In was not as effective because it didn’t

In Sara DeWitt’s Ted Talk, “ 3 Fears About Screen Time for Kids and Why They Are Not True,” she talks about how parents and we, as a society, react when a young child has a technological device. The fears she brings up are that screens are passive, playing games is a waste of time, it distracts children from their education and screens are isolating parents from children. Overall, the Ted Talk was not as effective because it didn’t say what age group it was addressing in the title.

Also, as technology is advancing every day, people are continuously and usually positively adapting to it. Therefore, so some of the fears are irrelevant. SCREENS ARE PASSIVE. DeWitt said that 40% of Americans check their phone every morning within 5 minutes of waking up and that we check it at least 50 times throughout the day. DeWitt also claims that we think that is a normal activity(00: 00: 20-0: 26). Then she goes on to say “ now imagine it in the hands of a three-year old, we as a society get anxious”(00: 00: 40).

Teenagers wouldn’t associate those numbers with three year olds simply because they aren’t one and don’t have one!  The title doesn’t say what age group the video discusses, so no parent could determine its usefulness for the age group of their child. DeWitt says that the second fear is “ Playing on these screens is just a waste of time. It’s going to distract children from their education.

” (00: 05: 56-00: 06: 08) Yet it truly can be argued that technology is advancing every day and being implemented as parts of the curriculum. Additionally, teachers are using social media platforms to engage and communicate with their students. Although DeWitt said “ It’s right for us to think about balance” (00: 10: 38), she didn’t elaborate on the differences of using devices for positive aspects of education.” Screens are isolating parents from children”(00: 08: 07). DeWitt has the audience play out a scenario when they are a parent, and they need time to make dinner, so they hand there phone to their child. Later on they receive a message that their child match 5 rhyming words. She says that this make the parents feel empowered.

The talk does give parents ideas of how to talk to their child about what they learned in the games they play, or the tv show they watch. And this connection can deepen the parent and child relationship. The video also explains why parents should let their children explore some education based games as they will remember the skills they used. DeWitt gave a great example of this. “ So we started with bats. When kids came into play this game they loved seeing themselves on screen with wings.” She continues by saying  “ My favorite part of this is when the game was over, and we turned off the screens the kids kept being bats.

They kept flying around the room, they kept veering left and right to catch mosquitoes and they remembered things” (00: 05: 02-00: 05: 20). Although the Ted Talk was impractical for most age groups for my age group, it did provide examples of some limited benefits regarding the effectiveness for parents of three year olds. I think DeWitt did an excellent job at explaining why parents do not need to be afraid about children on devices because she is a parent and understands how parents react to this new and ever changing technology.