receive from non – technology based activities are found in many research studies on cognitive development; for example, a study by preeminent sleep theorist Dr. Sadeh showed that the cognitive abilities of elementary school children deprived of just one hours night sleep would be reduced by two years the following morning (Sadeh, Gruber & Ravi 2003, p. 444 -445). Children cannot be engaged in interactive play with their peers, sleep or physical exercise which are so critical to their development, due to an overuse of isolating technological activities such as cell phones, television and video games.
Children who spend too much time with technology find themselves isolated from their peers. Leading theorists like Jean Piaget understood the importance of peer interaction as a research tool that provides children with unlimited opportunities to evaluate other people’s concept of how to deal with situations that happen in the world. According to Piaget, “children gained knowledge about the world through their interaction with others and incorporated that information into cognitive structures” (Piaget 1962, p. 257).
Piaget saw unscripted play as a way for children to gain new social skills by assimilating a peer’s new ideas and changing their understanding of the world to accommodate them. Children exposed to peer play gain the skill set which will allow them to progress away from an egocentric view point in which they are the center of the universe to a more abstract vision of the world that encompasses the morals needs of society. A child that has gained understanding of this is said to gain the social, emotional, and cognitive skills and behaviors that they need in order to be successful people in the world.
Piaget would find educational value in any technology that allows children the opportunity to freely experiment with their understanding of the world. From the preoperational through the operational stage, children receive educational experiences even from basic technology like karaoke machines or cell phones that provide them the opportunity to test their language skills through experimentation. A child in the preoperational stage will use the karaoke machine in symbolic play to pretend to be a rock star.
The operational stage children that are further along on their cognitive development might use a cell phone share ideas on what it is like to be in a rock group. However, the most promising use of technology to Piaget would be software that appears to emulate his theory of assimilation and accommodation. Indeed, Piaget believed that children learned best when a constant flow of information was acquired from others that either reinforced or challenged their perception of themselves in the world.
An example of technology that might provide this is the game SimCity, which was marketed as providing people with the opportunity to test their knowledge of cities while learning to build one of their own. However, eventually Piaget would find games like this to be too restrictive in their opportunities for players to decide whether to change their self-constructs of city- life based on the limited real life scenarios in the game.
The child is presented with or guided into possible actions by the software program and made to believe there are no limitations to the options one can take; however, software actions are very “narrow and circumscribed, and – what is even more important for the child – it is defined by the game developer and the manufacturer instead of by the child” (Provenzo, 1991, 1994). According to Piaget (1972), play can provide many opportunities for children to actively learn in a manner that is more intuitive than a direct instruction lesson.
Piaget’s philosophy about play is validated by the following research. A study on rats that played rough with each other had a higher degree of neurotropic factor transcripts created in their brains’ cortexes than a rat raised in isolation (Gordon, Burke, Watson &Panskepp 2003, p. 17-20). Research by Diamond et al. (1966) on the thickening of a rat’s cortex showed that when a rat was allowed to freely assimilate and accommodate within an “enriched environment” (Krech, Rosenzweig& Bennett, 1960, p. 09-513) its cortex was affected profoundly as compared to other rats’ cortexes that were raised in non-enriched environments (p. 117-125).
The research was designed to compare the thickening in the cortex of several rats’ brains raised in three different environments: one raised in isolation, three rats in a cage that emulated their natural environment, and three that were placed in the enriched environment. An enriched environment is defined as a cage that has enough room to accommodate the rats and toys that are added at specific intervals during their stay (Krech et al. 960, p. 509- 513). The rats were placed in the environment from 4 days to 80 days, and afterwards the cortexes were removed for comparison (Diamond et al. 1966, p. 117-125).
A second set of experiments were designed to isolate factors like age or stress, which were constantly changing to reach the maximum thickening of the cortex. Data comparisons between the cortexes of the rats raised in the impoverished environments and the lone rat were measured, but not compared; however, further experimentation, in this maybe warranted in order to show the effect of peer play.
In more play directed study, it was seen that rats that had played rough with each other had brains with a higher degree of neurotropic factors created in the brains’ cortex than a rat raised in isolation (Beatty, Dodge, Dodge, White & Panskepp 1982, p. 417-422). Another study of rats in social isolation showed an even more dramatic need for interactive play when a rat failed to respond with the proper defense mechanism when dealing with a dominant male rat.
The study showed that rats that played with peers were successful in assimilating into society by using the tools they learned from peer interaction, much like Lev Vygotsky’s studies showed children did as well (Foroud & Pellis 2003, p. 35-43). Unlike Piaget, Vygotsky believed that a child’s learning process or cognitive development was not based on a solitary exploration of the world, but the influences of the child’s culture, environment or knowledgeable adults. Vygotsky’s studies were based on the significant improvement that children achieved on tests when they worked with an adult as compared to working alone.
The test results for children working independently rarely reached the level of a child that had been taught by an adult. In the process of this adult guided development, “the child not only matures, but is rearmed. It is this “rearming” that accounts for a great deal of development and change we can that accounts for a great deal of the development and change we can observe as we follow the transition from child to civilized adult” (Luria & Vygotsky, 1992, p. 110). The times children meet with a knowledgeable peer or adult to learn a great deal of understanding is gained by the child.
The growth of the child that works with an adult can be observed throughout their lives till they reach adulthood. Vygotsky would find potential in today’s technology and hope for the software technology of tomorrow that he would perceive as supporting his theory of the Zone of Proximal Distance. His theory states: “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers [is greater]” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 6).
The technology that was capable of teaching critical thinking, analysis and problem solving skills by joining them together to learn about any subject matter. Present technology does not have the natural language skills necessary to be able to respond to a child’s unlimited questions; however, games can guide a child’s thought process by the designer’s implementation of scaffolding techniques into the program. For instance, some games like Oregon Trail are appropriate educational opportunities for learning in the classroom.
The game is a form of computer mediated instruction that uses information inserted into the program (scaffolding techniques) to help students complete the tasks that are important to perform an activity; however, it is limited in value since it does not allow children to interact with a knowledgeable adult or peer. Games that allow multiple players to work towards a common goal are available online and could be used to teach children in the way Vygotsky envisioned. Games like The Penguin Club or Halo are designed to allow children to work together towards a common goal; however, they are created to entertain and not to teach.
Video games must be designed to capture a child’s interest and be tested to show how they improve a child’s education, or they will remain another example of a technology whose use is restricted solely to household entertainment. Other examples of technology that children use for household entertainment are described in the following study including which technologies are preferred by both sexes and which are preferred by a specific sex.
“Children are far more likely to use technology for entertainment purposes to download music, chat on the social network, email friends or lay video games than do research on a topic of interest than for education” (Subrahmanyam, Greenfield, Kraut & Gross 2001, p. 7-30). The study shows boys and girls are likely to use the same technology for the same hours in school. However, after school hours boys were far more likely to play video games than girls. On the contrary, girls were far more likely to use their cell phones to text friends or communicate on the social network than their male counterparts. Both girls and boys still watched television more than any other technology.
The study focused primarily on the type of technology a child used to entertain him or her self; however, the study did not delve into the effects technology use had on a child. Grant money has been expanded for research to investigate new social concerns about technology ranging from the possibilities of brain tumors brought about by excessive use of cell phones, desensitizing affects of violent video games on children towards real violence, and attention span problems caused by television and video games.
A recent research study on the effects of children playing violent video games and their desensitizing effect on a child’s view of real life has challenged long held tenets of parents and researchers alike. Bowen and Spaniol (2011) designed a study to compare the emotional arousal state and long term memory of individuals that played violent video game as compared to those that did not. The participants viewed 150 photos of scenes that were designed to get a positive, negative, or natural response from the individuals.
One hour later the people were asked once again to observe the scenes and this time 150 additional photos were added. The researcher then asked the individuals if they indeed had seen the photos previously and the results were recorded. Afterwards, the students were given a self-assessment test that asked them questions about their emotional state. Researchers predicted the results would show that the participants that played violent video games would remember less of the photos and have a lower level of emotional arousal.
The study showed that the results were in favor of the null hypothesis and that there was no significant difference in the long term memory or emotional state of the participant that played video games and the individuals that did not. This study questioned earlier held opinions that violent video indeed caused children to be less sensitive to real life violence. Research by Carnagey, Anderson and Bushman (2007) evaluated the physiological response of individuals that watched a ten minute video showing real-life violence after playing their choice of a violent game or non-violent game for twenty minutes.
The individuals that played the violent video game were predicted to have a lowerheart beat and galvanic skin response than the non violent video game watchers. The violent video players did show a lower heart rate and galvanic than the non-violent game players and were considered to be desensitized to violence (p. 489-496). The conflicting results help illustrate how little is known to whether video game technology as any direct adverse on the cognitive development of children that the concerns of society have suggested.
Furthermore, studies on the effect of radio waves on heavy long term users of cell phones suggest different conclusions leading to question about its adverse affects on children as well. One study which evaluated brain tumor risk in relation to long term mobile use showed no increase in cancer in individuals that used cellphones excessively over the last ten years (Cardis 2010, p. 14).
Another study showed that the brain glucose metabolism rates were significantly higher when using a cell phone causing concern that there may be negative effects from radio signals delivered to the brain (Volkow et al. 001, p. 808-813). It appears that additional research on technology is required, as was expended on television earlier in order to get a clearer picture of its effect on children.
Television viewing time at a mean age of 14 years was associated with “elevated risk for attention difficulties, frequent failure to complete homework assignments, frequent boredom at school, failure to complete high school, poor grades, negative attitudes about school (i. e. hates school) overall academic failure in secondary school, and failure to obtain post-secondary (eg, college, university, training school) education” (Johnson et al. 2007, 481). The Research by Zimmerman and Christakis (2007) showed that six and seven year old children, who had watched an average of three hours of television a day as three year olds, had lower cognitive achievement scores on the Peabody Individual Achievement test for reading recognition and reading comprehension (473-479).
Less sedentary activities that children do when not playing video games show a much clearer picture of the benefit they provided to a child’s cognitive development than any adverse effect technology does. Children who rode bicycles, played basketball or performed other aerobic activities at least three times a week for sixty minutes and spent an equal amount of time on muscle and bone strengthening workouts three times a week or more had significantly better grades than the children who did not (Coe, Pivarnik, Woomack, Reeves &Malina 2006, p. 515-1519).
In conclusion, software technology as advanced as it may seem is not robust enough to support the theories of Piaget or Vygotsky. Advances in Artificial Intelligence for natural language would be required to make either Piaget or Vygotsky theories close to a real life learning experience. A computer game would need to be able to understand the thoughts voiced by a child and be able to respond to them fluently to recreate a real life experience. That software for video games is far from being developed.
A child’s ability to learn from a computer as if it was a teacher is limited by how well the software developer provides guidance within the program to complete each task. A child will never get the freedom to explore and change his or her constructs in the world of technology as he or she can in the real world. In this day of modern technology and the information highway, it may seem ironic that the best thing a child can do to develop his or her cognitive development is to turn the television, video game or cell phone off and go for a bike ride.
