Internet and Virtual Reality — Harm or Benefit | WowEssays

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Without a computer and the Internet, it is impossible to imagine modern life. We are used to constantly switching between the real and virtual worlds. There are many useful things online: you can find interesting information, read books and communicate. But parents and teachers worry about whether kids and teens spend too much time at the computer screen or with gadgets. After all, some just “live” in virtual reality. Won’t that do more harm than good? How much you can use the network without consequences for health, as well as whether parents and teachers need to actively penetrate the virtual life of students or it is better not to interfere, read our material.

Virtual Reality: developing or creating new problems?

Children are exposed to the Internet as early as preschool age. Every second, teenager spends more than 5 hours a day online. Is this a lot or a little? Doesn’t such online activity harm their development? For three years, they conducted a study to find out how Internet use affects the cognitive functions of children and teenagers. Here are what results they came up with.

Preschoolers (ages 5–6).

Children who spend less than 1 hour daily on the Internet performed best.

Such kids were excellent at doing graphic exercises, quickly memorizing words by ear, and making realistic pictures. Those who “sit” in front of the computer more time coped with the tasks worse.

Younger students (7 to 10 years of age)

1 to 3 hours a day of online activity will help improve academic performance at this age.

Students who fit within this time frame were better at analyzing and controlling the entire task process, learned an action algorithm, switched from one task to another more easily and had good visual and auditory memory. Children who “surfed” the Internet for 1 hour or less did not perform as well, except for the graphic tasks. Pupils coped with them faster, of higher quality, and held the line better. Students who spent more than 3 hours online were better at navigating computer tasks, especially those that required a high attention span. However, graphic skills left much to be desired, and the vocabulary of Internet enthusiasts was poorer. They could not always quickly find the right words in the story.

Younger teens (11–13 years).

According to the study, at this age, spend 3 to 5 hours a day in the network.

Adolescents who did not exceed the optimal time showed more knowledge and erudition and the best results in composing a story based on a series of plot pictures. They were good at memorizing sequences and constructing narratives intelligently, making few grammatical errors. Their peers with low online activity did slightly worse. Those who exceeded the 5-hour threshold had poor visual memory and “skipped connections, repetition, gaps in narration and made the narrative sound more like a recital of details of a picture.

Older teenagers (14–16 years old)

Psychologists have not yet found the optimal time. The only thing they could establish was that teens with low and high online activity were better at composing an oral story, made fewer grammatical errors, and performed better on visual memory than the average teen.

Why kids need the Internet

Numbers are not the most important indicator. Much more important is what a child is doing online, says Erin Claybow, a professor of child psychology at the University of Virginia and a neuroscientist researcher in the United States.

A child does not always clearly distinguish between real and virtual Reality. Then he may apply in real life the same reactions he saw in the online world. Scientists are also concerned that young people develop attention deficits because on the Internet, he receives an instant response to their actions. Online provokes multitasking, for which the child’s brain is not yet ready. As a result, he has trouble paying attention.

There are two sides to every coin. Of course, the Internet environment today provides many opportunities to get new information, learn, develop, find friends, and show their creativity:

• 80% of older teens use the Internet to study, 76% are looking for information about work or school, and 34% are learning online;
• 1 in 5 teens create and post their music or videos online;
• Almost a third of teens have between 100 and 250 followers, and a quarter has between 50 and 100 followers.

The virtual world is not only about opportunities but also about dangers. Everyone is familiar with terms like cyberbullying or grooming. Online, a child can fall under the influence of dangerous social groups. In the zone of personal space, there are only virtual friends, and parents and teachers remain “behind the scenes.

Prohibit or explain?

Adults often leave the child alone in this huge virtual world, where there is a lot of dangerous content. It happens because of digital illiteracy. Fathers and mothers often do not know anything about safety precautions and other nuances of behavior online. As a result, when a student has some kind of cyber problem, the parents don’t even realize it.

Jordan Shapiro, Ph.D., a senior fellow at the Joan Ganz Conney Center (USA), was a columnist for Forbes on digital education:

Often adults just don’t want to get into what a child is doing online. They say, “I don’t understand it. I don’t know how to do it. Let them spin it however they want!” I, for one, have almost complete control over my kids’ digital lives. I’m involved in it. And I trust them completely, as I’ve seen too much of what they do to not be afraid for them anymore.

Sometimes parents, to save themselves and their children from potential problems, simply forbid them from going online. It is a quick but ineffective strategy. Parents and teachers need to be experts and helpers in the online space. We need to explain, try to develop critical thinking and the ability to choose