Limiting Smartphones Can Enhance Social Intelligence
At our intentionally empowering summer camp near Chicago, we have always recognized the importance of unplugging. Because the whole point of our camp is to enjoy nature, facilitate communication, and empower children by developing those skills, we don’t allow cell phones or Ipods, which diminish interpersonal interaction. A recent survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that children today are plugged into some kind of electronic medium almost eight hours a day–“more than many full-time jobs, and more time than they spend doing anything else besides sleeping.” Recent research suggests that exposure to nature can improve all children’s cognitive abilities and resistance to negative stresses and depression.
Now, a new study shows that unplugging enhances children’s social intelligence. Recently, researchers from UCLA compared a “camp group” of sixth-grade students at an outdoor camp for five days to a control group. In the camp group, “we found that children who were away from screens for five days with many opportunities for in-person interaction improved significantly in reading facial emotion.”
The researchers reasoned that the greater emotional intelligence came about because: “The absence of screens meant children could rely only on face-to-face interaction when communicating during camp activities. Accordingly, the results suggest that digital screen time, even when used for social interaction, could reduce time spent developing skills in reading nonverbal cues of human emotion.”
Thanks for the reinforcement UCLA researchers!