Nicholas Kardaras - Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids-and How to Break the Trance

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In almost every house weve been,

Weve watched them gaping at the screen.

They sit and stare and stare and sit

...

Until theyre hypnotized by it,

But did you ever stop to think,

(What) This does to your beloved tot?

it rots the senses in the head!

it kills imagination dead!

...

it makes a child so dull and blind

he cannot think he only sees!

Roald Dahl

Excerpt from the Mike Teavee poem from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as sung by the OompaLoompas

The Trouble with Tech

Captain Kirk was the man.

At least thats what I thought as an impressionable fifth-grader back in 1974. Watching Star Trek re-runs, Id fantasize about being on the bridge with badass Captain Kirk and cool Mr. Spock, traveling to worlds where no man had gone before; heading at warp speed to exotic planets and confidently seducing green women what more could a red-blooded young boy want?

Then there was all of that cool tech! That communicator that hed so suavely flip open and command, Beam me up, Scotty. Desperate to be one of his crew, I made hundreds of paper versions of that flip phone communicator while I was supposed to be paying attention to my teacher, Mrs. Legheart, as she droned on and on about the Pilgrims or fractions or some such... but certainly not anything as exciting as my Star Trek inspired imagination.

I dreamed of a time when reality could catch up to my science fictionfueled fantasy, not realizing the wisdom of the old adage be careful what you wish for. Because, yes indeed, the tech of Kirk is here but at a very, very high price.

Believe me, I didnt want that to be the case; I wanted I yearned for guilt -free tech. Unfortunately, it seems that we, as a society, have entered into a Faustian deal. Yes, we have these amazing handheld marvels of the digital age tablets and smartphones miraculous glowing devices that connect people throughout the globe and can literally access the sum of all human knowledge in the palm of our hand.

But what is the price of all this future tech? The psyche and soul of an entire generation. The sad truth is that for the oh-so-satisfying ease, comfort and titillation of these jewels of the modern age, weve unwittingly thrown an entire generation under the virtual bus.

C mon aren t you being a bit dramatic? you might ask. But look around you. Look at any restaurant that has families with kids; look at any place where kids and teens hang out pizzerias , schoolyards, friends houses what do you see?

The head-down, glassy-eyed zombification of kids whose faces are illuminated by glowing screens. Like the soulless, expressionless people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the zombies in The Walking Dead, one by one our young people have fallen victim to this digital plague.

I had my first glimpse of this nascent global epidemic back in the summer of 2002 on the island of Crete. My newlywed wife and I had planned a trip to Greece land of my parents and ancestors as an escape from a hectic life in New York.

After the usual stops at Mykonos and Santorini, we decided to take the ferry down to the more rugged island of Crete and hike several hours down the ancient Samarian Gorge to the remote coastal village of Loutro. It is a magical place: Stunning, sun-drenched Greek beach with laughing bathers splashing around in the clearest blue water; a beautiful, tranquil place that time forgot... There are no cars, no convenience stores, no TV, no flashing lights just traditional whitewashed houses and a handful of small waterfront inns and their beachfront tavernas.

Loutro is also known as a go-to family destination. The seclusion of the traffic-free village makes it an ideal playground for kids: kayaking, swimming, climbing of rocks, games of tag, leaps into the water it is a kids paradise.

During our first day there, after having spent the whole morning at the beach, we stopped by one of the cafs for a frappe. While there, I asked the waiter where the restrooms were and was pointed toward some steep stairs down to a dimly lit, low-ceilinged basement. Once downstairs, I could see an odd glow emanating from a corner in the darkness. Squinting to adjust to the darkened room, I was able to see the light source: it was Loutros anemic version of an Internet caf two old Apple computers on a tiny table in a corner of the depressing cellar. As I looked closer, I could see the dark silhouettes of two pudgy American kids playing video games with their round faces illuminated by screens just inches away from their faces.

Thats odd, I thought; one of the worlds most beautiful seascapes, where the local Greek kids were playing from sunup to sundown was just a few feet away, yet these two were holed up in the darkness in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

As I chanced into that caf a couple more times over the week that we were there, those two kids were always in that basement with their illuminated faces. Not being a parent myself yet, I didnt think that much about the pudgy kids with the glowing faces and wrote them off, rather judgmentally, I must admit, as probably just the unhealthy children of bad parents.

Yet I never forgot the hypnotized expressions of those boys playing in that horrible cellar while paradise was just over their heads. Slowly, as with the drip, drip, drip of a faucet, I began to realize that the hypnotized, glassy-eyed stares were spreading; like a virtual scourge, the Glow Kids were multiplying.

Is this just a harmless indulgence or fad like some sort of digital hula hoop? Some say that glowing screens may even be good for kids an interactive educational tool.

But the research doesnt bear that out. In fact, there is not one credible research study that shows that a child exposed to more technology earlier in life has better educational outcomes than a tech-free kid; while there is some evidence that screen-exposed kids may have some increased pattern-recognition abilities, there just isnt any research that shows that they become better students or better learners.

Instead, what we do have is a growing mountain of evidence showing that there can be some very significant negative clinical and neurological effects on Glow Kids. Brain-imaging research is showing that glowing screens like those of iPads are as stimulating to the brains pleasure center and as able to increase levels of dopamine (the primary feel-good neurotransmitter) as much as sex does. This brain-orgasm effect is what makes screens so addictive for adults, but even more so for children with still-developing brains that just arent equipped to handle that level of stimulation.

Whats more, an ever-increasing amount of clinical research correlates screen tech with psychiatric disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression and even psychosis. Perhaps most shocking of all, recent brain-imaging studies conclusively show that excessive screen exposure can neurologically damage a young persons developing brain in the same way that cocaine addiction can.