למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

What children see or interact with on the screen is only a representation of things in the real world. The screen symbols aren’t able to provide as full an experience for kids as the interactions they can have with real world people and things. And while playing games with apps and computers could be considered more active than TV viewing, it is still limited to what happens between the child and a device — it doesn’t involve the whole child’s body, brain, and senses. In addition, the activity itself and how to do it is already prescribed by a programmer. What the child does is play according to someone else's rules and design. This is profoundly different from a child having an original idea to make or do something.

Today’s cultural pressures on children—media saturation, materialism, test-driven schools, and the fast pace of life—threaten to undermine some of the basic building blocks of healthy development.

It is hideously simplistic to privilege one media over another, especially when decrying the death of creativity or loss of innocence. For example, nobody ever questions the cognitive value or impact on creativity of a kid holding a Hotwheels car and saying, “Vroom Vroom,” over and over again for hours at a time. We value that activity, right? Do we have any evidence that it is more beneficial than a toy with batteries or Internet connection? Does a wooden toy increase creativity more than one made of plastic? If drawing with a crayon is better than drawing with your finger on a screen, why is it so? How do we know? Is drawing with a crayon better for childhood development than drawing with chalk?

What role are parents playing in the overregulation of children’s play through overprotection and over-scheduling? What is the impact of homework on play? What has silent lunch and the end of recess done to children’s creative development?

How can having the ability to answer any question you wonder about instantly be bad for children? If you make simple things easy to do, you make complexity possible.

Researchers who have tracked children’s creativity for 50 years are seeing a significant decrease in creativity among children for the first time, especially younger children from kindergarten through sixth grade. This decline in creativity is thought to be due at least in part to the decline of play.

The main findings of this study were that there was no evidence of change in some aspects of children's pretend play and improvements in other areas. There has been no evidence of change in children's pretend play, from 1985 through 2008, in terms of organization of the play story and amount and range of affect expression. Imagination has increased in recent play samples as has comfort engaging in the play task. It is encouraging that these cognitive and affective processes in play have remained the same or improved, given the decline in unstructured time for children.

It is also possible that the complexities and challenges of modern culture require creative problem-solving and imagination to function from day to day.