HOPE SMITH
campus editor
hope.smith393@my.tccd.edu
Think of anything, the internet has it, for anyone too. It’s incredible. But do you recognize the feeling you get when you see a family of three at a restaurant: the parents and their iPad’s child?
This phenomenon has been affectionately labeled the “iPad Kid,” a term tossed around social media for some time. They are too young, vacant-faced children. This can’t be good for their development.
At some of their youngest stages in life, these children are given devices in which they don’t even have full proper motor function.
The child isn’t the issue though it’s the parents. Children are hard, and children are needy. So the solution may look like giving them a form of constant portable entertainment to get a moment to breathe. It’s like slapping a bandaid over a gunshot wound.
Part of parenthood should be addressing the issue. They can’t push it on to an inanimate object and say, “I did all I can do!”
In the end, the child is going to develop more of an attachment to the device than to anything in the real world.
It’s scary because so much of human development is heavily reliant on social interaction. It’s hard to believe iPad Kids go out, and why would they when everything that gives them immediate gratification is right in front of them?
The pandemic really didn’t do anything to help either, it seemed children only secluded more into their own digital world. Bringing children out of the pandemic must have been a struggle, and it must have been so much harder to do so with a child that owns an iPad.
The growth of the new generation should be a big concern. It’s going to shift the way people interact with each other and how they communicate.
Obviously, the internet is unavoidable. At some point someone’s kid is going to have access. That’s OK. Children can still develop some sort of skill when it comes to the internet when they can properly pour something into a cup first.
It’s simple, but so much motor function can go into just steadily holding a cup, which is something that a lot of young children can’t do. That’s been apparent with a certain TikTok trend, where parents film their children trying to fill a cup by themselves and in a shocking turn of events, most of them can’t.
Let kids be kids. Let them first discover the real, tangible world. They are so curious, and let them be. There is a lot to discover in real life that a child will benefit a thousand times over from seeing in person, rather than have an iPad sing them the ABCs.
Parenthood isn’t easy, but children grow into adults who will eventually help lead the world. Raise people who are going to be eager to join the world, not hide from it behind a screen.
