Generation Alpha: the group of individuals born between 2013 and 2025. Given the nickname “iPad Kids” because of their excessive screen use, this generation is the first to grow up surrounded by screens, meaning their childhood differs vastly from that of other generations. This has led to many negative outcomes, including poor behavior and decreased learning capabilities.
Behavior
To start off, let’s observe the behaviors that these adolescents demonstrate in their day-to-day lives. In classrooms, elementary school teachers often convey how their students are “defiant” and “aggressive.” These students not only have no respect for their teachers, but they also have no respect for their classmates. Teachers who post on social media have claimed that they are afraid to teach in their own classrooms because of the degrading answers that these teachers get when they ask simple questions of their students. For instance, asking “Can you stand in line?” will get responses such as “No” and “Shut up.” This is unacceptable behavior, and, if uncorrected, will cause even worse attitudes to occur as the students get older. At home, the situation is similar. Generation Alpha (Gen Alpha) children are disobedient, just like how they are at school. The root cause of most of these behaviors is the fact that parents are not disciplining their children enough. For example, some parents give their children an unrestricted amount of screen time because it allows the parents to have “peace and quiet” since their children will be occupied with whatever they’re doing online. This is dangerous to a child’s mental development, as human beings are supposed to interact with the natural world along with other humans. By having a screen time upwards of 5 hours, adolescents’ sleep, as well as their creativity, will be hindered because of the artificial world their brains are in. They are also potentially exposed to content that is not suitable for their age, which may add to their behavioral and mental health issues.
Another change in Gen Alpha is their language – that is, their terminology (aka the words that they use). Gen Alpha’s slang terms have been infamously addressed by many individuals. Terms such as “rizz,” “skibidi,” and “mad lit” make up a large portion of Gen Alpha’s vocabulary nowadays, which indicates how deeply these kids are connected to internet culture since most, if not all, of these terms stem from social media. However, because of the usage frequency of the slang, many older generations cannot understand children because of the nonsense that the words come from. Also, many of these terms are deemed disrespectful, which may continue to worsen the behavior of these kids as more and more students are using them.
Learning Capacities:
Technology encapsulates a child in an alternate world, taking them away from reality. As a result, children who spend most of their time on electronics will not be able to engage with others in real life, causing problems in communication and language development. Studies show that individuals who were introduced to screens at a young age tend to have minimal parent-child interaction, which can create cognitive issues. As time goes on, these kids will most likely also develop problems with their attention spans because their brain’s reward system (motivation) is decreased from prolonged technology use, causing the kids to feel no incentive to do their tasks. In classrooms, students are underperforming. It is statistically proven that a large portion of Gen Alpha cannot read or write as well as compute simple math problems. The underlying cause is their technology use, which hinders their development of conceptual understanding as well as distracts the adolescents’ minds by making them want to stay on their screens for longer. As this progresses, Gen Alpha will not be able to benefit society as they will not be able to perform the tasks that they will encounter.
Conclusion
There is a simple solution to lessen the damage that has been done: dramatically decreasing the screen time of Gen Alpha adolescents. By doing this, kids will be able to foster the development that they are supposed to have. This change will allow for healthier lifestyle habits since there will be more environmental interactions without the distracting technology that interferes with their growth.
Works Cited:
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