Positives Technology has on brain functions

Technology has many benefits to support children and their brain function. Depending on the task you are completing online, different brain development areas are working. Even video games can be healthy for someone’s mind; “Racecar videogames with distracting road signs” will benefit “multitasking skills” (Small et al., 2020). Video games have been viewed as a negative for many years, but studies are showing that they are finding positives that it has on a child’s brain function. “Green and Bavelier have shown that playing action video games more than 4 days per week (at least 1 hour each day) for 6 months enhances visual attention, spatial attention over the visual field and task switching abilities’ (Small et al., 2020). This leads to attention span and problem-solving skills, as they focus on their games with multiple different tasks being asked of them through the game.

 

A study focused on the surgeons who played video games “surgeons who played video games more than 3 hours each week made 37% fewer surgical errors, were 27% faster in response times, and scored 42% better in measures of laparoscopic and suturing skills than surgeons who do not play video games” (Small et al., 2020). This study provided proof that video games and technology are beneficial in areas of work, providing better performance with attention span and problem-solving skills.

 

 

There are so many different technological apps created to help different brain-health areas. Monitoring, psychotherapy, and education applications are known for helping with heart rate, breathing patterns, mood, sleep, and social support (Small et al., 2020). Focusing on sleep, many different things influence it, such as sleep environment and sleep equipment. There are different settings on phones that will help with blue light filters and applications to track sleep, white noise, and more to help the child sleep. Technology also has many tools that can promote self-regulation in children, such as alarm clocks, management tools, and more. Technology can help children with developmental domains as long as they use appropriate applications.