Negative Effects Of Technology On Children

Technology as Viable Reward for Children Behavior

Coely Lim Sy Yee

B1401491

Department of Psychology

PSY113

Ms. Sybella Ng

Mr. Yap Wai Meng

The fact that we are currently living in a technological era is evident from the devices that we possess, including but not limited to our smartphones and tablets. Regardless of our perceptions of technology, it is undeniable that technology has revolutionized the world we know of. As much as we would like to agree or disagree, the reality of life is that technology has affected us greatly to the point of being integrated into our daily lives. It has also especially influenced and changed the way of Gen-Y’s mentality specifically young children. Young children who utilize these modern gadgets

This includes the communication between parents and children. Parents provide children with these devices with the sole intention of maintaining effortless communication. Due to the developing sophistication of technology that are in possession of the children, there are certain effects, both positive and negative, of technology on them. The first positive effect is an increase in visual reasoning. Dr. Patricia Greenfield of UCLA supported the correlation of increased visual reasoning skills in children of this generation after examining over fifty studies on the effects of technology on children.. Besides increasing visual reasoning skills in children, technology has the ability to instill a healthier lifestyle by promoting physical activities. Video game companies such as Nintendo have continued the legacy of developing consoles such as the Wii for exergaming which is a term for playing video games that require movement of the body (American College of Sports Medicine, 2013). Exergaming is a fun method to encourage children to participate in more physical

Telep (2009) suggested that rewards are better disciplinary methods compared to physical punishments. Physical punishments can be viewed as a positive punishment, that is, when an adverse outcome is presented after an undesirable behaviour. This would more likely be a temporary measure to prevent undesirable behaviour in children. However, rewards are opposite from corporal punishments as they are seen as positive reinforcement which occurs when a pleasant outcome is presented after a desirable behaviour. This is more beneficial when parents want to reinforce preferable behaviour in a child and diminish undesirable behaviour (Telep, 2009). Moreover, children would be able to distinguish between behaviors that are acceptable and vice versa as they would comprehend that they would not receive any incentive if they behave negatively.

Wartella, Rideout, Lauricella and Connell (2014) conducted a survey and discovered that parents tend to use technology to discipline or reward children as they get older. Because technology devices had been incorporated into children’s lives at a young age, eight out of ten parents are more likely to remove these incentives as a consequence to bad behaviour when the children are older. Thus, it can be