Human Interaction in the Age of the Gadget and Pandemic: Social Skills and Martial Arts
Bruce McCorry's Martial Arts Academy
220 Newbury St
Peabody MA 01960
Phone: (978) 535-7878
Email: info@brucemccorrys.com
“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction,” stated Albert Einstein much before each one of us came to own one gadget or another. The day he feared has finally come. The social price we pay for technology is irreplaceable, and this has affected the generation of our children more than anyone, as they were almost born into technology.
Asocial Beings: the Impact of Technology on Communicative/Social Skills of Children
Several studies have shown that the constant exposure to gadgets, devices, social media and mediated entertainment impacts the social and communicative skills of children in many ways.
- Within a family, the intrusion of technology actively reduces the quality time that parents and children spend together. On one hand, this lack of interaction results in strained and unhealthy relation between family members. On the other, children never pick up the social skills of interaction and bonding that holds the key to any successful family, thus impairing their ability to bond with people through their life.
- The same can be said for classroom relations as well. Kids who grow up addicted to devices and gadgets find it difficult to make friends in classroom. They hardly find companionship and enjoyment in real interaction, and resort to social media if they can. Even more so during this pandemic, and kids are forced into virtual classrooms.
- Some modes of mediated technology like video games are actually shown to cultivate apathy, indifference and lack of compassion in children. Children who grow up indulging in these often tend to view their peers and younger ones with similar apathy.
- Over-indulgence in technology can impair those communicative skills which are academically important. It is often remarked that tech-savvy kids find difficulty with elaborate writing and speaking activities that need complex expression and social interaction. This can greatly affect academic performance in a classroom.
Finding Voice: Martial Arts to Cultivate Social Skills
Enhanced social and communicative skills are often counted among the benefits of learning martial arts. Years of experience with kids’ martial art lessons at Bruce McCorry’s Martial Art Academy has shown how this actually works out in a regulated martial-art learning environment. Children’s martial art lessons at the academy in the past have yielded the following results:
- During the lessons, children who were regularly exposed to peers and seniors started picking up social cues and interacting more, as the social situation demanded this.
- The inbred values in martial arts such as respect, companionship, trust, and helpfulness were seen to have a positive impact on the social profile of children.
- Martial art sessions helped young children, who took part in preschoolers’ and children’s martial art programs to pick up language, social decorum and discipline quickly.
- Kids who took martial arts willingly disengaged from over-indulging in gadgets and media.
Taking part in martial art lessons with your kids and family is a unique and new experience that you get at the academy. Martial arts will help your children not just to become more social, vocal and interactive – it will persuade them to stop living a glued life to technology. Studies worldwide have shown that regular martial arts is a huge factor that helps children to get over their addictive obsession to gadgets, social media, video games and the internet.
To see your child switching off that device and finding his/her voice in the world, enroll them in martial arts today!
Bruce McCorry's Martial Arts Center
220 Newbury St
Peabody MA 01960
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please post your comments