For your child
learning to play guitar, especially when they get to teenage years. This is
make or break for many of them. This is because there are so many distractions
for children.
There are a lot of
talks about millennials and Z generations children and what they have to go
through growing up in such a technological world.
One thing that I want
to focus on today is the effect of games and technology, including social
media.
A lot of teenagers and
adults require a form of escape from stress. Music, whether it’s listening to
music or playing music has for a long time been a great stress reliever that is
healthy, productive for one to use.
Now, this behavior is
changing towards the use of technology to accomplishing a very similar thing.
Why is this?
When children play
games or receive a text on their phone, they get a rush of dopamine, that’s the
same drug that comes with drinking alcohol, smoking, gambling. It’s addictive.
Which is why many children end up being attached to their phones and iPads.
Dopamine in itself is
not harmful in small quantities. You receive the same drug when enjoying your
favorite meal. And this is the same as when you listen to music too. It also
provides a numbing effect and can work as an escape. Which is why music works
great as a stress reducer.
The trouble comes with
how much dopamine there is.
Children do not fully
develop their self control portion of their brain until they are 25 years old.
What happens when high level of dopamine levels that gaming, social media and
technology enters your child’s brain?
The use of these social
media and games overruns the neural pathways connecting the reward circuit to
the prefrontal cortex, which is what helps people to tame impulses. And that’s
contributes to why the more your child plays on a game, or use their phones. The
harder it is for them to get off their phones or iPads. Their brains are simply
not able to filter such a large quantity of stimulus in the brain.
Teenage years is a
very stressful time for children, and therefore the more they associate the
feeling of instant “happiness” from social media or games. The more likely they
are to turn to those things to reduce their stress. This creates the
“addictive” cycle to technology.
Tech companies have
openly said that the way their games, apps and social media is built. It’s
designed to give dopamine “hits” when one receives a like or a comment.
Because of their
association with technology and that’s what they’ve used as a method of escape
throughout childhood and into their teenage years. This is what they will end
up doing through their adulthood as well.
Technology has some
amazing benefits, and there are positives that come up gaming.
However, high use of
social media has been associated with increased likelihood of depression.
If you can help your
child enjoy playing guitar and they can use guitar as a form of stress release.
Guitar and music is much healthier for a child. It has immediate benefits of
improving their social skills when they play with other people; improve their
fine motor skills; listening skills; processing and orientation of attention in
time. Far transfer skills including reading comprehension, verbal memory,
general IQ.
Hope this article
helps you to understand that balance and moderation is important for the use of
technology. And having your child be able to play an instrument is a great way
to channel that stress is a healthy way that also has lots of other benefits
for them.
About author:
Guitar Tuition East
London is an acoustic and electric guitar school
based in London. Who
doesn’t just focus on the lessons themselves but really cares about the
psychological effects of learning music for the students. Helping them improve
their guitar playing in a way that has compound benefits to the rest of their
lives.
