As a 17-year-old I struggle with detaching myself from my phone and other technology around me, so I can’t even imagine how it must be for toddlers and kids who are allowed to have easy access to technology.
Ipads and phones can be great when it comes to using it as entertainment for road trips or even using it for educational reasons. IPads and parental controls and monitors are becoming easier to use. However, what parents don’t realize is that kids having “too much” access to their iPads can make them dependent on them.
It can be easy to not do your research about children using iPads. It can also be easy to forget to monitor when a child is using their iPad and what content they are consuming when on it. The internet, when not supervised, can be very harmful.
Parents are too willing to just give their children technology and let that become the kid’s main source of entertainment. No matter where or what the parent is doing with their child, it can be too easy to just give their child an iPad so the parent can do their own tasks or be “left alone”. Parents giving their children a tablet just defers the parents’ responsibilities. If a child is struggling, instead of handing them a tablet and hoping for the best, take responsibility as a parent and try to figure out why the child is frustrated. They just hope that the iPad will do the trick to calm them down.
Technology can affect children’s social skills and how they function. Children aren’t experiencing genuine interactions. If a child is frustrated and the parents decide to hand them their tablet to calm the kids down, that can lead them to have more outbursts in the future.
A lot of exposure to technology overall can be dangerous for children. It can create unsafe habits and behaviors at a very young age. iPads can have a lot of consequences for children’s physical health. Too much screen time can cause headaches, eye strain, and blurred vision. These symptoms can lead the children to develop a sleep disorder or other health problems.
Parents need to be considerate and think of the consequences when they are just handing over the iPad.
