Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction is Hijacking Our Kids and How to Break the Trance

Let me confess that my memory has gotten worse thanks to technology. The contact list on my cell phone eliminates any need to memorize numbers, so after having one for 13 years, I only know three phone numbers. However, I never use GPS and still navigate the old-fashioned way, by using a map and recognizing landmarks. Google Map is great for directions, but I still keep a map in my bag, and I often enjoy looking at maps, thinking of where I might go on my next vacation. They give me a desire to go out and see the world.

   

Glow Kids is written by Nicholas Kardaras, a neurologist who studies the effects of computers on memory and mental power. On one hand, he writes that there is little concrete evidence on the connection between screen addiction and mental disorders. However, the signs are omnipresent, with outdoor activities neglected in favor of video games and internet use. He places a lot of the blame on keeping kids indoors out of fear that they’ll hurt themselves. There used to be lots of wonderful playgrounds in the USA, built like army obstacle courses with ropes, slides, jungle gyms, and monkey bars. They’ve all been torn down in the last 15 years, because of the numerous playground accidents. So where do the kids go to play? They don’t go anywhere, they sit in front of the TV or the computer. Schools have been getting rid of outdoor recess because they’re afraid of accidents. The result is that the kids never get out. Videogames are the only thing to keep them busy.

    

Dr. Kardaras discusses how some kids, usually boys, are so addicted to video games that they never leave their rooms. One of the cases involves a 20 year old who ceased going to school, never leaves his room, and his mother leaves his meals by the door. Getting him out to go to the doctor takes several people to wrestle him out. I’m sure that there’s a lot of enabling going on here, because the parents could refuse to cook or clean for him, and they could always cut off his internet connection, cancel the cable, and stop buying him the games. Maybe the root of the problem is that these young people are emotionally troubled to begin with, and the video games are a way to avoid reality and shut out the world?

I got my hopes up in the chapter Brave New E-World, because for years I sought out games that would improve my memory and eyesight, powers that diminish under constant computer usage. Then I read Dr. Kardaras’ study on the London cab drivers, and there, in their training program, is the solution. Anyone coveting a hack license in London, England, must spend a year riding around on a scooter with a map mounted in front, memorizing streets and landmarks. Dr. Kardaras finds that the minority who pass the test develop a very dense hippocampus, meaning that their studying does to the brain what weight lifting does to muscle – it strengthens it!

    

The book concludes with a list of efforts to wean kids off the screen. There are wilderness camps, arts, music, physical activities, all of which get the kids out of the house and using their bodies. But he doesn’t mince words or promise miracle cures, he makes it very clear that it’s a hard sell and it’s up to the grownups to make outdoor activities more attractive. He also says that the US Surgeon General needs to study the problem with greater detail, end the hyping of useless technology as an educational tool, and put a freeze on technology in the classroom.

    

Kardaras cites the Sydney Grammar School in Australia as an example of a school without technology. The Cambridge-educated headmaster requires all papers to be hand-written until 10^th grade, forbids laptops, and makes writing a priority. Writing, according to him, breeds creativity, and creativity it fostered when the kids need to create. Let the kids be bored, Kardaras says, because when they’re bored and there’s nothing to do, they will make things to do.