It's the generation that can understand exactly how you're feeling through a few simple emoticons.
But
now researchers claim that children are now so engrossed in their
phones, they are unable to accurately read how people are feeling in
real-life.
This
is the result of less face-to-face time interaction, according to the
study, which found young kids are glued to electronic devices for nearly
five hours each day.
Students who went five days without
looking at a smartphone, television or other digital screen did
'substantially' better at reading human emotions than those who spent
time on their phones
The finding was made after testing the ability of 11 to 12-year-olds to recognise the emotions of people pictured in photos.
'Many
people are looking at the benefits of digital media in education, and
not many are looking at the costs,' said study author Patricia
Greenfield, professor of psychology at the Children's Digital Media
Center, part of the University of California, Los Angeles.
'Decreased sensitivity to emotional cues - losing the ability to understand the emotions of other people - is one of the costs.'
The
psychologists studied two sets of 11 to 12-year-olds from a Southern
California public school: 51 who lived together for five days at the
Pali Institute, east of Los Angeles, and 54 others from the same school.
The camp doesn't allow students to use
electronic devices - a policy that many students found to be challenging
for the first couple of days.
The scientists said that emoticons
used in text messages and services such as 'Whatsapp' are a poor
substitute for face-to-face communication: 'We are social creatures,'
they said. 'We need device-free time'
'SMARTPHONE LOSS ANXIETY' IS INCREASING, CLAIM SCIENTISTS
Can’t find your mobile phone? You could be suffering from smartphone-loss anxiety disorder.
Scientists
say people have become so reliant on modern technology like
smartphones, laptops and tablets, that when something goes missing they
will struggle to cope emotionally.
Canadian
researchers say the smart phone has changed most people’s behaviour,
sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
People
are now able to connect and engage with many more people than ever
before, but they have become over-reliant on the connectivity with the
outside world.
Either
way, the researchers say, there is no going back for the majority of
users who can almost instantaneously connect with hundreds of people
online.
However,
our dependence also brings anxiety, said study authors Zhiling Tu,
Yufei Yuan and Norm Archer of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
The students were shown 48 pictures of faces that were happy, sad, angry or scared, and asked to identify their feelings.
They also watched videos of actors interacting with one another and were asked to describe the characters' emotions.
Students
who went five days without looking at a smartphone, television or other
digital screen did 'substantially' better at reading human emotions
than those who spent time on their phones.
Researchers also tracked how many errors the students made when trying to describe the emotions in the photos and videos.
When
looking at the photos, for example, those at the camp made an average
of 9.41 mistakes at the end of the study, down from 14.02 at the
beginning.
'You
can't learn non-verbal emotional cues from a screen in the way you can
learn it from face-to-face communication,' said lead author Yalda Uhls.
'If you're not practicing face-to-face communication, you could be losing important social skills.'
Professor Greenfield considers the results significant, given that they occurred after only five days.
Professor
Uhls added that emoticons are a poor substitute for face-to-face
communication: 'We are social creatures. We need device-free time.'
Young children are so engrossed in
their phones, tablets and TVs, that they can't accurately read how
people are feeling in real-life, according to a recent study by the
University of California, Los Angeles
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