Luis Batista

ENG 11000

Research Paper Final

In today’s day and age, technology is being given to most children, in school, and off school. There have been arguments worldwide about the effects technology has on a child’s development. In “The touch screen generation” article Hanna Rosin believes technology can both hinder or improve a child’s development; Hanna claims that all guardians are supposed to carefully monitor a child’s device to make sure they are not consuming anything they classify as harmful. At the same time, in “Less Is More When It Comes to Technology in 2022” Katie pushes for less technology and more physical/social activity to develop children, as she believes technology does way more harm than good for a child’s brain. Katie claims that children in 2022 are growing up with more issues than ever before, with technology being the main reason. While I understand both sides of the argument, I believe a proper dosage of technology differentiating from child to child is the key to developing a child in this era of technology.

On the one hand, Hanna claims that despite popular belief, children can be given technology to speed up their psychological development further, but it must be controlled and monitored in specific ways as they grow. Hanna believes there is a general stigma around when it comes to children using technology at a young age, along with a lot of missed information being spread. In her article, “The touch screen generation”, Hanna states, “A longitudinal study of children older than 2 and a half showed that the ones who watched Blue’s Clues made measurably larger gains in flexible thinking and problem solving over two years of watching the show. For toddlers, however, the situation seems slightly different. Children younger than 2 and a half exhibit what researchers call a “video deficit.”(Rosin, Paragraphs 25-26) This means that they have a much easier time processing information delivered by a real person than by a person on videotape”. In other words, Hanna is using researched studies to explain how technology should be used depending on your child’s situation/age. By stating the differences in results between the two ages mentioned in the studies, Hanna can back her claim, as she supports that technology can impact young children’s development in negative and positive ways; According to Hanna, “There are legitimate broader questions about how American children spend their time, but all you can do is keep them in mind as you decide what rules to set down for your child…There are enough hours in a day to go to school, play a game, and spend time with a parent, and generally, these are different hours… If your child shows signs of having an addictive personality, you will probably know it. One of my kids is like that; I set stricter limits for him than for the others, and he seems to understand why.”(Rosin, Paragraph 44) In making these comments, Hanna explains how preventing your children from using technology altogether is not the way to go to treating any child unless there’s an obsessive addiction involved, she believes that there is enough time in a day for your child to do everything they need to do, including some time for a screen. Just like letting your kids watch television would “wreck their eyesight”, as well as video games would make them “violent”, Hanna compares the new age of technology to the previous two forms of consumption mentioned, which just like phones and tablets, also had a stigma for ruining the development of your children. Anything good can become bad if consumed too much, and most “bad” things can have good use if managed in dosages.

On the other hand, Katie does not believe technology’s effects on children outweigh the downsides that come with it. In “Less is more when it comes to technology in 2022”, Katie claims that with the rise of technology in recent years, there’s been a rise in social defects among children who’ve grown up with screens in their hands. Katie believes that there must be less technology and more socialization among children and their parents. In “Less is more when it comes to technology in 2022”, Katie states, “Mental health issues, behavior disorders, depression, and anxiety? Increasing. Is it all on us as parents or guardians? No. Give yourself grace. But we can create boundaries and standards at home. Additionally, seek professional help and support. The dark, negative effects on our children are being addressed by many groups and organizations. Parents and guardians need to step up at home for that work to be most effective.”(Pinke, Paragraph 6) The essence of Katie’s argument in this quotation is that there have been multiple studies showing the increase in many psychological issues since the covid outbreak, which she states had a “93.6% increase” in technological devices. She believes that the obsession with technology consumption in children and lack of socialization has been linked with all of the common mental issues and mood disorders. This quote supports her claim by illustrating the heavy downsides of being addicted to technology, which is stated to be very common among those who hold any sort of device. Katie knows that children especially, can be easily misdirected by technology, making them lack basic social skills and develop psychological disorders; she preaches change against the surge of technology not only among children but for families altogether. In her writing, Katie also states “If I could bring back the cell phone in a big bag in one family vehicle and a landline telephone at home only, I would for this year. Instead, we have a stash of digital devices”(Pinke, Paragraph 10). This quote emphasizes what Katie perceives as the outrageous amount of technology available today, Katie prefers to raise her children “old-style”, with no technology involved other than a home phone for necessary purposes. While Katie seems to be firm on her stand of this argument, she still admits that technology can have some use for educational purposes for children, but she does not believe that it is impactful enough to outweigh the downsides that she had listed before. Katie knows that technology is a necessity in today’s era but she tries to not depend on it as much as possible when raising her children, since technology alone will only get them so far.

I believe that technology and the development of children is a very sensitive subject because it varies from child to child. While there are some things that Hanna and I agree on, I do not agree with Hanna when she goes on to only use studies and surveys to prove her claim, and I also do not agree with Katie when she claims technology is horrible for most of its use when it comes to childhood development. There is no black-and-white way of going about it, each child will have a different reaction to technology, and not every child will be consuming the same content to be able to make perfect studies to rely on. But for that same reason, I believe we should allow children to be around technology at a young age, to test them early. Depending on their reaction to early technology consumption, the parents should make adjustments until they’re able to find a balance between being on an iPad and everything else going on in that child’s life. For example, in the final paragraph of  “The touch screen generation,” Hanna states “The week went on like this–Gideon grabbing the iPad for two-hour stretches, in the morning, after school, at bedtime. Then, after about 10 days, the iPad fell out of his rotation, just like every other toy does. He dropped it under the bed and never looked for it. It was completely forgotten for about six weeks. Now he picks it up every once in a while, but not all that often.” In this context, Hanna let her toddler use the iPad whenever he wanted, as an “experiment”. Even though her toddler was choosing to use the iPad a ton in the first two weeks, eventually it just became like any other toy. Naturally, you’d assume that the toddler would get obsessed and eventually not be able to live without the iPad, but children aren’t predictable. All children react to situations differently, some get negatively affected by the technological freedom given to them, and some can revert to normal, like Gideon in this example. As an Ipad kid myself, I’m able to say all of this by experience; I’ve both learned and failed because of my access to technology at a very young age. I chatted in games with other kids in games, I was able to use apps like Duolingo that made learning fun, and my second language English got extraordinarily better in a very short amount of time. But with all the good also comes with major downsides, My father had full trust in me of getting good grades at school and doing all my homework, and he gave me the ability to use my iPad whenever I wanted because I was an A student, but instead of being a scholar, I started lying to be able to use my iPad more. It became an addiction very quickly and through parent-teacher conferences, he found out about my missing work and finally started monitoring my use of the iPad. Unlike Gideon, my father had to take action to not let me lose control, which is exactly what I believe he should have done. 

I might disagree with some of Hanna’s points, but the same goes for Katie and her claims. I do agree with Katie when she talks about the negative effects that can come from giving children too much access to technology, but I do not agree with her when she says that we should limit all of our children and give them the least amount of technology possible. Just because technology can negatively affect children does not mean that we should simply get rid of it and not use it unless completely necessary. Katie contradicts herself, she states “This is coming from a mom who works in media and speaks often about positive ways to implement social media storytelling from our farms and across agriculture to connect with non-ag audiences”. This sentence has Katie telling us the readers that she often speaks positively about social media, but nowhere in the text does she talk positively about technology, she never mentioned trying new ways of implementing technology to help her children, she seemed to only stick to the roots of her believes without any change or different thought throughout the entire text.

Similar to Katie, there is a group of individuals claiming that technology is ruining our children in many ways, supporting that technology should not be allowed in the hands of children. An article supporting this claim named “Can You Raise Children Without Technology In 2022” talks about how raising your children with technology is preventing them from becoming bright kids. The article states, “Simply put, if your child is a student of online learning or in the habit of using technology, including e-readers, chances are there may be some delays and possible disruption to his developmental processes. And put bluntly, if I may, he may not become as intelligent as he could have been with a tech-free childhood”(Hanson, Paragraphs 4-5) In other words, they explain that learning with devices is less efficient and makes it harder to learn. As well as stating that using technology for anything else ruins your children’s brains. Therefore, according to this article, you’re unable to raise bright children if they are consuming technology, and although they do state reasons to back up their claims, I believe it is a weak and narrow-minded way of handling technology in 2022. I do agree that sometimes technology could ruin a child’s brain, but the parents can prevent that from happening without completely removing technology. The problem with this claim is that they do not have a solution, or a way, to properly prevent their children from reaching technology without avoiding conflict. The parent’s children will see their friends have the ability to touch these toys, also known as, Ipads/computers, and they will feel horrible and out of place for being the only kids with parents who don’t allow the use of technology. As a parent, you can discipline your children and manage how much technology they can consume, you go from there and adjust, whether it’s giving them more freedom or being more strict, you as a parent should be able to decide what’s best for your children. But it is clear that completely removing something as important as technology from your child’s hands is not the best option out there, as technology was made for a good reason and has tons of benefits to offer.

Although not perfect, Katie and Hanna still had good points and beliefs. Overall, we’re able to conclude that while one can disagree or agree with technology and children being this or that, we can all agree that escaping technology in 2022 is almost impossible. Despite our differences in raising children, we as humans, future parents, current parents, and so on, can only try our best to lead our children through a safe path. Figuring out how children work is already quite the task, despite the thousands of research we still have a lot to figure out, especially as technology keeps evolving further, we should strive towards making technology a safer and less dangerous tool for our children to learn and enjoy time with.   

       Citations

Rosin, Hanna. “The Touch-Screen Generation.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 19

Jan. 2018,

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/the-touch-screen-generation/30925

0/.

Pinke, Katie. “Less Is More When It Comes to Technology in 2022.” Agweek, Agweek, 9

Jan. 2022,

https://www.agweek.com/opinion/columns/less-is-more-when-it-comes-to-technology-in-2

022.

Hanson, Elizabeth Y. “Can You Raise Kids without Technology in 2022?” Smart Homeschooler, Smart Homeschooler, 5 Dec. 2021, https://smarthomeschooler.com/blog/2021/11/23/can-you-raise-kids-without-technology-in-2022. 

Language and speech, communication, and interactions all come together to make a
complex but efficient way for humans to express themselves; this leads to all negative, neutral,
`and positive perspectives on the topic. The essay “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and “If Black
English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” by James Waldin fall under the same
language genre. These two essays might convey similar arguments but lead through different
paths; We can further analyze these two essays by comparing the two using the conversation
method.
The essay “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan expresses Amy’s experiences growing up and
having to deal with obstacles because of her mother’s inability to speak “proper” English. Amy
beat the odds because she grew up to be an Asian writer; She mentioned how Asians produced
the least amount of writers among any other race because of their language barrier. Amy explains
how she perfectly understood her mother’s broken English, but others were usually unable to
understand her mother well. Amy grew up indirectly affected by the discrimination her mother
had to deal with because of the broken English her mother used to express herself to others. The
author’s main argument is that society generally judges and reacts to others based on how they
speak, but your unique way of speaking English still has its positives even if it’s “broken.” Amy
states, “She said they did not seem to have any sympathy when she told them she was anxious to
know the exact diagnosis since both her husband and her son had both died of brain tumors. She
said they would not give her any more information until the next time… And when the doctor
finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English—lo and behold—we had
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assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be
held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable
mistake.” This quote conveys a clear example of linguistic discrimination; the mother was being
treated differently simply because of her inability to speak proper English. This type of
discrimination affected not only the mother but also Amy. Amy stated that she would have to
deal with this on multiple other occasions. While her English was proper, she watched her
mother tongue be blatantly disrespected throughout her life. To support the second half of her
argument, she states, “I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent,
her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech, and the nature of her thoughts. Apart from
what any critic had to say about my writing, I knew I had succeeded where it counted when my
mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict: So easy to read.” This quote shows
the reader Amy’s English capabilities; she turned her and her mother’s struggles into motivation
to write things that individuals who struggle with English can understand. Amy chose to envision
her mother as the reader of her essays; her goal was to express the emotions that her mother
couldn’t speak in this language. Instead of keeping grudges against her mother or anyone else for
everything wrong that happened, she instead chose to appreciate all the different types of English
she learned while growing up and used them in her writing. The “Mother Tongue” essay itself is
a perfect example of a “simple” paper because it is “so easy to read.”
In the essay “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?” James Baldwin
describes the role of language and how it defines each individual; He uses black English as an
example of what language plays to minorities and people of privilege. James Baldwin goes into
depth on why black English became a thing and how the cruel nature of black slavery was its
primary cause. The author’s main argument is that language can be perilous and used to
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manipulate and mistreat others with the inability to understand it. To support his claim, James
states, “The brutal truth is that the bulk of white people in America never had any interest in
educating black people, except as this could serve white purposes. It is not the black child’s
language that is in question, it is not his language that is despised: It is his experience”. This
quote conveys that as enslavers, white people never felt like educating blacks for anything other
than their gain. Enslavers would only teach enslaved people how to communicate for work
purposes; this way, enslaved people could be more effective at only working and nothing else. It
was easier to understand the enslaver’s orders when you understood the words coming out; It
shows the cruelty of what educated white people did to manipulate the uneducated blacks. He
also states, “A language comes into existence by means of brutal necessity, and the rules of the
language are dictated by what the language must convey.” By this quote, James explains his
reasoning as to why black English came to be. Black English was a necessity, not just a choice,
and blacks hid and educated themselves so they could communicate with each other and find a
means of escape. Black English allowed them to communicate secretly, an advantage the white
enslavers did not expect. James Baldwin believes that language is a powerful thing to have no
matter the place or time, and even to this day, we are judged and treated differently by others
based on how we speak.
When we take Amy’s and James’s essays and put them next to each other, we can
simplify them to a similar theme. Language is essential and diverse and has given individuals
status and power for hundreds of years. The differences between the two essays are simply in the
context from which these two themes came. James’ writing and ideas are justifiably described in
a deeper and more serious tone. James’ linguistic discrimination does not come from just a lack
of speaking proper English; instead, it’s centered more around blatant racism and what his black
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ancestors had to deal with, which has led to black English. On the other hand, Amy talks about
her mother receiving different treatment from others for how she spoke. Still, unlike James, Amy
centers her essay around what she was able to do because of her mother’s struggles with speaking
English. Amy uses her ability to speak multiple types of English to show that it’s okay not to be
fluent in a language as long as you can express yourself. Neither essay directly states the
diversity involved with linguistic discrimination. Still, after reading both pieces, we can conclude
that being discriminated against for the way you speak does not pertain to one race or ethnicity.
James states, “There have been, and are times, and places, when to speak a certain language
could be dangerous, even fatal. Or, one may speak the same language, but in such a way that
one’s antecedents are revealed, or (one hopes) hidden.” This quote shows James talking about a
broader situation, where one might be able to speak the same language and still be in danger
because of the accent that comes with it. It can be related to Amy’s mother’s CAT scan situation,
where she states, “She said they did not seem to have any sympathy when she told them she was
anxious to know the exact diagnosis since both her husband and her son had both died of brain
tumors.”. Despite Amy’s mother telling the doctors about previous family deaths, they never
changed their attitude until the mother put Amy on the phone, which magically solved their
issues. James’ quote directly correlates to the Amy CAT scan event because, just like James
implied, if any emergency happened where Amy’s mom needed medical assistance, she might
have to depend on her “broken” English to save her life. In critical situations, your way of
speaking may be the deciding factor in a life-changing case. These two quotes convey the Idea
that despite both of these texts being unrelated in terms of context and tone, they are still
agreeing on the Idea that your way of speech is an essential product of the reactions you get from
others.
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When comparing the two essays, as readers, we realize that language by itself can define
a person in multiple ways. The way of speech is incredibly diverse, connecting us with others
who speak our language. Although, If we’re not careful, we can find ourselves being
discriminated against by others because of how our language represents us. Amy Tan and James
Baldwin essays were unique; Neither against each other or too alike, each author had their own
way of expressing language.: Comparative Essay