Is Technology Addiction Killing The Benefits Of Boredom?

Handing over tech devices to our kids to prevent boredom could be backfiring.

There are lots of times that having a tech device can be a lifesaver when it comes to entertaining kids.

Whether it be handing over your smart phone at the doctor’s waiting room, or grabbing for the tablet on a rainy afternoon, most of us have used tech to fill the gap to prevent our kids getting bored.

But are we doing them a disservice in preventing their boredom?

And do we need to rethink our dependence on technological devices when it comes to our kids?

Dr Teresa Belton, senior researcher at the University of East Anglia's School of Education and Lifelong Learning, argues that boredom is the key to kids developing their creativity and imaginations. She studied a number of UK based, authors, artists and scientists to ask them about the effects of boredom when they were growing up, and found that many of the most successful creative adults were often bored as kids. Dr Belton told the BBC that “children need to have stand-and-stare time, time imagining and pursuing their own thinking processes or assimilating their experiences through play or just observing the world around them." If we are giving them the tech option too often, we’re interfering with this free brain space.

According to Thomas Goetz at the University of Konstanz in Germany, there are five different types of ‘boredom’: indifferent, calibrating, searching, apathetic and reactant. The ‘calibrating’ variety is the kind of boredom that leads to an ‘open’ and ‘wandering’ mind space that aids in thinking. The latest neuroscience reports that when our brains are bored, they are actually at their most active. 

ABC’s Life Matters program recently reported on the benefits of boredom and their Facebook page was inundated with comments on the topic of kids and boredom. DameHelle Du Tour said, “Boredom creates ideas. Kids are over stimulated because they don't have time to be bored or their relaxation consists of screen time.” 

Ivette Delgado, said, “Time to sit and ponder is definitely something I see less and less in many these days, especially children”. 
But Sue Silva made the point, “There is a difference between using technology as a babysitter and using it as a teaching tool though”.

What do you think? Do you think that technology gets in the way of beneficial boredom?

Source : parents[dot]nickjr[dot]com[dot]au