Plough Quarterly • Winter 2018 35 Reproduced by permission from Jie Wei Zhou “I have seen a devastating impact on children over the last twenty years. Technology attacks the foundation necessary for healthy develop- ment. When I was a child, our neighborhood was safe and I played outside every day with my friends. We used our creativity and imagination, enhanced our problem solving skills, and developed healthy bodies. But by the time my son was growing up, I rarely saw neighborhood children playing outside. The trend had shifted, and the outdoors was perceived to be unsafe. “I had to return to work full time, which meant long days and less evening time to play and enjoy the outdoors with my son. The biggest mistake I made was purchasing him his first video game console. It started off with rules and time limits, but as time progressed, so did the hours at the game controller. “At the beginning, it seemed like a win-win: he was interacting with children from all over the world and could casually socialize with his age group. He became good at some games and his confidence rose. I always thought that at some point he would find friends to play with in the neighborhood. Socialization has always been a challenge for him, and video game com- panies often bill their products as a bridge to forming connections. Now I feel he was denied the chance to develop healthy interactions. “My son is seventeen years old now. He will text all day long. He says he is comfortable talking to people on the computer because he does not get bullied. But the flip side is that he did not learn to work through those awkward childhood moments that are an opportunity for growth. If he had never had the choice of online ‘friends,’ would he have learned better social skills?” We know that physical health is affected by screen time – especially eyesight, hearing, and weight. But we also need to consider how it attacks a child’s soul. Many children find themselves unable to com- municate with a real person who requires a thoughtful verbal response. More and more young children arrive at preschool with speech difficulties; some do not speak at all. Since this is a diagnosable trait in the autism spectrum, how many children may be categorized as autistic when they have simply not had the opportunity to learn human interaction? In my conflict resolution work in schools, I sometimes speak with teens who don’t know who they are – what is real about themselves and what is a mask. They have spent their growing years using several different personas or avatars in various imaginary worlds, and if they can make these false fronts more Just as books require white space, so do children. Jie Wei Zhou, Study Girl