How
often do you see your smartphone? You may see it almost in a day. It looks like smartphone
has been being an addictive device for
many people. Wherever you go, it’s easy finding people use smartphone. The users
are not only adult and teen but also children. It is amazing seeing children
nowadays who are mastering to use smartphone in a couple of minute. Smartphone
as sophisticated device provides some interesting features which appear like a
fun friend for children. Then we come to a question, do children need smartphone?
Or is smartphone just a useless thing for children? I am confident to say
smartphone is a useless thing for children. Smartphone becomes useless thing
for children because it brings negative
effects in some aspects of children life. The aspects are social life, mental
health, and learning habit.
The first, smartphone
gives negative effect for children’s social life. It is no wonder today,
smartphone replace any kinds of children activity such as playing hide and
seek, football, basketball, etc. Although those activities are one of bridge for children to learn how to interact
, build empathy and sympathy, cooperate, and live together with others.
Children today tend to stay on their
smartphone and play various online game, for example mine craft, point blank, and
others. By spending time with smartphone, of course, children lose their chance to interact with
other person directly. They live in their own world without caring another. As a result, most of children today are egoist
and poor in socialization.
The second,
smartphone is bad for children’s mental health. Smartphone help children to be
easier accessing social media, so most of them becomes social media user. As a
social media user, children is potentially getting cyber bullying or another harassment in social media. Children who are unmature mentally have not been
ready yet to face such as bullying. Then children are getting hurt mentally because
they only can feel uncomfortable condition but they do not know how to hold it.
As Jenifer N. Caudal, DO, an AOA board-certified family physician in Philadelphia states that kids that are bullied are likely to experience
anxiety, depression, loneliness, unhappiness, and poor sleep. In addition,
smartphone with easy connectivity to internet can lead children to unhealthy website. For example, a child is opening a website to look for a lesson. Then
the problem is when it is unhealthy website, the child is not only find article related to
his lesson but also some advertisements which are the content is not suitable
for the children sometimes. The contents usually have pornography within it. Of
course it is dangerous for mental health of children.
The third, smartphone
influences children’s learning habit. Smartphone is wonderful for most of
children because they can explore everything they want to know by touching the
screen only. Experience such as fun activity through smartphone makes children
neglect learning. Because smartphone is
addictive, children prefer break their
learning habit pattern to leave their smartphone. Although some parents try to
control learning habit of their children but children who has been addicted on
smartphone will also try to look for some ways to use smart secretly.
The
opponents of smartphone for children says that smartphone supports children
education aspect with the program in it such as e-book, calculator, educative
game, etc. However, choosing smartphone to support children education is not
ideal choice because smartphone as stated previously brings much negative
effect. It’s better to use book, the real educative game, and another media
which are safer than smartphone.
In
conclusion, children possess smartphone is useless thing because it can cause
much negative effects than positive one. The negative effects of smartphone
harm children in some aspect such as social life, mental health, and, learning
habit. Since smartphone brings much disadvantages, it is benefit to avoid children
from smartphone.
