Alveena Ahmad
High screen time for children is a bad idea. Despite the awareness of the negative impacts, parents still let their children spend so much time on smartphones and electronic gadgets.
According to researchers, the chances of depression in kids increase to 27% when they use social media frequently.
Kids who use their phones at least three hours a day are more likely to become hopeless. This happens mostly because of parents’ ignorance towards raising their kids in a digital world. There are two biggest tech figures in recent history i.e. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who have raised their kids in a low-tech environment where the power of digital technology did not make their kids addicted.
According to Bill Gates, he didn’t allow his kids to have cell phones until the age of 14 and implemented a cap on the screen when his daughter developed an unhealthy attraction towards a video game.
Steve Jobs, who remained CEO of Apple until his death in 2012, also revealed that he used to limit his kids’ time with the screen at home. Jobs prevented his kids from using iPads in schools although the modern school system requires children to study by using digital screens instead of books.
Looking at these two tech leaders’ low-tech environments for their kids, it is easy to imagine that people in Silicon Valley are raising their kids away from the power of these digital gadgets.
Gates stressed on use of technology tailoring lessons for each student in order to benefit them in an educational setting. He took a keen interest in personalized education. For this purpose, Gates celebrated Summit Sierra which is a Seattle-based school that took the personal goals of students seriously. According to Gates, personalized education may not the cure for all, but it will be helpful for the young generation to make the most of their potential.
