If a child plays with his mobile phone too much and writes poorly, will this affect his brain and learning?

Many parents and teachers complain that today\’s children\’s handwriting is not as good-looking as the students of the past. is this real? This is indeed the case, and this has a lot to do with modern technology. Many pediatricians have noticed that due to the advent of tablets, children are beginning to be unable to hold a pen correctly. For example, Sally Payne, chief pediatrician at the Heart of England Foundation Trust, part of the NHS, said: “Children today don’t have the same hand muscle strength and dexterity when they start primary school as they did 10 years ago. Children before school. They will find that they cannot hold a pen when they go to school because they lack basic hand movement training since childhood. Holding a pen requires extremely strong control of the fine muscles of the fingers, and children need a lot of practice before going to school.\” Payne I believe that if you want to learn to write, you must exercise your hand muscles, and the best way is to build blocks, draw coloring books, or play with traditional toys. However, today\’s parents are more willing to let their school-age children play with iPads and smartphones instead of letting them play games such as building blocks. This has resulted in the lack of full development of the hand muscles of young children. In the United States, primary school teachers have been teaching students to write since the 1920s. However, some countries now pay little attention to this and are even giving up completely on letting children learn to write. According to the Guardian, Finland is gradually abolishing the teaching of handwriting skills and instead cultivating primary school students\’ typing skills, which is the first of its kind in the world. The Finnish government\’s consideration is that in an era of rapid technological advancement, handwriting has become obsolete, and what children urgently need is the communication ability of typing. With cars, won’t humans need to run anymore? Many people would certainly disagree. In the same way, will children suffer cognitive losses if they no longer learn to write after they have a keyboard? What effect does writing have on the brain and learning? Edouard Gentaz, a developmental psychologist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, believes that \”writing is a complex task that requires the coordination of tactile information on paper and pen, and the brain\’s fine control of muscle activity. It takes several years for children to learn this delicate movement .\” Typing is another matter, and children can learn to type very quickly. Roland Jouvent, director of psychiatry at Pitiers-Salpetrill Hospital in Paris, France, said, \”Typing only requires a simple movement, but writing requires coordinating many functions.\” Many studies have found that for school-age children, writing and Reading ability is inseparable. For example, according to a 2014 study of 87 children aged 6-11 published in Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, visual memory ability and writing ability are significantly related. sex, and also predicts reading ability. Coincidentally, according to a 2012 article published in \”Trends in Neurosci\”ence and Education), researchers from Indiana University and Columbia University found that for 5-year-old children, there is a strong correlation between writing and reading; if they only type or trace with their fingers , some brain areas related to reading will not be activated, and these abilities will probably not be developed. In addition to reading ability, the fine movement of writing is also related to learning, especially language learning. A first-line review published in Cortex in 2013 summarized 18 neuroscientific studies. This study found that a large area of ​​​​the left hemisphere of the brain is related to writing, and only when we write or draw, certain neural circuits related to learning and memory are activated. Researchers at the University of Aix-Marseille in France asked 76 French children aged 3-5 to learn words in different ways. The results showed that those children who learned by writing remembered more words than those who typed on a computer. They also asked French adults to use these two methods to learn Bengali and Tamil characters. The results were the same. Those who learned the new language by writing remembered more. Gentaz believes that \”handwriting can improve (children\’s) learning because the muscles themselves have memory. Some people have lost the ability to read after a stroke. In order to help them learn to read letters again, we have them trace by hand. This method is usually very effective.\” It works because the movements are remembered by the body.\” Writing can also help adults learn. A 2014 study published in the top psychology journal Psychological Science found that college students who took notes had a better grasp of class content than those who typed on a computer. What is the correct way to hold a pen? According to a study of 120 fourth-grade elementary school students published in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy in 2012, the correct postures for holding a pen should be the following four. The reason why they are correct is that these four pen holding postures will not affect the speed or flexibility of writing. If a child cannot hold a pen using the dynamic tripod grasp in the upper left corner, he or she can write in three other ways. Unfortunately, there is evidence that today\’s children have an increasingly difficult time learning any of the four pencil holding positions above. Motor dysgraphia is becoming more and more serious among school-age children. Should you teach your children a specific font? Many psychologists believe that there is no need to stick to a fixed font. In a brain-imaging study of children, Karin Harman James, associate professor of neuroscience at Indiana University, found \”no difference in the brains of children who used different fonts.\” Virginia Berninger, professor of educational psychology, University of WashingtonHe believes that \”research evidence points to the possibility of teaching children print and another writing style, and then letting them choose the writing style that suits them.\” The earliest human writing appeared about 5,000 years ago. From the emergence of writing until 20 years ago, writing has been an important daily activity and communication method for human beings. However, the emergence of computers and other electronic products has completely disrupted the circuits that the human brain has developed for writing over the past 5,000 years. For the sake of children\’s learning and growth, it seems like they should be given more pens.