Addicted to dopamine: Short videos are eating your child's brain

Boy Pie

2024-04-08 09:27Posted in Anhui parenting field creators

Times will make children, and they will also destroy children.

As a parent, don't let short videos become the "spiritual opium" of teenagers.

作者 | Seven

On weekends, I went to my girlfriend's house as a guest.

As soon as I entered the door, I found my best friend's 8-year-old son leaning on the sofa and playing with his mobile phone.

During the meal, he also held his mobile phone and kept sliding short videos, laughing from time to time, I glanced at it, it was all that kind of funny and funny video.

I couldn't help but poke my girlfriend with my elbow, suggesting that you don't care.

The girlfriend glanced at her son and said:

"The child is quite tired from studying for a day, so let him play, besides, it's better than playing games, isn't it?"

I watched the child who was happily watching short videos, and I couldn't stop worrying.

According to the 52nd Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network released by the China Internet Network Information Center, as of June 2023, the number of short video users has reached 1.026 billion.

Among them, there are many children who are still young and still in the academic promotion stage.

Especially during the holidays, in the subway, on the streets and alleys, you can see children holding mobile phones and watching short videos everywhere.

The short video is like a sugar-coated poison, which seems harmless, but in fact it is silent and hurts the bone marrow.

Short videos

Kids' brains are being hijacked

Do you want to know what changes happen to our brains when we watch short videos?

A 2021 paper published in Neuro Image, a top journal in the field of neuroscience, scanned the brain while watching a short video.

They asked 30 participants to start watching videos while their brains were being monitored.

Among them, there is a type of video, which is the short video platform that accurately pushes the type of video you like according to your preferences, such as animals, games, funny videos, etc., called PV.

When we brush a PV that is specially tailored for us, certain parts of the reward system in the brain are activated.

The neurons in this area then release dopamine, and we get a sense of happiness and pleasure.

When the algorithm continues to send us the short videos we love to watch, we will be full of comfort from our brain to our body and mind, and we will involuntarily sink deeper and deeper.

A neuroscientist who studies short videos said that for the study, she downloaded a TikTok, signed up as a new user, and started watching the 15-second short video inside.

As a result, an hour later, she stopped unsatisfied, looking dazed, and sighed where the time had gone.

Adults are still so addicted, let alone children with immature brains.

There is a girl named Yoyo in the reality show "After School", and she must watch a half-hour short video every day when she comes home from school.

At first, I could stop at the point, but then I became more and more addicted.

I didn't do anything two hours before the meal, and I spent all my time brushing my tablet and mobile phone.

Dad tries to stop it, but Yoyo is indifferent.

Once you leave the electronics, you have no energy and are not interested in doing anything.

Many children who are addicted to short videos have reached a level of addiction.

Some children hide their mobile phones and hide under the quilt in the middle of the night.

Some secretly took their mobile phones to school, hid below and watched videos during class, and had no intention of listening to lectures;

Some children watch short videos all day long, and their mothers can't stand it and confiscate their mobile phones, so he scolds, punches and kicks his mother...

No wonder even Musk and Zhou Shouzi, CEO of Douyin's overseas version of Tiktok, have banned their children from watching short videos.

Short videos are unconsciously hijacking children's brains, making them deeply trapped and unable to extricate themselves.

Short videos

The stratification of children is accelerating

The author @ sheep sheep told the experience of his son Xiao V:

Little V has been very smart since he was a child, and his memory is particularly good, he is literate at the age of two, and he reads independently at the age of four, and has a literacy and a huge amount of reading that is no different from that of adults.

But during the summer vacation before entering school, she let her son watch a lot of short videos, and he didn't read a few pages of books during the whole vacation.

After the start of school, Xiao V had a particularly obvious problem, he was always in a hurry to write his homework, scribbled, and even missed questions, and often asked her: Mom, what does this question mean?

At first, she would blame Xiao V for not being careful, and she was in a hurry for a while.

But then she found that as long as she took the question he "didn't understand" and read it again, without explanation, he could understand the meaning of the question from the sentence breaks and accents of the question.

So it's not that he doesn't understand at all, he just can't focus on words.

A 2018 study found that children aged 9-10 who used their smartphones for more than 7 hours a day experienced visible brain atrophy.

Because in the process of addiction to short videos, the prefrontal function of the brain, which is responsible for subjective high-order thinking, will be severely degenerated.

This can have a lot of negative effects on children:

Decreased concentration, difficulty concentrating;

impaired cognitive abilities;

Nerves and memory become slow and sluggish;

Affects learning abilities such as language, reading and writing......

In short, it will affect children's ability to learn and think deeply.

A mother once revealed:

During the winter vacation before, because she worked during the day and had to prepare for exams at night, in order to prevent her children from disturbing her, she threw her mobile phone to the children who had just entered the second grade of elementary school to play.

As a result, in just ten days, the child became addicted to the short videos on his mobile phone;

I also have to brush it when I eat, I have to brush it when I walk, and I haven't finished my homework for most of the winter vacation.

As a result, one month after the start of school, the child was often distracted and absent-minded in class, and his academic performance directly regressed by 20 places.

This time the gap between the rest of the classmates has widened, and I really don't know how to catch it up.

She really regretted it, she knew that she would not be able to give her mobile phone to her child when she died.

You know, when watching short videos, the brain will constantly release dopamine.

Once children get used to the high dopamine stimulation of short videos, it is difficult for them to focus on boring and boring learning for a long time.

Short videos are silently accelerating the stratification of children and widening the gap between children.

There is an old saying: education cannot be repeated, a child only grows once.

If the child is immersed in the dopamine released by the short video, he will only sink deeper and deeper, waste the most valuable time and energy, and eventually delay his studies and achieve nothing.

Not only that, but the vulgar content in short videos can also distort children's outlook on life, worldview, and values.

Helping children resist this hidden erosion is the top priority of family education.

Here are a few suggestions for parents' reference:

1. Replace short videos with high-quality video content.

In the face of the torrent of the times, it is almost impossible to avoid the negative impact caused by short videos through isolation.

If the child really wants to look at the mobile phone, you can guide the child to watch some well-made cartoons, documentaries, movies, etc.

First of all, children usually watch short videos, because of the algorithm of big data, children will stay in the videos that meet their preferences, which is easy to get addicted, and it will take half a day to brush it.

However, traditional video formats such as cartoons and documentaries have fixed themes and complete storylines, and one episode is over.

Secondly, like a lot of popular science or historical documentaries, many of them are relatively in-depth and have rich knowledge popularization.

For example, "Forbidden City 100" adopts the form of a short documentary, each episode is 6 minutes, a total of 100 episodes, the picture is beautiful, the commentary is interesting, and it doesn't hurt to let children watch 5 or 6 episodes every day.

Therefore, we can choose these high-quality content instead of short videos, which can not only prevent children from over-indulging, but also efficiently transmit knowledge to the brain and broaden their horizons.

Here are a few high-quality documentaries to recommend:

https://mb.wekin.kk.com/ch/li9lavetjobva6n92s3r5a

2. Help children develop a variety of interests.

Have you ever noticed that when a child has something he is particularly interested in, such as playing football, dancing, or drawing, he will never remember to play with his mobile phone and watch short videos.

Psychologist Mihaly also proposed that people are more likely to experience a state of mind of undivided and selfless dedication when they are engaged in something they like, challenging, and good at.

Therefore, if you want to keep your child away from short videos, you might as well help your child establish a variety of interests and hobbies.

You can usually observe your child's interests and provide him with a variety of entertainment options when he is free and bored.

Take your kids to play ball, learn to dance, hike and ...... You can even go to do farm work, read some idle books, and so on.

Don't try to save trouble, throw your child a mobile phone and do nothing.

When a child has an intimate connection with other things and has more lasting fun, he will forget about the short-lived, foamy pleasures in the virtual world.

3. Expose your child to the real world.

For too many children who have lived in reinforced concrete cities since childhood, the short video presents a completely different world, so they become curious and gradually addicted.

Why don't you take your child back to the real sensory experience and take him to see the real world outside.

Parents can bring their children to:

Go to the countryside to see how the food comes from, and experience the joy and hard work of labor;

Go to aquariums and zoos, say hello to the lively critters, and see the different life forms on the planet;

Go to nature to have a look, the family stays away from mobile phones and the Internet, listens to cicadas and birds, and watches fish play in the water.

Go to the great rivers and mountains around the motherland for sightseeing, and learn about the local history, culture, customs and customs.

No matter how ordinary the scenery is, there are poems and distant places, and even more children's broad minds and horizons.

Seeing the size of the world, he will no longer limit his vision to a small screen.

With the advancement of science and technology, short videos are prevalent, which is the trend of the times, and we are irreversible.

But for children, exposure to these things too early will only destroy the order and normal laws of his growth.

Parents are the key "floodgates" for their children to block the erosion of short videos.

I hope that every parent can be vigilant and provide a loving, safe and stable protective space for their children to grow up healthily.

Give it a thumbs up and encourage all parents.

Article reference: Gu Yu Planet: Musk's latest warning: short video algorithms will "eat" children's brains.

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