“The first thing I pick up in the morning, and the last thing I touch in the evening” is as easy a riddle as “A pear is hanging, you can’t eat it.” A smartphone can be an addiction and deprive us of free time or become an assistant in solving important issues. We tell you how to make the phone useful for a child.
Relationships with the phone can be of two types: healthy and not so. In the first case, we use it for what we really need: we call, buy tickets, take pictures, read the news. And in the second – we become dependent on it. And so much so that our mood obeys what the luminous screen shows.
Nowadays, many people are addicted to the phone. There is even a special term that describes the fear of being left without it – nomophobia. So, according to a 2019 study, 66% of the adult population of the United States admit that they could not live a day without mobile devices.
But for children, a conscious relationship with the phone is much more difficult: they do not always understand how often and why they should use it. Therefore, to help the child, you need to properly set up his smartphone.
1. Download useful apps
Want to know how a rainbow appears? Follow this link. How to assemble a house of cards? Watch the video. Answers to many questions are at our fingertips – in the phone. But search engines have too much information to wade through.
Special applications will help solve this problem. They allow you to learn a lot of new things, master a hobby, introduce a good habit into your life, make progress in your studies …
Here are the apps by interest:
- Learn more about art and culture — Arts&Culture, ArtQuiz, Radio Arzamas;
- Listen to audiobooks – MyBook, Litres;
- Learn how to process photos – VSCO, Snapseed, Facutune;
- Understand the position of celestial bodies – Night Sky, SkyView, NASA.
It is especially important for modern children to use new technologies in education, because something is constantly changing around them – you need to be on the same wavelength with the world. New technologies are actively used in the online school . Education there takes place on an interactive platform, and homework can be done on the phone – and you can immediately find out your result.
“The platform is adapted to any age of the student, so even the youngest students will feel comfortable using it, both from a computer and from a phone,” explains Maria Shchekic, Academic Director of Skysmart English.
The fact is that the mechanics of the exercises take into account the age characteristics of children and the degree of their readiness to interact with the device. For example, in preschool courses, we use tasks like “click on the correct answer”, “click and drag”, which is especially convenient to do from the phone. And in the coloring there is a function of filling with color, – continues Maria Shchekic. —
For non-reading children, we do not give exercises where you need to enter letters, but they can draw and draw on any picture or in a special field. And for older children, we offer more complex mechanics: entering a word or text, recording speech on a microphone, tests.
2. Tidy up the “desktop”
Remove applications that your child has not used for a long time, and distribute the rest into thematic folders:
- Music
- Games
- Transport
- Money
- Studies
- Social network
- Photo and video processing
- Shopping
- Utilities
Firstly, it is easier to navigate on the phone. Secondly, it will help not to be distracted when searching for a specific icon, for example, on social networks. Thanks to the folders, the child will focus on a specific task and look for something that will help solve it.
You can also set a timer or password for entertainment applications. And the most daring can remove social networks from the child’s phone so that he uses them only at home, on the computer. This will definitely help him devote more time to study and new knowledge.
3.Set up notifications
We often forget about our business and grab our smartphone when we see notifications. Someone leaves a comment on Instagram, we go to read it and … after 30 minutes we find ourselves in the news feed or on the live broadcast of some blogger. If this happens so often with adults, is it necessary to say how easy it is for children to fall into such a “web”?
In order for the child to concentrate on gaining knowledge, we recommend disabling notifications in all applications that do not provide this knowledge. Most likely, at first he will be unusual and even anxious. But after a couple of days, the child will notice that nothing broke without his reactive reaction, which means that you can use the applications when there really is time for them.
Another useful tool is reminders. You can use them when you need to repeat a poem or learn 10 new English words.
The Skysmart app has a smart notification and reminder system, as well as an animated assistant character that appears in every homework assignment and reacts to the choice of answers, thereby helping to complete the exercises.
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