Are you addicted to your iPad, tab, phablet or smartphone? Do you constantly scan your news feed ? Worse, are your children also addicted to these tech devices ? If they are, you have a serious problem on your hands – literally. That is because your children may not develop proper hand-to-eye coordination and dexterity as a result of the excessive use of these touchscreens.
There is a whole new generation of children who are growing up with the smartphone, which is around 10 years old now. They know how to zoom, swipe and type on a touchscreen. Some of them think that every surface is a touchscreen. I have even seen rather hilarious attempts by toddlers to pinch-zoom on a conventional newspaper.
But, the problem is, they have turned completely away from conventional books and writing instruments such as, pencils and pens. Pediatricians in the U.K. are warning that children born in the age of tablets and touchscreens are missing the fine motor skills needed to operate the simple implements in life: pens and pencils.
Finger muscles
“Children are not coming into school with the hand strength and dexterity they had 10 years ago,” Sally Payne, a pediatrician at the Heart of England foundation NHS Trust told the media in the UK. “Children coming into school are being given a pencil but are increasingly not being able to hold it because they don’t have the fundamental movement skills. To be able to grip a pencil and move it, you need strong control of the fine muscles in your fingers. Children need lots of opportunity to develop those skills.”
In other words, an overuse of touchscreen phones and tablets is preventing children’s finger muscles from developing sufficiently to enable them to hold a pencil correctly, As Payne notes, a pencil is a kind of wooden wand that develops hand strength and dexterity that children will need throughout their lives. It is a lifelong learning tool that helps the world produce its surgeons, pilots and top-level hand-shakers.
And, in a tech-dominated age where kids often learn to operate a keyboard before wielding a pen, those skills may not be forthcoming any time soon. It is easier to give a child an iPad than encouraging them to do muscle-building play such as, building blocks, cutting and sticking, or pulling toys and ropes. Even a Lego set seems to be too much work for today’s tech-obsessed children.
Although this example is from the UK, on whose education systems we have mostly modelled our own, the situation here is no different. Many parents I have spoken to say their children grab the smartphone from them as soon as they get home from work and won’t let go even on the threat of punishment.
They are far less likely to read a dead-tree (physical) book or engage in some physical activity, except in the case of certain types of homework. Even the television, the once-favourite pastime of children seems to have dropped to second place with the advent of the tablet/smartphone.
This is certainly not a healthy trend, in more ways than one. Children are clearly being overexposed to touchscreens at the cost of their motor skills, conventional playtime, educational activities and even the precious eyesight.
Schools and educators must impress upon the parents the importance of allowing only the moderate use of smartphones and tablets for children. Parents too must desist from just handing over the smartphone for the children to ‘play’. The smartphone is not a plaything. Apart from losing dexterity, children may access undesirable sites via the smartphones or play addictive video games that glorify violence. These can spoil young minds and ruin their education.
However, there are some educators who hold a different view. They say that handwriting and print books will anyway go the way of the Dodo in a few decades. They question the need for forcing children to learn handwriting and fine motor skills when those skills may no longer be needed by the time they enter adulthood. Indeed, educators in Arizona, USA are already planning to drop conventional handwriting from the school curriculum. (The word ‘conventional’ alludes to the fact that notes can also be directly taken on a tablet that recognizes handwritten characters). Such tablets can also double up as a voice recorder. So why spend time teaching a child to wield soon-to-be ancient artifacts like pens and pencils, they ask. But, this is a view fraught with danger, because these are fundamental life skills. As detailed in the book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” there are some skills that you learn very early in life that stick around till you go to the Great Beyond.
Indeed, evolutionary biologists say hands could become vestigial anatomical features far into the future, because we may no longer need or use them. However, some scientists say that genetic engineering could help us to avoid such evolutionary challenges.
There are suggestions that we might be able to control appliances etc with our thoughts. Robots will tend to our every need in the future, so there will be no need to get our hands busy. Even the humble steering wheel could disappear by 2030 – Volkswagen has just showcased at the Geneva Motor Show a concept car named I.D. Vizzion which has no steering wheel, as the car is fully autonomous. Since it requires no human intervention, there is no need or a steering wheel. One less function for the hands, then.
But the biggest enemy of our hands could be our voice. Google’s Home and Amazon’s Alexa Voice Assistants already help us to control everything from lights to curtains, order various items and seek information on everything under the sun. There is no need to type what you want on a web browser, because Alexa can order it for you.
The writing is also on the wall for physical keyboards as voice recognition systems keep getting better year after year. As one advertisement for a voice recognition typing program says “You Talk. It Types.” Ten years from now, voice control will be everywhere, from cars to homes.
Conventional writing
We cannot stop the march of progress, but there are some traditions worth protecting even in the age of technology. Conventional writing and drawing are among them.
The medium (blackboard or electronic tablet) does not matter, as long as such traditions are preserved for posterity. It is important to strike a balance between the ancient and the modern as we head into the future.