My Name is Paul H Cosentino. I started this Blog in 2011 because of what I believe to be wrongdoings in town government. This Blog is to keep the citizens of Templeton informed. It is also for the citizens of Templeton to post their comments and concerns.
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Sunday, December 18, 2016
Kids Turn Violent As Parents Battle "Digital Heroin" Addiction
Kids Turn Violent As Parents Battle "Digital Heroin" Addiction
On August 28, The Post published a piece by Dr. Nicholas Kardaras,“The Frightening Effects of Digital Heroin,” that was based on his book “Glow Kids.”
In it, he argued that young children exposed to too much screen time
are at risk of developing an addiction “harder to kick than drugs.” The
response was overwhelming, generating more than 3.3 million views on The
Post’s website and hundreds of letters from anxious parents. Now Dr.
Kardaras writes about this parental revolt against digital heroin and
reminds readers of the worst effects of the obsession.
Experienced sailors, Barbara McVeigh and her husband exposed their
children to the natural beauty near their home in Marin County, Calif. —
boating, camping and adventuring in the great outdoors. None of this
stopped her 9-year-old son from falling down the digital rabbit hole.
His first exposure to screens occurred in first grade at a highly
regarded public school — named one of California’s “Distinguished
Schools” — when he was encouraged to play edu-games after class. His
contact with screens only increased during play dates where the majority
of his friends played violent games on huge monitors in their suburban
homes.
The results for Barbara’s son were horrific: Her sweet boy, who had a
“big spirit” and loved animals, now only wanted to play inside on a
device.
“He would refuse to do anything unless I would let him play his
game,” she said. Barbara, who had discarded her TV 25 years ago, made
the mistake of using the game as a bargaining tool.
Her son became increasingly explosive if she didn’t acquiesce. And
then he got physical. It started with a push here, then a punch there.
Frightened, she tried to take the device away. And that’s when it
happened: “He beat the s–t out of me,” she told me.
When she tried to take his computer away, he attacked her “with a
dazed look on his face — his eyes were not his.” She called the police.
Shocked, they asked if the 9-year-old was on drugs.
Modal TriggerBarbara McVeighHandout
He was — only his drugs weren’t pharmaceutical, they were digital.
In August, I wrote a piece about “digital heroin” for the New York Post,
and the response was explosive. More than 3 million readers devoured
and shared the piece — though not everyone agreed on its message. Some
readers felt that the notion of comparing screens and video games to
heroin was a huge exaggeration.
I understand that initial response, but the research says otherwise.
Over 200 peer-reviewed studies correlate excessive screen usage with a
whole host of clinical disorders, including addiction. Recent
brain-imaging research confirms that glowing screens affect the brain’s
frontal cortex — which controls executive functioning, including impulse
control — in exactly the same way that drugs like cocaine and heroin
do. Thanks to research from the US military, we also know that screens
and video games can literally affect the brain like digital morphine.
In a series of clinical experiments, a video game called “Snow World”
served as an effective pain killer for burned military combat victims,
who would normally be given large doses of morphine during their painful
daily wound care. While the burn patient played the seemingly innocuous
virtual reality game “Snow World” — where the player attempts to throw
snowballs at cartoon penguins as they bounce around to Paul Simon music —
they felt no pain.
I interviewed Lt. Sam Brown, one of the pilot participants in this
research who had been injured by an IED in Afghanistan and who had
sustained life-threatening third-degree burns over 30 percent of his
body. When I asked him about his experience using a video game for pain
management, he said: “I was a little bit skeptical. But honestly, I was
willing to try anything.” When asked what it felt like compared to his
morphine treatments, he said, “I was for sure feeling less pain than I
was with the morphine.”
Modal TriggerGetty Images
Sure enough, brain imaging research confirmed that burn patients who
played “Snow World” experienced less pain in the parts of their brain
associated with processing pain than those treated with actual morphine.
The Navy’s head of addiction research, Cmdr. Dr. Andrew Doan calls
screens “digital pharmakeia” (Greek for pharmaceuticals), a term he
coined to explain the neurobiological effects produced by video
technologies.
‘I feel like there is a war going on against our children. And it’s come so fast that we’re not even questioning it.’
While this is a wonderful advance in pain-management medicine, it
begs the question: Just what effect is this digital drug — a narcotic
more powerful than morphine — having on the brains and nervous systems
of 7-year-olds addicted to their glowing screens?
If screens are indeed digital drugs, then schools have become drug
dealers. Under misguided notions that they are “educational,” the entire
classroom landscape has been transformed over the past 10 years into a
digital playground that includes Chromebooks, iPads, Smart Boards,
tablets, smartphones, learn ing apps and a neve r-ending variety of
“edu-games.”
These so-called “edu-games” are digital Trojan Horses — chock-full of
the potential for clinical disorders. We’ve already seen ADHD rates
explode by over 50 percent the past 10 years as a whole generation of
screen-raised kids succumb to the malaise-inducing glow. Using
hyper-stimulating digital content to “engage” otherwise distracted
students creates a vicious and addictive ADHD cycle: The more a child is
stimulated, the more that child needs to keep getting stimulated in
order to hold their attention.
Dr. Nicholas KardarasLuz Rojas Carderas
Research also indicates that retention rates are lower on screens
than on paper and that schools without electronics report higher test
scores. And then there’s Finland. A standard bearer of international
excellence in education, Finland rejected screens in the classroom.
According to Krista Kiuru, their minister of education and science,
Finnish students didn’t need laptops and iPads to get to the top of the
international education rankings and aren’t interested in using them to
stay there.
Yet in the US, there is a national effort to give kids screens at
younger and younger ages as parents worry that their little ones may
somehow be “left behind” in the education technology arms race — the
data be damned.
But not all parents are drinking the screens-are-wonderful Kool-Aid — some are fighting back.
Cindy Eckard, a Maryland mother of two, is launching a grass-roots
campaign to create legislation to limit screen time in schools and is
testifying in front of a state Senate subcommittee hearing this month.
“I was shocked to learn that the Maryland State Department of
Education had no medically sound health guidelines in place before they
put so many of our children in front of a computer every day . . . The
schools keep encouraging more screen time in the classroom without any
regard for our children’s well-being,” Eckard told me. “Our children are
owed a safe classroom environment, and right now they’re not getting
one.”
Some parents are opting out of public schools for less
technology-dependent schools. Many Silicon Valley engineers and
executives, for example, put their kids in non-tech Waldorf schools.
Others, like longtime educator and consultant Debra Lambrecht, have
decided to create new tech-free school models. Debra has created the
Caulbridge School, a distinctly “Finnish-style” school that is intended
to serve as a template for future schools throughout the country.
“The argument for technology in the earlier grades is often rooted in
the fear of children falling behind. It is true that most children will
use technology in their jobs and everyday life. It is also true that
most children will learn to drive a car,” Lambrecht said. “Certainly we
would not give a 7-year-old child the car keys to give them a jump-start
to be a more skillful driver. In the same way, we want to ensure
children can effectively use technology as a tool and will bring all of
their best thinking, creativity and innovation to bear.”
A Long Island mother recently contacted me because her 5-year-old son
in kindergarten was going to be forced by the school to use an iPad.
When she complained and threatened to pull her son out of school, her
school district threatened to call child-protective services. I spoke to
her school’s superintendent, and he agreed to let her son opt out of
using an iPad. But all the other kindergartners still need to use iPads
for standardized-testing purposes. That Long Island mother has already
reached out to her local legislators.
That seems to be the key. Parents need to educate themselves, find
their voices and speak up. If enough parents organize, push for
legislation and put pressure on their schools to limit screen time in
school — as well as to delay the grade levels that screens are
introduced into the classroom — then we might have a chance to slow down
this digital epidemic.
Indeed, even the respected AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) has
just this month modified their screen recommendations suggesting more
tech-cautious guidelines: Children younger than 18 months — no digital
media; ages 2 to 5 no more than one hour daily to be “co-viewed” with
parents.
But many, myself included, think these recommendations still don’t go
far enough. Because of what we know about screens as “digital heroin,” I
believe that kids below the age of 10 should have no interaction with
interactive screens (iPads, smart phones, Xbox). There should be warning
labels on such interactive screens that read: “Excessive Screen Usage
by Children May Lead to Clinical Disorders.”
Meanwhile, back in Marin County, Barbara pulled her son out of his
suburban tech-filled public school and enrolled him in a more rural,
less tech-oriented school. So far, she’s seen huge improvements in his
behavior.
She just found out last week that all fourth-graders in her son’s new
school will begin learning the increasingly popular skill of “coding”
to design video games. Even in this rural hamlet school, kids were
allowed to play violent video games indoors rather than having to go
outside to play during recess.
She is now hoping to get political about this issue and to reach out
to legislators to end the digital madness in elementary schools. “I am
prepared to go to war with our public education over technology use.
This is wrong,” Barbara said with the determined voice of a mother
fighting for her child’s life.
“I feel like there is a war going on against our children,” Barbara
said. “And it’s come so fast that we’re not even questioning it.”
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