Faster, better…

Linda Beth says:

Yes they said it about TV, BUT, this is different. Remember Sesame Streets "number and letter" commercials, to me that was the beginning of not encouraging the discipline of being able to focus and concentrate on something for longer and longer periods of time. The electronic technologies are like the Sesame Street commercials on steriods! Concentration is a skill that has to be learned in balance with the ability to move from one topic or activity to another effectively. Most people's brains actually need about 15 minutes to refocus when moving topics, and if you move around a lot, you are really losing an amazing amount of effectiveness. What they can see now that they couldn't with TV, is that through neuroimaging, special scans like SPECT etc. is that some things are really happening at the biological level that no one expected to ever see before. The technology to research the brain has come a long way and is showing us some new things to think about … Me I'm old fashioned, I think reading to kids to help them learn to focus is a great thing. And I think there are other activities that parents can do to help build the analytical skills of focus and concentration into their kids repetoir. When kids are texting each other to the tune of thousands of text messages a day, there is some skill building that is being lost. When they have to work for a living they will find out, they will not be texting like that or they will not earn a paycheck.

The brain research may actually help us teach kids how to care for their brain so that they have a healthy brain until they are very old and gray! We teach them how to keep their teeth and a healthy body, now we need to teach them how repetitive behaviors actually do have an impact on the brain at a physiological level.