The scientists confirm that the children today suffer from this nature deficiency to such a degree that it is having negative consequences for their well-being. And the digital knowledge is a poor substitute for learning in the real world, kids just don’t know how ‘to like’ a physical person in the 2D world.
The psychologists faced with the new phenomenon in our modern high-tech world where there is a lack of contact with nature have on kids’ learning in general. In other words, children prefer to learn from YouTube videos, not from their real mother cook or gifted father snowboarder, i.e.
There is a problem because initially, the person builds conceptual knowledge of real-world phenomena from his/her sensory experiences. Any video gives no such an experience. Today, a play is not automatically an outdoor activity, where children are free to run around on uneven surfaces or climb trees. The play is a screen-activity, which takes place seated inside, and often with the curtains drawn so you can see the screen more clearly.
This type of play is not necessarily lonely—far from it. It allows communication between devices and across physical space. Children watch and share YouTube videos, read Wikipedia, and are exposed to vast amounts of information from others. But new research highlights some of the more undesirable side-effects of so much screen time.
Mediated learning is thus not as effective as learning by practical experience because it assumes that the child will fill in the gaps themselves—the gaps that are missing in the sensory learning process—and that this type of knowledge is transferable to the real world. Small children, will struggle to translate 2D information to 3D, and it is extremely important! The same goes for learning via YouTube videos. We can only sensibly decode the images from the screen if we have also experienced doing it ourselves.
In other words, scientists advice to keep the right balance between 2D and 3D activity while raising kids, that’s the best option for both parents and children.
