Whoa. Mom was right!

October 6, 2006 on 9:54 am | In Technology, Life, Playstyles

When I was a kid and young teenager (in the days before the term "tween" was used), I was forbidden to use my Apple //e during the school week. The theory was that not getting sucked into programming and gaming during the week would let me focus on schoolwork.

While I hated this rule at the time, as a parent now I can see the value of it, or at least some variant.

And, according to Ars Technica, so does the magazine Pediatrics.

The short form:

According to Dr. Iman Sharif, the results were clear-cut. "On weekdays, the more they watched, the worse they did," said Dr. Sharif. Weekends were another matter, with gaming and TV watching habits showing little or no effect on academic performance, as long as the kids spent no more than four hours per day in front of the console or TV. "They could watch a lot on weekends, and it didn't seem to correlate with doing worse in school," noted Dr. Sharif.

I can agree. Though my oldest is only four, my wife and I already see a huge difference in her behavior between when she watches TV or plays games on the computer and when she's not. In my admittedly untrained opinion, I feel this has to do with the amount of cognitive inputs she's receiving at any time. When the TV and computer are off, there's only so much her brain has to process. So no matter how engaging a meal or her latest drawing project might be, when Mommy or Daddy talk, she's almost got no choice but to listen.

She's a very focused kid, when she wants to be. Not having the TV or computer on makes it easier to be. 

This is an age of multi-tasking, with everyone yammering about how today's tweens are better than today's adults at it. But all I see is the continual problems. I'm no academic, but just from interacting with lots of people every single day, it seems to me that the brain can only process so much actively at a time. When focus shifts, so does attention. Are today's tweens simply better at shifting focus faster, making it appear as if they're multi-tasking? I don't know.

But what I do see is a lot of failures coming from attempts multi-tasking. People seem to think that because they can walk and chew gum at the same time, they can drive, be on a telecon, and checking their PDA concurently. Anyone who works with Crackberry users see this all the time in meetings, though it could also be any PDA or any connected laptop. Anyone who watches kids listen to music while IMing while emailing while gaming while studying can easily see that somethings not getting active attention. And it's usually the studying.

In my opinion, people need to be made more aware of their limitations. Society and commerce can expect whatever they want, and as an adaptive species, we'll always rise to the challenge in some way. However, I think people individually need to be held more accountable for what they try and attempt when they multi-task. And parents need to be more aware about the limitations of their kids, making honest assessments based on results rather than hype or hope.

Maybe it's just that people need to make that ONE BIG HUGE MISTAKE to learn. Seems to be the hallmark of humanity.