Education Guide

Published studies in developed countries show an inverse relationship between children and adolescents access to electronic media and games and school performance: the greater the access, lower school performance. They also show a direct relationship between sleep habits and school performance: the worse the quality of sleep, worse school performance.

A survey of 15 000 children and adolescents from five to 18 years, from 22 states, from these results abroad, will study what happens to the child population in Brazil. For now, we collected data from 1,994 children for a pilot project in the city of Santa Cruz das Palmeiras, in the region of Ribeirão Preto. The intersection of information relating to access to electronic media and school performance is in progress.

The search results are not yet available, but I talked to the neurologist childhood Marco Antonio Arruda, director of the Institute and coordinator of Project Glia Attention Brazil, on the relationship between the use of electronic media and games and children’s mental health.

I imagine that the absence of specific studies hamper decision-making by parents and educators about the use of television and computers by children. Without knowing exactly how and why access to these media is harmful and what are the consequences for child development, it is difficult to have a correct posture and firm front to the question. If scientists do not really know …

According to the neurologist Marco Arruda, Brazilian researchers assume a theoretical model based on the suspicion that the games are not good for mental health. The damage to the brain development of children may be related to the results of immediate gratification of video games: hit the child, get bonuses, phase passes. This is very visual and auditory stimulation, combined with a lot of interaction.

“Put that child the entire morning playing the afternoon game and put in a classroom. It is very difficult for the teacher, is unfair competition, the child is completely unmotivated. In the classroom interaction and does not study does not provide immediate gratification, “he said.

There are brain areas responsible for the delay of reward. These areas, like everything else in the brain need to be encouraged to develop and be available as a tool for life. “If children are growing up without that incentive to delay reward, they lose this ability and it starts to complicate many other aspects, especially mental health,” he said.

In assessing the child neurologist, the same is true of television. “There is a subliminal message to the child that is only worth what gives immediate pleasure. You see it in novels, in programs, at all, “he said.

The doctor teams up with researchers trying to relate the damage to these brain areas the epidemic of childhood obesity and the use and abuse of chemical substances. “What gives immediate pleasure? Eating, drug use, sex, consume, buy, buy, buy … The most important values ​​of humanity, especially the cult to know and learn, that things are not going the way of immediate pleasure “he said.

But the neurologist wishes to emphasize that this issue has not been studied with the breadth and depth required. “It is not a paved terrain, the terrain is not science. Here I speak not as a scientist, I speak as a father, as an observer: there are many researchers suspected of child mental health experts, that this generation is being severely hampered because of these habits. That’s what we want to study. Analyze the data collected in the pilot project and throughout Brazil, “he explained.

To assess how the habits of the child and the educational aspects influence on mental health, we start from the principle that mental health is not disease. And that mental illness is all that change in behavior or emotions that takes away the sense of well-being of the person or which damages it in some context.

“A child inattentive, restless, impulsive, is doing well socially, doing well in school, doing well at home, has no mental health problem. She has what would be the Attention Deficit Disorder and Hyperactivity. Another child who is sadder, quieter, but it gives no negative impact on her life, did not have depression. It is only mental disorder, if there is loss of the child as a result of those symptoms, “he said.

He said the researchers conducted a survey of Brazilian scientific literature and found no data available on our reality. In this work, will be evaluated on caffeine present in chocolate and soft drinks, sleep habits and school performance, access to television and electronic media, mental health and development, to know how all this affects the health of children.

Babies
The doctor also warned about the great harm caused by the exposure of children under two years old at the television. International studies on the impact of television on child development show a very negative interference.

“Children who are heavily exposed to television until the age of two have very large loss in language skills and school performance. And that is not seen in a conversation, these skills are tested up front, at school, ability to interpret and produce a text. They are scientific evidence of harm to these children, “he said.