The mounds of information available on the Internet can make life easier for children and adults, indeed. But that same mound can lead to information overload which, in turn, can lead to increased anxiety and other detrimental consequences.
The negative consequences pop up when children are taking in tons of information with no opportunity for processing the info, as Jim Taylor explains in Psychology Today:
“At the heart of the problem with information overload is that such large and never-ending quantities of input interferes with children’s ability to engage in what I call ‘interput,’ which involves all of the processes that go into thinking between input to output. With so much information coming in and the need to get information out, interput suffers; there is neither the time nor the energy to adequately process all of the information that children receive these days.”
That’s enough to make anyone anxious! And that’s not the only bad things that can happen without that so-called “interput.”
“For children, information without interput has serious consequences. It means, as the writer Nicholas Carr so aptly puts it, being a jet skier rather than a scuba diver, skimming at high speed over the surface of information rather than going deep.
“The absence of interput prevents children from taking ownership of the information—making it theirs—and not only incorporating it into their information ‘hard drive,’ but also integrating it into their knowledge ‘library.’ It also keeps them from transforming the input from cold and lifeless data into a power plant of insight, creativity, and innovation. It ultimately prevents your children from putting the information into conscious, meaningful, and beneficial action.”
You may want to rethink that computer time! You may also want to check out the full article.
Read more at Psychology Today: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-power-prime/201212/are-your-children-overloaded-information
