Technology has changed the way children interact with each other and with the world. The development of technology brings benefits and harm to children.
Information technology and parenting now go hand in hand. So parents need to know how to educate their children to grow up with a healthy lifestyle in the digital age. The article helps you analyze the 3 most negative effects of the Internet on your baby and how to solve them effectively.
Advantages of technology on children
Educational tools
Technology helps children now have convenient access to online educational tools, helping children to improve in the learning process. There is online educational software designed as games, giving children virtual rewards, helping children be more interested in learning. This is a big positive for children to practice using technology.
This is also an opportunity for your child and technology to progress together, which means that your child’s future career will be highly technology-related as most industries today require employees to have enough technical skills to do their job well. These skills include using a lot of software and knowing how to perform tasks online.
As your child uses technology at an early age, it will take time for them to get used to and use the technology more proficiently later when your child goes to work.
Improve cognitive function
Research shows that children who play video games regularly have more sensitive cognitive skills than children who do not play video games. In particular, video games designed to improve cognition are labeled as brain training, which has been shown to significantly enhance cognitive performance.
Easy access to information
While this can be considered a double-edged sword, giving your child easier access to information can significantly improve his or her speed of learning.
Children are extremely curious about many things. Sometimes, it is difficult for parents to keep up with all of the child’s questions. Therefore, you can encourage your child to use an online search engine to let them learn about the world around them. This helps children to be self-reliant in learning and improve their learning capacity.
Disadvantages of technology on children
Underdeveloped social skills
What is the problem?
Direct communication with those around your child is the foundation to start building intimate, safe, meaningful social relationships, creating a premise for a strong relationship. This is the most important task of childhood: learning social skills. Mastering these skills requires the use of all of your child’s senses and requires constant practice, and repetition.
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When your child often lacks real social interactions, he or she will grow up without developing the social skills essential to life. Later, it will be difficult for children to communicate and create relationships with others.
Solution: Get your child out more
As technology develops, children limit physical activities, only play games with their friends online.
You should enable your child to have positive interactions that may or may not be possible with a digital device. But having fun and positively interacting without technology will show your child that life is full of fun and not just the internet. For example, you can:
- Organize family picnics
- Let your child play sports
- Take your child to the park
- Let your kids join clubs after school
- Hold meetings so they can socialize with their friends
When children participate in physical activities, they will be limited to the internet for entertainment. Regular physical activity is not only healthy but also helps develop your child’s social skills.
Risk of accessing inappropriate content
What is the problem?
For school-age children, these risks include things they might feel uncomfortable, disgusting, or unpleasant if they come across. This content may include pornography, animal cruelty images, realistic or simulated violence, bloody accident images or demonic images.
Among these, pornography is the most dangerous. Research shows that most pornography and sex addiction begin in adolescence. Pornography adversely affects brain development, negatively changes the perspective of self-image and encourages attitudes and acts of violence against women.
Besides, with the growth of the Internet, smartphones and fast internet speed, your children can access porn more easily and quickly than ever before. Due to the addictive nature of pornography, it takes a few times for your child of watching to completely risk becoming addicted to pornography.
Solution: Use online content filtering tools
These are things that stalk your child in the virtual world every day without you even knowing, these contents completely negatively affect your child’s development, from anorexia, nightmares to sleep. , even suicide.
To ensure your child’s online environment is safe and healthier, you should consider using an additional online content filtering tool – considered by many parents as one of the best free parental control software to hide 15 types of harmful content on the Internet, including:
- Pornography
- Horrifying content like gore, accidents, ghosts, violence, murder, terrorism, etc
- Content about stimulants, addictive substances such as alcohol, beer, marijuana, drugs, etc
- Content with aggressive elements, hurting others like Hate speech
This free porn blocker extension can help to minimize your child’s access to harmful content, ensuring a healthy online environment for your child but at the same time, not invading their privacy rights.
Risk of technology addiction
What is the problem?
Often, children can become seriously addicted when using smart devices to go online. Children are more likely to form behaviors and habits that negatively affect their own development due to their addiction to technology.
Solution: Build a closer relationship with your child
When exposed to digital devices for too long, your children will gradually become distant from their families. Therefore, parents need to schedule a time to bond with their children regularly. Not necessarily a big thing, just a period that you and your kids spend time together, not online. Such as:
- Cook dinner together
- Family outings, reading
These simple activities will help you maintain and develop a healthy relationship with your child, away from the distractions caused by digital devices.
Wise modern parents are always proactive in bringing the best for their children. To better protect your child from all porn sites, for all internet-connected devices your child use, you should pre-order Wifi Device, becoming the first parents to own the solution which 24/7 protects your kids from harmful websites. Best prices are always available for early birds!