New York Times reporter Nick Bilton said he once asked Steve Jobs about how much his kids must love the iPad. Jobs’s response? “They haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” Why? Because it’s bad for developing young brains. As the Silicon Valley tech execs who send their kids to computer-free private schools explained to reporter Amy Graff: “The thinking is that technology interferes with creativity and young minds learn best through movement, hands-on tasks, and human-to-human interaction.”
But you don’t have to be a tech genius to know that kids hypnotized by technology and touch screens become unresponsive and insensitive to their physical environments. You’re an adult–with a lifetime of discipline to call on–and still you just looked at your phone eleven minutes ago. And you’ll do it again in a minute. Nicole Crawford, in an article about Wired Kids sounds like she’s describing a drug addict when she describes a kid who’s overdosed on screen time: “Moodiness. Restlessness. Strange cravings. Incoherent speech. An inability to focus on tasks that require concentration. Emotional outbursts.” The average child spends seven hours a day looking at a screen, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
