Gadgets Pros And Cons Essay

Parenting & Gadgets: The Pros & Cons
By Dr Rajini Sarvananthan, Child Development Paediatrician.

As parents, you may find that modern life comes with many advantages in terms of the availability of gadgets. However, before you start to rely too heavily on its usage, you will need to carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages that it offers as it can be either beneficial or harmful, depending on how it is used. Here, we explore the good and the bad of letting your little ones handle gadgets from a young age.

Differentiating between the good and the bad
The use of gadgets (e.g. smartphones, laptops, etc.) can be beneficial if they are used for educational purposes. Some advantages include:
• Providing your child with a stimulus for his senses and imagination.
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• Encourages cognitive learning and helps him further develop his analytical/thinking skills.

However, just like anything in life, there can be too much of a good thing. The over-use of gadgets can make your child too reliant on them, and in more extreme cases, lead to addiction. This can be further exacerbated if parents use gadgets as a ‘digital nanny’ and leave their children to their own devices in the literal sense! In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that parents limit any type of screen time to less than one or two hours per day for children, while children below two are discouraged from any kind of screen time.

Some of the other potential downfalls that have been identified include:
• gadgets aid learning, but do not encourage innovative learning – an over-reliance on gadgets from a young age can stunt your child’s creativity in searching for solutions to problems as he becomes used to being spoon-fed information. After all, most educational apps are just an improved version of their predecessor, i.e. dictionary apps, electronic