2024-03-24 07:11:26
diGianvito Martino
Two studies published in Science and Jama Pediatrics highlight the effects of an excessively “video-mediated” childhood: children who are more distracted, less empathetic and with less ability to communicate, leading to psychological problems and psychiatric disorders. We need to foster environments with positive examples and real interactions
Asking ourselves how we acquire knowledge of the world is a topic that has always fascinated those who want to understand man and his evolution. Two very recent studies, appearing in Science and Jama Pediatrics, are further evidence of this. The first tells of Sam, a 12-year-old Australian boy who, when he was an infant, was the subject of an extremely fascinating, painless and side-effect-free experiment.
With a micro-camera mounted on his head, everything he saw and heard was recorded for a total of 61 hours – one hour of recording twice a week between 6 and 25 months of life -, after which what was recorded was given fed to an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model based on machine learning, the so-called CVCL (Child’s View for Contrastive Learning model). This model was able to correctly associate with their names some images of objects frequented by Sam during the recorded audiovisual experiences. The study has therefore revealed that a lot can be learned in the first months of life even just through the association between stimuli coming from different sensory sources.
The second work tells us about a large group of children from 1 to 3 years old, also Australians who, when examined, showed communication skills whose development proved to be inversely proportional to the amount of time spent in front of videos, smartphones or similar. Once again, it is demonstrated that video-addicted children are “distracted” children because they suffer the phenomenon of “technoference”, the interference that technology exerts in their relationship with their parents; in doing so they are less talkative, less able to converse, but also more distracted, and their empathy and mnemonic capacity is reduced.
The two studies are certainly different from each other and have limitations. The first is based on a single subject, who was also examined for only a minimal fraction (1%) of the total time spent awake. Furthermore, it only demonstrates that AI can correctly but not in all cases (62%) match nouns to images and does not demonstrate that it is capable of knowing verbs, or the structure of the language. The second study is based on large numbers – 220 families examined once every 6 months during the period in which their children were 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36 months – but it is a retrospective study, with all the biases of such studies due mostly to the quality and real comparability of the data when collected retrospectively. But, if we overcome these limits and go beyond a mere reductionist vision, some implications are evident.
If during childhood we know the world, or at least part of it, by processing only in a computational and associative way what we see and hear, and if the world to which we expose our children during childhood is video-mediated and therefore at least counterfeit , if not unreal or even surreal, what should we expect? The most likely consequence is that the development and growth of our children will not only be characterized by linguistic and communicative poverty, as already demonstrated, but also by the concrete risk of making them live in a dissociated, detached, apathetic reality.
The consequence, which we are already witnessing, is an increased risk for very young people and young adults of developing discomfort if not actual psychological and psychiatric disorders. It is therefore our non-derogable responsibility to quickly contribute to creating environments for our children that are immediately less toxic and more human, made up of exchange, reciprocity, communityism and solidarity, characterized by real interactions and not videos, or worse, mass-mediated ones. , and populated by positive examples and not by arrogant ignorance. If we want a healthier, safer, fairer, more supportive and happier society, maybe we think of Sam and Australian children when we give our children smartphones.
At the same time, however, we must not make tomorrow’s adults hostile or unsuitable for technology because they will have to feed on technology. As a society we just have to educate them to understand that technology must only be a means, a very powerful one, but always and only a means and not an end. This is done by offering them an interactive technology, a true medium of knowledge, and not a technology that is just endured, or an end in itself, or even self-celebrating, and it is done, above all, by guaranteeing children the necessary tools to consciously access to the contents of the web space which are not only truly informative and educational but also safe and protected.
* Neurologist, Vice Rector of the University of Life and Health, San Raffaele, Milan
March 23, 2024 (modified March 26, 2024 | 08:22)
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