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Children Struggle To Hold Pencils Due To Too Much Tech, Doctors Say (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Children are increasingly finding it hard to hold pens and pencils because of an excessive use of technology, senior pediatric doctors have warned. An overuse of touchscreen phones and tablets is preventing children's finger muscles from developing sufficiently to enable them to hold a pencil correctly, they say. "Children are not coming into school with the hand strength and dexterity they had 10 years ago," said Sally Payne, the head pediatric occupational therapist at the Heart of England foundation NHS Trust. "Children coming into school are being given a pencil but are increasingly not be able to hold it because they don't have the fundamental movement skills. "To be able to grip a pencil and move it, you need strong control of the fine muscles in your fingers,. Children need lots of opportunity to develop those skills." Payne said the nature of play had changed. "It's easier to give a child an iPad than encouraging them to do muscle-building play such as building blocks, cutting and sticking, or pulling toys and ropes. Because of this, they're not developing the underlying foundation skills they need to grip and hold a pencil."
I wish I could say this tech-addicted story surprised me.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Who says these kids are playing games? They are most likely watching youtube videos or similar. Even if they are playing games, on an iPad or smartphone the game is going to involve tapping or dragging, not using buttons and a directional pad like a Gameboy.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
As the newfangled quill became more popular, we began to see more and more children lack the hand strength to use a hammer and chisel. Sadly, we have yet to recover from such a blow to society. Once again technology has degraded our quality of life.
Then they'll develop the dexterity they need.
Using a game controller is completely different from using a touchscreen smart phone/tablet. That's what kids do today. The only thing they use their hands for are swiping from one YouTube video to the next.
Decades from now YouTube will be blamed for all of this. I mean hell, they're shifting their whole damn business model to cater to kids and push everyone else off. Gotta get that money and kids are easily addicted targets.
Pencils are going the way of the Dodo. Not saying that is good (I don't actually think it is, there are a lot of other instruments that are basically similar to hold like a pencil), but that seems to be what is happening.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It might be just because I'm a very kinaesthetic person, but this is something I find in general computer tech has failed to grasp: How important it is to hold something, to touch something, to feel something touching you.
Among other things, this is the primary reason most keyboards on the market suck, and why VR still hasn't taken off. We techies tend to believe too much that 80% of the human perception is visual, and that is just plain out wrong. The largest sensory organ in your body is your skin.
Computers make great toys for kids, they allow so much creativity and agency, and there are so many skills you can develop with them. But kids should also play with sticks, with Legos, with tools, with wood and metal and stone.
And, frankly speaking, if you don't give your child real, physical books to read, IMHO you should be locked up for child abuse.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
They'll be fine. Whenever I had to write cursive, it grated by wrist bones after a while. Like most physical adjustments for a task, you do a little damage, your body heals, and over a couple of weeks you're a halfway-capable writing machine.
Writing isn't going away even in some far flung future - but it's understandable why kids don't want to use it constantly anymore compared with alternatives.
That particular kind of bone pain involved with mashing those wrist bones into shapes is validly a
thing that makes you not want to practice writing.
But kids would still end up doing it, even if there aren't lesson plans. If there stuck somewhere and want to make a crude sign, they're not going to be unable to. They'll still write words in the sand with s a stick, and countless other interactions with language we're drawn to.
The kids will be fine. It's the adults we should really be worried about - there's some things really wrong with them.
Ryan Fenton
At 40, like me, you would have learned to use a pencil first. We had Atari, we had Nintendo, we had C64, but they weren't quite as prevalent as smart-phones and iPads, which are what my kids grow up on.
My kids have definitely had issue with pencils and scissors in their early years. Of course, they got over it. These tests are designed to identify developmental disorders, and one failing one test in a series does not a developmental disorder make.
But, not shown are that kids are learning their letters and learning to read at a younger age. While my kids struggled a bit with using pencils, they both went in to pre-school, at 3 years of age knowing their alphabet and knowing how to read. My son in particular went in to kindergarten reading at a 7th grade level, he learned all of it from his iPad and learning to read to play games that he saw me playing.
So while kindergarten teachers may need to spend more time with pencils and scissors and developing hand strength, they will not need to spend as much time teaching the alphabet and reading, both of which are pretty much 90% of the kindergarten curriculum.
Perhaps the need to hold a pencil will not be needed in the future.
Everyone who is posting using a pencil or stylus, please raise your hands . . . ?
I have terrible hand-writing and therefore took an after school typing class in 9th grade, back in the late '70s.
Since then, I rarely write anything; just type. In the early 80's, in the terminal room while I was studying CS, I often pitied the poor folks hen-pecking in their code at a snail's pace.
About the only time I take a pen in my hand, is when I need to put a signature on something.
Handwriting can be a fine art, and I really admire folks who have beautiful and inspiring handwriting . . . it's just something I can't do, but don't need to do it.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
This story seems like complete, made-up bullshit. It has:
- Doctors and scientists making a claim that seems ridiculous on it's face
- Focuses on children and learning for reader and interest
- A bogeyman
- No actual scientific study mentioned
- An audience ready to believe
The other 10% being "do not eat glue".
#DeleteFacebook
Typing, at least typing the proper way, also builds up hand strength. Hunt and peck with 2 fingers does not. If you really want to build hand strength, make them learn to play the piano.
Have your child play a musical instrument.
We'll make great pets
Thing is -- different usages build different areas of muscles. And the brain learns different types of movements.
When growing up, one summer I used to bike 40km to work at age 16. 80km round trip. I'd work a physical job for a full shift, and return. And growing up in the country, overall I was in fairly good shape. Lots and lots of outdoor/physical chores.
And clearly, one is in excellent shape when doing the above 5 days a week.
Anyhow, I took up water skying. For the first week, I could barely *stand* after a mere 15 minutes. My legs would shake. Part of my leg muscles were not even used in bicycling, walking, and whatever else I did.
People talk about 'swimmer's bodies' and all that, but there is truth to it. Different activities use different muscles, and using a pen/pencil is the same sort of thing. And then, on top of that, the brain needs to learn the specific / fine motions akin to that specific action.
I'm positive that gross hand/eye coordination is improved with playing games. And typing. But, if you've never typed? All the video game playing in the world, won't provide you with the strength and coordination to make all those repetitive typing movements. Your body still needs training.
"Children adapt to best adjust to what they need to do."
Handwriting is dead. The writing is on the wall. (Sorry!)
These kids have 4 years of touchscreen and keyboard skills before they go to school now and we're teaching them to use pencils? Why? A lot of schools are issuing tablets to individual pupils from a young age and most certainly they still teach ICT skills.
We had to be taught how to write because it's not natural and "you'll need to be able to write when you grow up."
They need to be taught how to use a keyboard / touchscreen because it's not natural and "you'll need to be able to type when you grow up"
For myself, I literally have had NO NEED of handwriting beyond block capitals for the entirety of my adult life. Sure, I can do it. But I don't need it. And I have a degree and still didn't need it. In fact, I would argue that my degree is in one of the few areas where touchscreens and computers are useless for transcribing information - mathematics. I can out-formula anyone using LaTeX or equivalent by hand. But that's because I was made to use my hand, rather than a computer language with a GUI for laying out maths equations.
Rather than force these kids to hurt themselves (building up muscles like that is done by tearing and healing, tearing and healing enough that they strengthen the right areas - do you not remember wrist-pain when writing in school, because I do, yet I've never suffered from RSI even a tiny bit), to learn an outdated, obsolete and (to them) secondary skill, let them use the skills they ALREADY HAVE by the time they hit school, on a lot more relevant technology, which is much closer to what they'll require when they are older.
Fact is, I work in prep schools* - these kids are literally entering school able to type on QWERTY and do every swipe, sweep, drag, drop, tap and hold they will need until at least adulthood. And then we sit them in the ICT suite and try to teach them "home keys" (an outdated concept once you are able to type at any speed at all, like telling a rally driver to keep his hands on the ten-to-two position). And then we sit them in the English classes and force them to write with a stick for YEARS on end until they've learned to break their hands enough to hold the stick just right so that they don't have illegible scrawl but proper joined-up writing that they will NEVER NEED TO READ in their life (how much of what you read is printed or screen typefaces only? Almost everything).
No matter how much you disagree with abolishing handwriting, it's a stupid suggestion to forcibly train kids on an alternative older technology when they are so accustomed to the current technology that it comes natural to them anyway.
*Private education, age 3-13. The headmaster's 3-year-old son smashed their laptop screen because he assumed it was touchscreen like EVERYTHING ELSE he's used in his life and so kept applying pressure when it didn't respond to touch. I'm not even joking. And if the live-in son of the live-in headmaster of an exclusive expensive prep school (who still do "pen licences" for handwriting, etc. and teach Latin) is already that familiar with touchscreens, you can be sure that most people have that skill.
I would say, having experience in the matter, "bathroom activities".
stop ogling that mirror.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
COUNTLESS studies to IMPROVE DRAMATICALLY after a good amount of video game playing.
Indeed they have. All of these countless studies involved games that actually had hand eye co-ordination and fine motor skills, i.e. using a mouse / keyboard or a game controller.
Have you seen a child play on an iPad? They just smack the screen with their hand and get rewarded, that is assuming they are playing games at all. There is a big difference between playing with an iPad and working your way through an FPS game on an Xbox.
The kinds of typos it generates, apparently.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Is there anybody left who doesn't know what hentai is?
Are we all going to become brain surgeons? So what's the point? Can you explain why " Hand / Eye Coordination " would be an important metric?
- You stepped on a splinter. Are you going to use a sharp knife and pincers to remove it without breaking it, or are you going to sit down, cry and wait for an ambulance?
- A wire came lose in your expensive keyboard, amplifier, headphones, vaporizer, guitar or whatever. Are you going to spend a minute with a soldering iron fixing it, or spend hours looking for somewhere that can repair it, or toss it and buy new?
- Your child comes crying with a broken toy and asks if you can fix it.
- You received a hand written invitation in the mail, marked RSVP.
There are so many different scenarios where hand coordination is important that you're bound to encounter them regularly. I don't expect my dog to be able to do detail work, but are you a dog?
if you had a girlfriend, sheâ(TM)d be very acquainted with something pencil sized
You're acquainted with something much smaller than a pencil that is quite vacuous between your ears.
We'll make great pets
At 40, like me, you would have learned to use a pencil first. We had Atari, we had Nintendo, we had C64, but they weren't quite as prevalent as smart-phones and iPads, which are what my kids grow up on.
My kids have definitely had issue with pencils and scissors in their early years. Of course, they got over it. These tests are designed to identify developmental disorders, and one failing one test in a series does not a developmental disorder make.
We also played with legos and erector sets.
We'll make great pets