Technology: Its Effect on Children

Technology has had a profound impact on all sections of society, as products and services which were formerly only available to the very rich have been adopted by wider society. This is a result of rising disposable income levels and the fact that new technologies have been getting cheaper. There have been significant implications for the social structure and for how people relate to one another because of the increasing reliance on technology. Nowhere is this more evident than amongst children who have only ever known a technology-driven society which they take for granted.

Most children in the Western world are extremely technologically-savvy, and all have the latest gizmos and gadgets, or at least try to pester their parents into getting them the latest inventions. There is a lot of peer pressure involved when it comes to technology, as youngsters increasingly communicate with their friends on social networking websites and by text messaging. At this rate the next generation of adults will have lost the art of good conversation, being forced to rely on text speak!

Children from poorer families run the risk of being alienated for not being able to afford the latest technological innovations. They may be picked on, or be excluded from conversations, and so feel isolated. However, even those with the latest innovations may find themselves unable to escape bullying and taunts. With mobile phones and instant messaging, often bullying can continue outside of the school gates, as bullies are able to access their victims at all times. Clearly this is distressing for the children who are involved, and although bullying has always happened, now children cannot escape even when they are at home.

Children seem to be completely dependent on technology, which is unsurprising since schools have embraced computers and electronic whiteboards to help teachers take a twenty-first century approach to lessons. What children are being taught is no better or worse than it was in the past, but it does give the impression that computers can solve anything and should be used for everything, perhaps making it more difficult for children to learn in more conventional, old-fashioned ways, as their attention spans become shorter.

In fact many children cannot be bothered with reading when they can simply watch the film when they get home. The majority of children have televisions and DVD players in their room from a young age, meaning that parents are often not in control of what their children are watching. It also means that there is rarely a time when a child is not sat in front of a computer or television screen, when it would be good for them to go outside and run around now and again.

Of course, technology has made life a lot easier for people, but it is easy to become over-reliant on technology, so that when things go wrong they do not know how to cope. This is even more so in the case of children, who may find it difficult to appreciate what life would be like without the availability of certain gadgets. Communication may also become a problem for some children if they only ever talk with others online or by text messaging, and so it is important for parents to try to strike the right balance between allowing their child to possess new technologies, but also to gain experience of the outside world.