Pea suggests theory that technology enables higher thinking
If you don't understand your Facebook privacy settings, how to
programme your PVR or can't see the point in sharing your music
playlists, try asking one of Generation Z. These children, born in the
1990s and 2000s, have entered a world where digital technology is
ubiquitous, and they speak the language fluently. But what are the
implications of this – for children and their parents?
Research
in March this year by Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, found
that 61% of parents think their children know more about the internet
than they do, while three-quarters of children aged five-to-15 use the
internet at home. Nicholas Carr's recent book The Shallows suggests
that the internet is rewiring our brains, making us think more
superficially at the expense of deep reading and analysis. With such
heavy use of internet media already, are children's brains more
vulnerable to these pressures, or will Generation Z deal more
intuitively with these demands?
"Kids aren't born knowing how to
use this stuff," says Ann My Thai, assistant director of the Joan Ganz
Cooney Center in New York, which was set up to explore how technology
can benefit children's education. "We know from studying young adults
that multi-tasking is affecting our ability to do tasks efficiently
because we are distracted. We need to give them the tools to learn how
to navigate and prioritise information, and critical thinking is
important because of the volume of information."
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