Tag: video games

Recent Posts

Is the American Academy of Pediatrics Copping Out on Kids’ Screen Time?

According to a recent article titled, “Pediatricians to tweak ‘outdated’ screen time recommendations for kids,” the American Academy of Pediatrics, that esteemed organization charged with protecting the health and well-being of children, has decided that their recommendations of limited screen time—basically no screen time for children under 2 years old and only two hours a […]

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Are Young People Losing Their Ability to Read Emotions?

An interesting new study was just published that suggests that children who have little or no screen time are able to read the emotions of others better than those who spend considerable time in front of a screen. Though the sample for the study was small, its implications are disturbing, namely, that the decline in […]

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Technology is Making Us Dumber

Very much in line with my own views on the overuse of technology, this article describes 8 Ways Technology Makes Us Stupid. I’m quite sure that the majority of us can relate to each of the eight.  

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Taylor Featured in Article about Video Game Violence on The Daily Beast

I was just interviewed for an article by The Daily Beast that described recent research that found that playing violent video games actually created feelings of guilt, produced an increase in moral sensitivity, and might promote prosocial benavior. I am skeptical, to be sure.    

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Are Opportunity Costs Children’s Real Problem with Technology?

There are a lot of “techno-evangelists” out there spreading the gospel of technology as the cure for all of our ills. For this group, technology can do no wrong. At the same time, there are plenty of Chicken Littles running around saying that our cultural, social, and educational sky is falling. For this group, technology is the ill that needs to be cured.

I place myself firmly in the middle of these two camps. Think of me as the Paul Revere of the 21st century—“The techies are coming!” I believe that technology is inherently neither good nor bad. But neutral does not mean it is benign. As with most things in life, technology is healthy or harmful depending on how it is used.

One challenge for us is technology enters our lives before we can know what effect it will actually have on us. The speed at which technology is becoming deeply woven into the very fabric of our lives is breathtaking; as if we’re holding onto the railing of a caboose of a runaway train. Innovations are launched and become a part of our culture so quickly that there isn’t time to step back and consider the implications of new technology on us. It is only in the rearview mirror that we can see whether a technological advancement has been beneficial or damaging. And by then it’s too late to go back; the new technology is already irreversibly embedded in our individual and societal psyches.

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Feed Your Children a Balanced “Diet” of Technology

The operative word in raising healthy children in this often-times unhealthy digital world they are growing up in is balance. A nutritional analogy works well here. A balanced nutritional diet doesn’t mean 50 percent healthy food and 50 percent junk food. Rather, a balanced diet involves ensuring that your children get adequate nutrition from all […]

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Is Big Media Slowly Killing Our Children?

Your children’s physical health is the foundation for everything they become and do. As corporeal beings, they, like the rest of humanity, are at the mercy of the fitness of their bodies to handle the ordinary challenges and extraordinary demands that are placed on them during childhood and beyond. You are responsible for ensuring that […]

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Parenting: Children’s Immersion in Technology is “Shocking”

What do smoke signals, drums, books, the telegraph, telephone, fax, mobile phones, and the Internet have in common? They have incrementally enabled us to connect with more people and access more information in more rapid, easy, and less costly ways. Each advancement changed our lives in ways manifest and subtle, direct and indirect, predictable and […]

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