#627 Juvenile Genius

So I read this interesting article the other day.
Turns out smart parents are making their children dumber.
Well, only the lazy well-intentioned ones.
We all know keeping up with kids and technology is the greatest problem today’s parents face. Next to hunger, world peace and global warming, of course.
That and time. Unfortunately, many two-income earning households don’t have the time their old-fashioned one-income parents did. Children often don’t get the one-on-one attention that really makes them thrive.
So it’s no wonder today’s parents try some technological shortcuts.
And hey, kids like technology, right? This is the society that feels like it has to technologize everything. Even the hallowed Barbie now doubles as an Mp3 player. That’s right, in case your kid gets tired of pretending to be the ultimate jet set consumer with frozen ankles, she can turn her doll into a audio device. No word whether she comes with earphones and a neck harness.
But it’s another example of the same problem. The power of active imagination compared to passive entertainment.
Like the “smart” kid DVDs. Parents spent hundreds of millions of dollars last year on videos like Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein, in the fond hope that the simple pictures and lessons about music, math and vocabulary would stimulate the babies’ brains and set them on the fast track to the ivy league.
Nope.
University of Washington researches say it doesn’t work.
It’s like empty calories for the mind.
Not only that, it makes their minds worse. For every daily hour a child spent watching these videos the child understood an average of seven fewer words than babies who just played and interacted with older children or adults.
Interacting with the world is how babies learn. With blocks and toys and people. Babies watching videos just zone out.
Perhaps dreaming of the day when they can have their own remote.
Passively watching videos does to babies what it does to middle-aged adults after a big dinner.
Puts them in la-la land.
Might as well just crack open a beer for em while your at it.
America, ya gotta love it