Ace Venuto
Staff Writer
In the past ten or so years, chances are you have witnessed more children absorbed in electronics than playing outside or engaging in educational content.
According to data analysis company GITNUX, “ … 95% of U.S. teens owning smartphones, nearly half saying they are online almost constantly, tweens averaging five hours and thirty-three minutes and teens eight hours and thirty-nine minutes a day on screens for entertainment” Digital addiction refers to compulsive use of devices that negatively interfere with someone’s life. This manifests in many different forms, including online gaming, impulse shopping and gambling.
According to UPMC Children’s Community Pediatrics, “Children’s brains are still under construction, especially in the areas that control self-regulation, planning, and decision-making. The prefrontal cortex, often referred to as the brain’s ‘thinking cap,’ doesn’t fully develop until well into the mid-20s.” With this constant exposure, technology dependency poses a serious threat to a child’s suggestible nature, development and overall well-being. Parents need to take preventative measures to protect their kids from harmful digital environments.
Children are easily impressionable and this puts them at risk of advertising and adopting dangerous beliefs. Social media tyrants Jake and Logan Paul are a prime example of online threats to a child’s wellbeing, with them catering their questionably ethical endeavors directly towards children.
Logan’s involvement with Lunchly, a Lunchables knock-off which contained mold, and CryptoZoo, a blockchain-based NFT game that scammed players out of their money, doesn’t position him as being a good mentor figure for the younger generation. Jake is in a similar boat, where he encouraged minors to engage in gambling and advertised an expensive, low-effort course on how to be a “famous” influencer just like him. No thanks.
Their content promotes a general message of doing whatever it takes to make the most amount of money possible, even if it costs you your reputation. This is extremely harmful to children who will take what the Paul brothers say and do at face value and aren’t able to understand the consequences of this kind of behavior.
Trending “online challenges” can also cause an immense amount of harm or irreversible damage. An infamous example of this was the 2018 Tide Pod challenge where college students, teens and even kids as young as five were consuming laundry pods. There were so many people participating in this trend that poison control was receiving reports of more than 10,500 children five or younger being exposed to the toxins within laundry detergent.
Another example was the 2020 Benadryl challenge on TikTok, where kids would take a dangerously high dosage of Benadryl to experience hallucinogenic effects. To no one’s surprise, multiple teenagers were hospitalized or died. These challenges affect children’s families, their livelihoods, and some people’s perception about themselves or others.
Despite the growing danger of technology addiction, there are ways to combat this dilemma protecting children and promoting healthier alternatives. According to Mayo Clinic Health System there are many ways to get children to be less on screens. Having clear screen time limits every week allowing children one hour of non educational content to watch. Or having device free zones allowing kids to engage in offline activities like playing outside, drawing, writing etc.
Even with these tactics, early screen exposure is still rising and continuing research is key to fully comprehending how technology addiction affects young children.
