Are parent behaviours with their use of technology having an impact on their child’s development?
I recently attended a very intriguing keynote presentation from Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair titled: Lost in Connection: How The Tech Effect Puts Children’s Development at Risk
I was preparing to listen to more information about how children are using technology and the negative effect of this on their development. Certainly, this would fit with some of the concerns that parents raise about their children and how technology is impacting upon their lives. There is, perhaps, even more concern given that many schools use 1 to 1 laptop programs and iPads are also rapidly being introduced to compliment classroom instruction from teachers.
I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised that the presentation that Dr. Steiner-Adair gave was not about this at all. It was, in fact, about the behaviours of parents with technology and the impact that these behaviours are having on children.
While I certainly did not agree with every aspect of her talk, some excellent points were made for us to consider in our role as parents and, for that matter, as teachers:
- How attached are we to our mobile devices?
- How often are we checking for emails, messages and notifications?
- How we are using mobile technology to record many aspects of our lives and also those of our children?
Three things really stuck in my mind. Firstly, when we hear a notification alert on our mobile device and how that makes us feel. For many of us, there is that instant need to break free of what we are currently doing to attend to that notification. So many important moments that we spend with our children can be interrupted by our mobile devices, that when we try to return to the conversation, the moment, it has passed, we cannot recapture it and children see that.Are parent behaviours with their use of technology having an impact on their child’s development? | Connected Principals:
