Do modern children face problems with memory, thinking, expression of emotions? Galina Soldatova, a psychologist and director of the Internet Development Fund, tells about the challenges they face.
There are six generations living on Earth at the same time. The youngest is the so-called generation Z. It includes children and adolescents up to about 14 years old. They can rightly be called born of the digital revolution. The facts show that children are starting to master tablets, smartphones, and use the Internet earlier and earlier. Our research in 2015 shows that almost 80% of schoolchildren use the Internet 3 hours a day. Every sixth spends there about 8 hours a day. Today, children perceive the Internet not as a set of technologies, but as a habitat. This is no longer a separate virtual reality, but a part of their life. And this way of life is at odds with the way of life of parents.
All this suggests that a new social situation of development is emerging. There is an emergence of new psychological contexts and phenomena, new forms of relationships, a change in social practices accepted in the culture.
Formation of mental functions
The Internet for children is a new cultural tool that mediates the formation of higher mental functions. If before the Internet era they developed in the direct interaction of a child and an adult or children among themselves, today the Internet interferes with this interaction. For example, memory. Psychologist Betsy Sparrow, drawing on the work of Daniel Wegner, suggested that the Internet has become a special form of memory – transactive. This memory occurs during long-term relationships in couples, when people begin to rely on each other’s memory. Memory begins to work according to other mechanisms: it is not the information itself that is remembered, but the way to get to it. Is memory getting worse, or are we just trying to adjust to a new way of life? Perhaps soon we will judge erudition not by how much we know of encyclopedic facts or Latin catchphrases, but by the speed of search or by assessing the reliability of what we find on the Internet.
The next problem is attention. The average attention span has decreased significantly compared to what it was 10-15 years ago. This is especially noticeable when children are trying to be taught in traditional ways at school. Further, this process can go in two directions: either the dispersion of attention will increase when a person watches everything at once and concentrates on little, or children will learn to distribute their attention.
There is also the problem of sensory deprivation. As children surf the Internet, they receive fewer sensory inputs from the world around them. The sense of the world may become less sensual. The perception of smells, sounds of the real world may be dulled. The child may be afraid of being touched. This can lead to difficulties in perceiving one’s own body, its capabilities, difficulties in perceiving oneself as a separate physical entity, which is important for the formation of identity. In addition, people’s perceptions and evaluations are often based on non-verbal information. A child does not learn to read these signals if he is on the Internet all the time. Researchers note in connection with this decline in the ability to empathize, to empathy.
And another phenomenon is “clip thinking”. It began to take shape long before the Internet, when a TV appeared and the ability to switch channels. The development of electronic forms of communication leads to the return of human thinking to the pre-text period. This is not logical thinking, but visual images, associations of various kinds. Some see clip thinking as a transition to a different quality of thinking: from linear-sequential to mobile-network. Does it mean that with clip thinking, children become dumber? There are researchers who believe that excessive use of the Internet leads to atrophy of the child’s brain. But there is another point of view. Experiments by psychologist Gary Small prove that the active use of the Internet leads to the formation of new neural connections.
Read more:
- What prevents us from focusing (on ourselves)
Identity building
Digital technologies have an impact on the formation of personality. The child is actively experimenting, he has an amazing platform for building his identity, experimenting with his identity, searching for his social “I”. On the Internet, he masters a variety of social roles. On the other hand, attempts to try on different masks can lead to the fact that the identity will not be formed, but will be staged. It is possible to get stuck at the stage of diffuse identity – a vague, unstable idea of uXNUMXbuXNUMXboneself. As a result, the process of self-determination, the transition from childhood to adolescence and beyond, may be delayed.
The concept of social capital is also changing. Children within the framework of social networks accumulate the number of acquaintances, build up social ties, which then remain for almost a lifetime and contribute to future success. It is through them that people access new resources. And most often, it is not close friends that play an important role, but random friends.
Life in the digital environment causes the emergence of new psychological contexts and phenomena. For example, the phenomenon of privacy, which has always been not very characteristic of our Russian culture. They set up their privacy in social networks, dispose of their personal data. This is connected with the privacy of the individual, and behavior, and personal data in the first place. The problem of protection and security of personal data for children is among the most important. The very concept of privacy is now evolving. The line between private and public is blurred. Ideas about private life are changing: it becomes transparent.
Read more:
- Sergey Volkov: “Do what you don’t need!”
Risks and Threats
We have identified four groups of risks:
- content,
- Communication,
- consumer,
- Technical.
And Internet addiction as a separate risk.
The most important risks are communication and technical. Approximately 50% of communications risk calls are related to the problem of cyberbullying. Every fifth child admitted that he was a victim of bullying, and every fourth – that he was an aggressor. The lack of culture at school, the understanding that this cannot be done, remains a big problem. An important condition for the safety of adolescents and children on the Internet is digital competence. We have developed an index of digital competence in four areas: content, communication, consumption and technical aspects. We found that children do not have any special knowledge, although they believe that they know the Internet like the back of their hand. Therefore, increasing digital competence (not only for children, but also for teachers and parents) is the most important task today.”
The material was prepared on the basis of the lecture “Digital Generation: Competence and Security”, delivered as part of the lecture hall “Department of Psychology of Novaya Gazeta” on January 27, 2016. Details on .