Phones. ipads. Houston. We have a problem.When my dad got his license back in the 1930s the police officer asked him to drive around the block which took less than 5 minutes and he got his driver’s licence. There were real problems with car accidents, so as the decades rolled by the hurdles to get a car license in Australia got much harder. This was in the view to protect and keep safe people.
During World War 2, the Australian army would freely give away cigarettes to service men and women as a form of stress relief. In the 1960s medical science caught up as they discovered that smoking kills. In the 1980s my mum would stand under the kitchen fan while smoking as she knew that smoking had a detrimental effect on her children.
In 50 years time will the next generation look back and ask “what were we thinking about how we allowed our children to freely use electronic devices?” To free play computer games? To freely use social media? The science is clear that many of the activities like gaming and social media we do on phones and ipads release dopamine in our brains. Dopamine motivates us to act and check our phones or gaming devices. The problem is it gives us a boost temporarily and then we are then let down. We want to do it again. So we do it again. And again. And Again. Children often do not have the emotional maturity to limit how much. In Australia, most high school classrooms now are set up by using electronic devices. Like Google Classroom. We have created structures that literally encourage addiction. But this does not stop there. In previous generations where kids would be outside on weekends, riding bikes and kicking a ball. They are now more often inside the house looking at screens. More and more and more. Mental health problems are going through the roof not just because we live in a chaotic world, but because we have lost the sense of balance in how we spend our time. On Screens.
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