Dealing with the excessive use of screens by children is complicated and, as children get older, it is even more so. This is so because “digital technology is very attractive, it allows you to go from one content to another with a very high speed and that is highly rewarded,” he explains. the expert in neuroeducation David Bueno, doctor in biology and professor and researcher in the Section of Biomedical, Evolutionary and Developmental Genetics at the University of Barcelona. It is something that “all fathers and mothers must face” because it is practically impossible to eliminate them from their lives. What we can do is limit its use and, in this sense, “audio platformsWithout a doubt, they can help us”, he assures.
“When we are listening, we imagine what we hear, it is not necessary to see it, so it is one of the possible ways to disconnect from the screens, since it is an activity that is also pleasant for the brain ”. That is why he has participated in the creation of Ditto, an audio platform aimed at children from 0 to 9 years old because it achieves “the motivation to continue listening and put aside, whenever possible, the screens.”
Resources as simple as listening to music or a story through a platform can be a greater incentive than we think. Besides, “listening to stories is a very growth-enhancing activity, of the maturation of the brain of girls and boys”, Bueno details. “It is an activity that is inherent to the human species, stories have been told since time immemorial.”
Benefits for children of listening to stories
He stresses that they serve not only “for transmit knowledgebut also for strengthen group ties and even stops stimulate empathy and what is called the theory of mind.
- theory of mind. “Theory of mind is the name used to describe our ability to realize that what other people think is different from what we think, that what we feel may be different from what we other people feel and is, therefore, one of the basic points of socialization”. How, then, can listening to stories enhance this theory? According to Bueno, “maintaining your individuality, but integrating into the community, knowing that the community is diverse and plural.”
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Benefits of listening to music for children
“Music is a real gymnastics session for the brain,” says the university professor forcefully. “Both playing an instrument and listen to music through an audio platform activates many brain areas”; in fact, he points out that it is one of the activities that activates more brain areas simultaneously:
- reflection zonesbecause “we try to anticipate what notes will come”
- memory zones. “When we have heard music several times, we already know, we remember before it occurs”.
- Zones associated with emotions. Music always activates emotional areas of the brain, linked to hearing and even sight because “music often reminds us of images, sensations, experiences, situations of our lives…” and it also occurs in children and in in girls.
“Besides, listen to music It can be very relaxing or very uplifting.” Both one and the other can be very useful at certain times; Thus, when a child is overstimulated, listening to relaxing music will help them calm down a lot. “Or vice versa; Music that is lively, that is happy, that is very stimulating… is going to succeed precisely in stimulating all these parts of the brain linked to attention and motivation”. Therefore, “listening to music is something that not only girls and boys, but also adults, should practice more often than we do.”
