Education
What is constant Internet exposure doing to children’s brains?
There was a time, less than 1000 years ago, when people thought books, paper, reading and writing were all expensive bad habits for children. Our current fears about the Internet are similar to the fears of those times.
This is a question from the Dark Generation born before the Internet.
The Internet is here and it’s not going to go away. Children will access it whether we want them to or not. The devices with which they will access the Internet will be so minimal, we will not be able to tell whether someone is accessing the Internet or not – in a few years.
There was a time, less than 1000 years ago, when people thought books, paper, reading and writing were all expensive bad habits for children. Our current fears about the Internet are similar to the fears of those times.
There is a generation that is growing up immersed in the Internet; they don’t know a world without it. The relationship is symbiotic – the Internet lives off them, they live off the Internet.
If you think of a ‘human + smart phone’ as a composite creature, it knows just about everything. ‘Knowing’ is obsolete for this composite creature.
What will that do to the human brain? I think it will liberate the brain from knowing all kinds of things just in case it ever needs them (this is what existing schooling does). Instead the brain will learn how to learn when there is a need to learn. How to learn fast, accurately and critically. ‘Just in time’ instead of ‘Just in case’.
A brain that is liberated from ‘knowing’ and in a world where most things are done by machines will have the space to create.
This is what the new generation will do – they will imagine and they will create.
The ‘Ape that Knows’ (Homo Sapiens) will have the opportunity to transition to the ‘Ape that Creates’. We should applaud that transition.
About the Author:
Prof. Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, England. He conducted the Hole in the Wall (HIW) experiment, where in the year 1999 a computer was embedded within a wall in an Indian slum at Kalkaji, Delhi and children were allowed to freely use it.
The experiment aimed at proving that kids could be taught computers very easily without any formal training. The Hole in the Wall experiment has left a mark on popular culture. Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup read about Mitra's experiment and was inspired to write his debut novel that went on to become the Oscar winning movie of 2009 – SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.
Professor Mitra is the winner of the 2013 TED Prize.
This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of ScooNews magazine. Subscribe to ScooNews Magazine today to have more such stories delivered to your desk every month.