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Thanks to their overwhelming use of technology, i.e. tablets, phones, laptops, etc., many kids today that are just entering school can’t use a pencil because they don’t have the “hand strength and dexterity” to do so. Seriously.
I guess technology is not only “hijacking our minds and society,” it is also hijacking our ability to use the most basic of writing instruments. Considering that so many people can’t even eat a meal without their phones these days, I suppose this isn’t terribly surprising.
According to The Guardian…
Children are increasingly finding it hard to hold pens and pencils because of an excessive use of technology, senior paediatric doctors have warned.
An overuse of touchscreen phones and tablets is preventing children’s finger muscles from developing sufficiently to enable them to hold a pencil correctly, they say.
“Children are not coming into school with the hand strength and dexterity they had 10 years ago,” said Sally Payne, the head paediatric occupational therapist at the Heart of England foundation NHS Trust. “Children coming into school are being given a pencil but are increasingly not be able to hold it because they don’t have the fundamental movement skills.
First, we have schools building bulletproof shelters and now we find out that kids can’t even use a GD pencil? What is this world going to look like in twenty years? Will there actually come a day when a kid has no idea how to do this?!
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Because that’s not a world I want to live in, thank you very much.
Mellissa Prunty, a paediatric occupational therapist who specialises in handwriting difficulties in children, is concerned that increasing numbers of children may be developing handwriting late because of an overuse of technology.
“One problem is that handwriting is very individual in how it develops in each child,” said Prunty, the vice-chair of the National Handwriting Association who runs a research clinic at Brunel University London investigating key skills in childhood, including handwriting.
“Without research, the risk is that we make too many assumptions about why a child isn’t able to write at the expected age and don’t intervene when there is a technology-related cause,” she said.
Okay, first off, there is a National Handwriting Association? And second, what about stylus pens? Does using those help a kid with being able to write with a pencil? Asking for a friend.
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Okay, never mind then.