I am convinced that those phones are making them dumber every time they pick them up. Their brains are not fully formed until age 25, as is common knowledge. So, that which messes with the brain makes a permanent impression, so to speak.
Recently, podcaster David Morrow gave me ammunition for this battle.
Morrow is a screen-expert who has studied brain chemistry. He shared that the average time that a person is on a screen per day is NINE HOURS. That is, for many of us, more than half of our waking hours. Screens in this statistic include computers, phones, and televisions. Here is an excerpt from his podcast:
Our brains need that to heal. When we started carrying these devices around with us all the time, we began filling that down time with screen time. Quick round of Fortnite. Quick, check your social media. Quick, check the news or weather, right? So, our brains never rest.
Our brains never rest! We’re on high alert all the time. Our brains are like any other muscle. If you went on a walk, and you walk continually for nine hours, you’d be exhausted. Our brains need time to rest as well. And if people spend nine hours a day on their screens, their brains are getting exhausted.
What else makes our brains exhausted? They are in a near-constant state of hyper-arousal. For example, if you were taking a walk through a nice forest, you’d notice the trees and the flowers and the butterflies, but if a wolf came across your path, your brain would instantly go into this state called hyperarousal. The media gives us a constant parade of wolves, threats, that keeps our brains feeling hyperarousal, and it’s wearing us out. We are not meant to see a wolf every minute of our waking hours!
That is only one of the dangers that David Morrow shared. He also connected our screens to ADHD, but I will let you check out that one on your own. (www.fotf.com daily broadcast, November 2023)
I am not trying to be a killjoy or “THAT mom”, as my kids sometimes say. I am really and truly concerned about their brains. And not only theirs! Because remember, I have been teaching 115 children a day, for the past six years, and I can see their attention spans shrinking, year by year.
Children of the 80’s, you know how we always say things like, can you believe our parents smoked in the car with the windows rolled up while they drove us to school? Or...can you believe that they fed us bread full of preservatives and processed meat and cheese, and called it dinner? I predict that someday OUR kids will sit around and wonder: “Oh my gosh, y’all! Can you even comprehend why our parents bought us phones in elementary school and then allowed us to look at them for hour upon hour for the next ten years?! Did they not realize what they were doing to us?”