The Minds of Boys: observations about hands-on toys

Listening to the Diane Rehm show on Friday, I heard a remarkable comment by Michael Gurian, author of The Minds of Boys. He and Diane were discussing the impact of screen time (tv, movies, video games) on the growing brains of kids, and here's the idea that struck me: children's brains grow and develop based on their physical interactions with three-dimensional objects in real space and time. That is, when children handle objects and interact with the world, they are growing brain tissue as they learn about the world. By contrast, when kids are in front of a screen, that medium (video, tv, etc.) is what is dealing with the 3-d world, doing the work for them, so brains are not developing in the way that they are designed. This is just one of the reasons that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television for kids younger than 2 years old.



One more comment from Mr. Gurian that struck me: if you compare a 12-year-old child who has used a computer since they were 2 years old with a 12-year-old child who is introduced to computers at 12 years of age, within 2 weeks of introducing a computer to the latter child, the computer proficiency of the two will be nearly the same. I hear many parents say that their kids will fall behind if they do not start them on computers (or video games) at a young age, but this seems to be a misunderstanding and perhaps an underestimation of how quickly kids are able to learn.