Abstract
Technology is growing at exponential rates and is creating a new environment that the human species must learn to navigate. The power of current technologies may be even greater than we imagine on a day-to-day basis. By looking at the ways in which technology can affect childhood development, we can begin to understand or at least make more conclusive
Technology is growing at exponential rates and is creating a new environment that the human species must learn to navigate. The power of current technologies may be even greater than we imagine on a day-to-day basis. By looking at the ways in which technology can affect childhood development, we can begin to understand or at least make more conclusive
inferences as to how our technological world could potentially shape us biologically.
Though we are looking specifically at new technologies, this conversation is not new. The same conversation was speculated during the introduction of the television and plausibly the introduction of all other technologies to the basis of human life. Even going back to the beginning of human life in the stone ages, anthropologist Sally McBrearty and Alison Brooks have managed to uncover a more plausible timeline of how human brain has become what it is today. By looking at technology and technological structures from archaeological remains it’s clear that human cognitive and social development is always affected and marked by technological progress.
However, these new technologies, from handheld devices such as smartphones to virtual reality, are interfaces unlike any others we’ve seen - they are extremely fast and immersive. Many studies are coming out to understand the evolution of these interfaces and how they affect our ways of processing and storing information. For some reason, as technology has advanced our main preoccupation is understanding how we think, as though the computer is a certain amount of threat to our intellectual capability as beings, both now and the future. A lot of where this fear comes from is through the invisibility and seamless development of these new and immersive experiences with technology. The internet is used every single day at crazy amounts and yet, not many people think about how much space the hardware that the internet takes up.
The fear of technology’s power is especially furthered when we see how it changes our children. Simply by the use of iPads and other day-to-day devices, it has become clear that the child umwelten is potentially pretty different from all older human beings. Unfortunately technology changes so quickly now that we are mostly left in a state of speculation. And yet, there seem to be more studies out there trying to tackle specific scenarios within this topic.
In 1998, Robert Kraut led a study called Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being? at Carnegie Mellon University. This study found that more Internet use was associated with an increase in loneliness/depression and a decrease in social support/social involvement. This was unexpected as the participants’ major use of the Internet was social. The study warned that until the Internet evolved to be more beneficial, people should moderate their use.
Drew P. Cingel and Marina Krcmar’s 2014 study, Understanding the Experience of Imaginary Audience in a Social Media Environment: Implications for Adolescent Development, suggests that behavior rehearsal through social networking sites could have serious implications for adolescent development, and plays a role in teens experimenting with identities. While research done by Patti Valkenburg and Peter Jochen of the University of Amsterdam in 2005 examined how development is related to media use (adolescents with social anxiety would turn to social technology for support), Cingel and Krcmar warn there is not enough research examining how media use is related to development.
In 2012, Roy Pea at Stanford University led a study, Media Use, Face-to-Face Communication Media Multitasking and Social Well-Being Among 8-to-12-Year-Old Girls. Pea, et al concluded that even media created to facilitate interaction is associated with negative measures of social well-being, while face-to-face interaction still gave tweens better feelings of social success. Their study also showed that heavy media multitasking in children during this developmental stage had trouble with 3 major cognitive functions: information filtering, memory management, and task switching.
If given time and funding to continue researching this topic, it would be beneficial to look more closely at how children in their early childhood stages interact or overuse technology. There has been a lot of speculative research on this particular subject and single case studies and testimonials but very few formal scientific experiments. For example, it would be fascinating to survey the cognitive, social and emotional capabilities of children whom have been diagnosed “addicted” to technology compared with other children their age who have been limited in their technology usage. Overall, the field is lacking solid research on technology's effect on early childhood development, and leans towards teens and adolescents for study.
It would be interesting to do more of an anthropological study at a children’s museum as a starting point. It would be smart to set up an exhibit on an unrelated topic to technology (ie. an art historical exhibit, dinosaurs, the 1950’s etc.) and split the exhibit into two parts: one side with wall text, images and physical artifacts and one side with screens and ipads that educate on the topic. The researchers could use large randomly selected groups of young children and test the children from the two sides to see what children better respond to. There are many more research paths and this particular experiment only would answer a few particular questions.
Our decision to make a talk show that is on screen via screens illustrates the varying and layered means of social interaction we have now due to technological advances. We also decided on the talk show as our mode of communicating these ideas because talk shows have room for open ended conversation. We present an evolving video talk show called Our Evolving Consciousness, where we sit together to (try and) discuss our thoughts as well as bring in segments from outside the studio. The presence of the segments and the segmented segments illustrates a nonlinearity in communication, a push for immediacy, and heightened interaction with different stimuli.
The four of us explore different facets of this digital age phenomena and speculate how our growing interaction with the digital interface affects development and potentially long-term change. Our recurring disinterest and lack of attention for each other demonstrates a growing isolation between bodies in meatspace, while life through digital means is teeming. If there are portions where we are talking live in the studio, all the pauses and “ums” are cut out for efficiency, and the dialogue is sped up to keep up with the modern pace of information flow. The disjointed connections throughout also illustrate a mode of communication based on “stacking” information rather than “synthesis” of ideas to create conversation. This is one area where we can speculate that younger generations may be growing up with a completely different umwelt, from which we can try and discover potential evolutionary trends as a result.
Visualization
Annotated Bibliography
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