If there’s one thing I love, it’s a good debate but to really develop an interesting conversation, a great topic is essential. As a mother, I have a lot of opinions when it comes to parenting and recently I learned about a fun new debate and discussion site that’s full of great topics called Discuss. Essentially, users can post a 100-character statement and then other contributors chime in with their opinions. What I love about this site is how many different topics it covers, and when this statement caught my eye, I couldn’t help but think about all the possible responses: Kids shouldn’t learn to use tech before they can read.
Initially, I have to admit that I leaned towards agreeing with this statement. After all, the Canadian Pediatric Society recommends that children under two have no screen time at all and that those between two and four years of age have no more than an hour of screen time. In fact, the studies of Dr. Gary Small, Director of the UCLA Memory and Aging Research Center, show how children’s brains today, specifically the frontal lobe, are developing differently than their parents’ due to technology exposure.