Social Media is Giving Children Mentality of Three-Year-Old's, Warn Researcher
SOCIAL MEDIA IS GIVING CHILDREN MENTALITY OF
THREE-YEAR-OLDS, WARNS RESEARCHER
She claims that social media inhibits one's ability to
think for themselves
August 6, 2018
Social media is having an adverse effect on the mental
and emotional maturity of children, a leading neuroscientist has warned,
leaving them with the behavioural habits of three-year-olds.
Baroness Susan Greenfield, former director of the Royal
Institution of Great Britain, told The Daily Telegraph that social media and
video games have left children unable to communicate with one another and think
for themselves, as they are constantly looking for something to distract them.
“What I predict is that people are going to be like
three-year-olds: emotional, risk-taking, poor social skills, weak self-identity
and short attention spans,” she said.
Greenfield, who is also a senior research fellow at the
University of Oxford, supported her claims by citing a study from 2014
conducted by psychologists at Virginia and Harvard University’s which found
that students would prefer to give themselves a mild electric shock than to be
left alone to think without distractions for 10 minutes.
She said that the study suggests people need “constant
stimulation from their environment every single moment” and implies that they
are no longer able to be left to contemplate their own thoughts.
This can be particularly detrimental for children, with
Greenfield suggesting that parents promote activities such as gardening, sports
and reading as a way to reduce screen time and stimulate their imaginations.
Digital detox expert and author of Stop Staring at
Screens Tanya Goodin also claims that reducing use of digital devices could offer
significant benefits to children.
“I couldn’t agree more with Baroness Greenfield,” she
tells The Independent.
“A study from UCLA found that children who had all
digital devices removed from them for a week were better able to read
non-verbal communication in others than a group of children who carried on
using screens.
“When you think about what an important skill reading
body language is for life, work, school and relationships, then alarm bells do
start to ring on some of the long-term implications of screen over-use.”
Greenfield’s comments come four years after she claimed
that new advancements in digital technology were rewiring children’s brains in
her book, Mind Change.
In the book, she claims that children who used social
media and played on digital tablets were more likely to suffer from depression
and low self-esteem in addition to becoming more narcissistic.
Such concerns were recently echoed by a group of US child
welfare experts, who wrote a letter in January to Mark Zuckerberg, urging the
Facebook founder to remove Messenger Kids - a communications app aimed
specifically at children.
The letter lambasted the app as “harmful” and
“irresponsible”, citing studies which have linked social media use amongst
children and teenagers to poor mental wellbeing.
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