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Tianxu Shi
04/12/2015
Professor Chocos
Technology is Destroying Traditional Childhood
Childhood is an age period which should be full of happiness, curiousness and
creativity. Creativity is the most special ability that children have. They are inquisitive
for everything around them. They have the special creativity which adults don’t have,
because everything for them is new, and they don’t have too many things to worry
about. They can focus on their own world to think about their creative idea. However,
the technology is slowly taking away children’s creativity. The technology includes
many different things, such as TV, video game and mass media.
Before computer and video game went into normal family’s life, children always
spent their leisure time out side of home. They went out into nature, there had not
much things for children to play, but they could use their creativity to use little things
around them to create interesting game to play，such as play sports, hiking, ride bike
with friends. An article Childhood, which is wrote by Alice Walker is mainly talk a
story about the author’s childhood. The author summarizes her childhood by saying,
“When I think of my childhood at its best, it is of this magic that I think. Of having a
family that daily worked with nature to produce the extraordinary, and yet they were
all so casual about it”(59) The author’s childhood shows that nature gave her the most
amusing time in her childhood. The nature with her creativity combine together could
produce ideas, which was extraordinary. Childhood is the period that children’s
creativity emerges. That ability need something like nature offer children opportunity
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to inspire it. Nowadays, large percent of the child don’t even know how potato grows
up, because they never see it.
However technology has changed children’s life a lot. There have tons of
thousands of electronics were invented by inventor for people’s entertainment. Those
different electronics are very attractive for children. More and more kids spend their
time on the TV not outdoor activities or reading. In the article A World of Half-Adults
wrote by author Robert Bly talk about the TV’s influence. Bly quote a date from New
York University’s research” Four minutes a day or less for 50 percent of them, two
minutes a day for 30 percent, and none at all for 10 percent. The same group of
children watched 130 minutes of television each day.”(51) This data shows the
phenomenon that children are spending most of their time sit in the home to watch
television, and activities such like reading only have small part of time. Children are
all tend to watch television means they all accept same information from TV. For
example, if a cartoon is very popular during a period, most of children will watch it
on TV. The same cartoon is transmitting the same knowledge to children. Therefore, it
is hard to inspire children to have unique idea. Also, the cartoon producer in order to
attract children to watch their program, they always put the factor like violence, sex or
surreal things in the cartoon, which are not appropriate for children to watch. This can
make children mature too fast to enjoy their childhood, but children’s parents are not
realized this problem. They even think their kids mature earlier than normal age is a
good thing.
Television has the potential to generate both positive and negative effects. Not all
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the television programs are bad. The television program such like documentary movie,
puzzle game programs and News are good for children to watch it, because it can
provide knowledge for children to learn, and help practice brain. Nonetheless, there
have more and more advertisements are showing on the television. Most of them
contain inappropriate sexuality or offensive language, which are bad for children’s
development. Bly had described television’s bad influence by saying” Television
provides a garbage dump of obsessive sexual material inappropriate to the child’s age,
minute descriptions of brutalities, wars, and tortures all over the world”(52) All the
inappropriate information are strongly attract children’s attention. The reason is
children have inquisitive more than any other age period. They are interested to know
every thing new. The inappropriate information showed by media is even attractive
for adult, so children have no ability to deny their inquisitive to accept those
information. Once children begin have contact with inappropriate information, they
will try to imitate some adult’s behavior. This can cause children missing their real
childhood experiences. Some people think this is good for children grow up earlier,
but children cannot really grow up without their childhood experiences.
Television inappropriate information does not only cause children become mature
fast, but also make children lose their concentration ability. Companies are trying to
create advertisement which can make people easily accept the opinion they try to
express to public. Therefore, most of their advertisement are attractive and simply for
children to understand it. Children don’t need to use their brain think much to
understand advertisement. Bly shows us about how easy to watch television in her
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article by saying” National Institute of Mental Health and guided by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi and Robert Kuby, gound that more skill and concentration were
needed to eat a meal than to watch television, and the watching left people passive,
yet tense, and it left them unable to concentrate”(52) Television is like a killer who
killed thousands children’s creativity. The mass media should take responsibility for
this. Make children unable concentrate on their creativity ability is like destroying
children’s future, because children can practice their mind during the creating process.
This could help children develop their intelligence. Even though there have some
people realized that help children practice their creativity is very important. Some of
the application design companies have created some interesting application program
on computer in order to help children practice their creativity, that’s not good enough.
The application program have already design by certain function. It’s only can help
children practice, not inspire them. The nature can really inspire children’s creativity
when they are paly in it.
Childhood is an important period for children’s sensory, motor and attachment
develop. The rapidly advancing technology is making children’s develop process
disorder, because the technology is overuse during children’s daily life. Children now
rely on technology for most of their play. There have many different products children
can play, such as computer, tablet and game machine. It’s seems like children have
much more choice to decide what they can play than children lived 10 years ago, but
in fact, their choice is merely have one. It’s video game. Video game offers children
some exciting and interesting experiences in the virtual world. Children spend a lot of
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time on the video games. They went out less and less. Some people think children
also can learn some useful knowledge through playing the game, such as how to
complete a game by work with other people and how to deal with some difficult
challenge in the game. But all of those challenges are from the virtual world. It’s can’t
help children when they are facing challenge in the real world. Actually it’s limiting
challenges to children’s bodies’ development and their creativity. When children went
outside to ride bikes, play sports and play simple game with their friends. Their whole
body can get exercise. Also, different outside environment can provide more material
to inspire children’s creativity and imaginations. It’s better than sit on the sofa, face to
the same screen to play game everyday.
As the technology is like a train will move forward continually, children’s parents
and teacher need to take their responsibility to wake up their children, because
children have no ability to find out their won problem, and its hard for them to deny
accepting the convenience life brought by new technology, but they can guide their
children to spend more time on other things except video games and television. The
parents should not always focus on their job to earn money for their children. They
need realized that spend time with their children to do some outside activities is much
more important for their children’s future. To encourage children to travel is a good
way to make them avoid from technology’s influence, and can practice children’s
independent ability. They also can experience different life challenges, which can
inspire their creativity.
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Work Cited
“A World of Half-Adults” Untne. N.p, n.d. Web. 13Apr. 2015/4/13
“Childhood” Alice Walker. N.p, n.d Web. 13 Apr. 2015
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