I see kids and I am concerned about their social development.
The First problem is parents who don’t understand that children have to learn they are not the center of the universe.
The Second problem is children, as young as 3 who are buried in their computer and don’t even look up.
The article from JAMA Pediatrics shows that this second problem is producing maladaptive kids–well what’s the surprise?
I have equal concerns about helicopter parents and self-centered undisciplined kids.
Electronic Media Associated With Poor Outcomes in Children
Research · March 17, 2014 JAMA Pediatrics
TAKE-HOME MESSAGE
This longitudinal study analyzed the effect of early childhood electronic use and long-term well-being in over 3500 children between the ages of 2 and 6. General well-being was assessed with questionnaires about peer problems, emotional problems, family functioning, etc. The results in 2-year follow-up indicated that higher use of electronic media in early childhood is associated with poorer well-being outcomes.
This study underscores the importance of parental counseling by medical providers about monitoring and limiting children’s use of electronic media devices. However, the long-term impact of this study has not yet been assessed.
– Moshe Ornstein, MD
ABSTRACT
IMPORTANCE
Identifying associations between preschool-aged children’s electronic media use and their later well-being is essential to supporting positive long-term outcomes. OBJECTIVE To investigate possible dose-response associations of young children’s electronic media use with their later well-being.
DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
The IDEFICS (Identification and Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-Induced Health Effects in Children and Infants) study is a prospective cohort study with an intervention component. Data were collected at baseline from September 1, 2007, through June 30, 2008, and at follow-up from September 1, 2009, through May 31, 2010, in 8 European countries participating in the IDEFICS study. This investigation is based on 3604 children aged 2 to 6 years who participated in the longitudinal component of the IDEFICS study only and not in the intervention. EXPOSURE Early childhood electronic media use.
MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
The following 6 indicators of well-being from 2 validated instruments were used as outcomes at follow-up: Peer problems and Emotional problems subscales from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and Emotional well-being, Self-esteem, Family functioning, and Social networks subscales from the KINDLR (Questionnaire for Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life in Children and Adolescents-Revised Version). Each scale was dichotomized to identify those children at risk for poorer outcomes. Indicators of electronic media use (weekday and weekend television and electronic game [e-game]/computer use) from baseline were used as predictors. RESULTS Associations varied between boys and girls; however, associations suggested that increased levels of electronic media use predicted poorer well-being outcomes. Television viewing on weekdays or weekends was more consistently associated with poorer outcomes than e-game/computer use. Across associations, the likelihood of adverse outcomes in children ranged from a 1.2- to 2.0-fold increase for emotional problems and poorer family functioning for each additional hour of television viewing or e-game/computer use depending on the outcome examined.
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Higher levels of early childhood electronic media use are associated with children being at risk for poorer outcomes with some indicators of well-being. Further research is required to identify potential mechanisms.
JAMA Pediatrics
Early Childhood Electronic Media Use as a Predictor of Poorer Well-Being: A Prospective Cohort Study
JAMA Pediatr 2014 Mar 17;[EPub Ahead of Print], T Hinkley, V Verbestel, W Ahrens, L Lissner, D Molnár, LA Moreno, I Pigeot, H Pohlabeln, LA Reisch, P Russo, T Veidebaum, M Tornaritis, G Williams, S De Henauw, I De Bourdeaudhuij
John, can you please explain how ICD-10 is a worse problem than ICD-9 was? My understanding is that both are hierarchical systems, so the number of nodes in each is not a useful metric of complexity. If it is a system based on a meaningful ontology, a 10-fold increase in the number of nodes can be accommodated with only a slight increase (on the order of 10%) in the average path length.
Also, are you allowed to use codes at different levels of generality, or do you have to pick them at the leaf level?
I’m on the other side of military health care. It works fantastic when you’re near a large base like NAS Jacksonville, FL, but the clinic here in New Orleans is a nightmare. They can’t even take an X-ray. since anything more complicated than taking blood pressure or administering a standard booster requires a referral out in town, it’s clear that Tricare (the insurance company for those that don’t know) is running the show. It took me a year and a half to get my son to the specialist all the doctors knew he needed. When I saw the statement showing how little Tricare paid them, I understood why.
If I was an office practitioner, I would be impacted horrifically by the ICD10.
If i worked in a hospital that billed for medicare and medicaid and regular insurance, I would even be impacted as an emergency physician.
This is the kind of overkill that happens when computer geeks find out they can gather all kinds of information.
I am in emergency medicine and I work for a hourly for the Army. A good choice to avoid these problems, i assure you.
I have lots of physician allies, and i will try to provide some insight on this catastrophe, but obamacare and healthcare sysem renovation have not been subjects i covered much in detail. I actually have become despondent about the problems that have developed–I love my profession and it is not as lovable as it once was.
What’s your take on this, by the way?
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/03/124716-one-doctors-viral-letter-exposes-harrowing-reality-obamacares-war-doctors/
Have you been affected by the 438% increase in ICD codes? Maybe if you get the time you could post an article on it.
Enough of this ridicule and vilification. I have my scrivener challenges, but I am trying to overcome them and in this hostile environment I may develop psychological problems too.
Heh. Doctors have always had mandates. Prior to these Affordable innovations, they fulfilled their mandates by covering miles of paper with their atrocious handwriting.
As far as doctors are concerned, a lot of that problem is directly a result of the EMR mandate. Doctors are forced by the Affordable Care Act to spend the majority of their time doing data entry.
I don’t mean to hijack this thread, but I’d like to see something written about the adults that have problems because of their electronics. It seems like every manager now has a Blackberry, or equivalent, that draws their complete concentration (unless they are the ones talking) during meetings. Doctors barely make eye contact as they come in a room, as they immediately sit down and start to type on their laptop, interrupted only by an occasional question or remark made to the patient. Then there are the pedestrians who are so engrossed with texting that they walk into walls or fountains, or sometimes fall into holes or over cliffs. And finally are the drivers, who are either texting themselves, or watching what a passenger is texting, which puts a lot of other people in danger. Granted, kids who spend excessive time on electronic media might be doing themselves some harm, but the adults are a danger to the rest of us.
A few million years ago Crog the Elder complained that the tribe’s children spent too much staring at the new fangled fire and that ebony tipped spears made hunting too easy. He lamented that they would never learn to hunt with a good old stick, or how to eat their food raw.
Hm. So children with peer problems, emotional problems, and malfunctioning families find comfort with televisions and iPads. Is there a surprise here?
I’ve seen first hand the effects of excessive electronics use on children, as well as the benefits when electronics are appropriately used.
One of my children has used electronics as an escape from reality during much of his younger years. While I was at work, his mother had him parked in front of a screen all day. This led to him focusing so intently on the screen that he wouldn’t recognize body cues to eat or get up to go to the bathroom. He developed maladaptive behaviors and was developmentally regressed compared to his peers. Years of martial arts, restriction of electronics (when he’s not on visitation to mom’s anyway), and structure that causes him to have to step up and own his life has helped. Martial arts really helps to ground a person in their own body, focus their mind, develop a tollerant for discomfort, and overcome fear. He’s 16 now and it’s taken many years of working with him to help him overcome those deeply engrained patterns of behavior, and even still he struggles with falling back into them.
Another one of my children had unrestricted access to a computer while on visitation on mom’s. He was entering into puberty and had a history of abuse when he was younger, which can be a bad combination. He surfed all matters of pornography for hours every day he was on visitation. He began sexually acting out, including at school. He was placed into a residential treatment program to provide him the level of care needed for these and other behaviors.
In both of my childrens’ cases, the computer use followed the pattern of addiction. Both were attempting to escape highly stressful situations involving abuse from a parent with a personality disorder.
On the flip side of things, when I was a child I had a good mix of hands on life experiences, including sports, playing outside, building forts, going down to the creek, etc. I also had parental challenges. When I entered middle school I took the first computer programming class they offered in the school district. That led to a high interest in computers and programming. I ended up choosing the computer field for my career and have had a good living. In my case, my younger computer use wasn’t playing games and surfing the web. I wasn’t escaping to a fantasy world like my kids. Instead, I was program, which is very logic and problem solving oriented.
In essence I was practicing thinking skills. My kids on were practicing addiction. I am definitely concerned about the increased misuse of computer technology with young children and the harms that can be caused. I foresee that as personality disorders increase in the population due to multiple factors (public education, social media, breakdown of family, people living behind facades, rejection of religion/spiritual structure), we will see more children raised by screens instead of parents. This will result in more maladaptive children, which then result in a further increase in personality disorders.
It’s a vicious self reinforcing system. It is only through a very strong drive to fix the multiple factors that are breaking down in our society will be able to stop the decline. The irony is that so much of what is wrong in society was done in the name of “the kids”. All the while it’s actually causing the deepest psychological harm to the children (and their children and so on).
It’s a tall order to change all levels of society. For now I’d suggest home schooling with lots of hands on experiences in life that teach reality, logic, and cause/effect. Martial arts training where the child learns to tolerate discomfort and they teach strength and courage to stand up for what’s right.
Teaching of family history is far more important than I realized when I was younger. My family didn’t share much in that area. As I’ve dug into my own family history though I’ve seen how much of who am I am is shaped by the mid west values of my family line. Sharing family history helps to give a child a framework for understanding where they come from and what’s important in life. It helps to teach us how we treat people or how we approach work. It teaches us who we are. Who we are is the framework of personality. Someone with a personality disorder lacks such framework.
Without understanding that concept earlier in my life, I had a more difficult time educating my children on mid west values. I also had other factors working against me, such as their mother having a personality disorder. Yes, I told them it was important to be honest and treat people well, but the overall framework of why was missing depth. Part can be done with sharing family history and part through religion.
Lastly, stand up for each person’s right to feel safe and secure in their being and home. At the root of a personality disorder is disrupted attachment formation in the first 7 years of life. What this means is that a young child should feel safely and securely attached with their primary caregivers. This calls for love and safety, along with clear, consistent boundaries (not abuse through power and authority). They sometimes call this a “secure base”. Children of parents with a personality disorder don’t develop a secure, stable bond. They form insecure attachments. They end up feeling anxious, fearful, and distrusting of those closest to them. They really struggle with trust. How can a child develop a trusted, safe, stable relationship with a parent that’s annoyed by them and wants to just park them on a screen so they don’t have to deal with them? They can’t.
Research is just confirming that which attachment theory already knows. See the “Still Face Experiment” for an example of this type of early attachment dynamic ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0 ). Parent’s with a personality disorder do things like the still face and lack the appropriate mirroring required for secure attachment formation.
Kids growing maladaptive is of course a real problem, but it is not caused by electronic media. Civilisation does it, in more than one way.
Resentment against new technology is not new. When the printing process was invented centuries ago, it evoked similar sentiments among the educated elite. Books were evil, for two reasons: people spent lots of time reading instead of thinking and they suddenly were able to “teach themselves”, thus rendering the process of education considerably less elitist.
Centuries deep into the book age, when it was obvious that printed media were there to stay and it was taken for granted that people were more willing to read than they were to think, philosophers lamented “die Zerstörung des Kulturs durchs Machine”.
Where did that get us?
Culture is indeed maladaptive, but it continues to be supported by the influx of the less cultured.