It is difficult to measure the positive or negative effects of emotional development because for one, young people can only show us physiological differences and for two, many of the psycho-social influences do not manifest themselves until later in life and are then also conglomerations of one another and thereby makes it very difficult to realistically pinpoint causal mechanisms. What is needed however, is to then mark what is a common desire for individuals and parents to have in others and children. Ultimately, maturity is a sufficient umbrella term that could serve as an effective mark, but currently, modern parenting trends are working against popular maturation.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is categorized by a combination of excessive energy and a lack of decided, purposeful attention. ADHD has been diagnosed in increasing levels in compulsory school children, primary in the Western world and the United States of America in specific. The prevalence of ADHD has been correlated with the increase and proliferation of technology in the life of the youth.
Each individual child has a different life, and the generalization of a causality to explain all their deficits and proficiencies is not scientific. What can be noted however, are the changes in diet, and physical activity. Young people are increasing their use of technology and have an increasingly poor diet, the result is an excessive of caloric energy and a transient attention span as a result of a lack of emotional maturity.
Emotional maturity is simplified as a control and identifications of emotions. Without the ability to identify what is important, and control behavior as a result, young people have a difficult time making an active decision on what to give credible attention too. Attention is a nebulous concept that is difficult to measure as a result of information presentation and redundancy. If the emotion fear is examined as an analogous result, one can understand that a lack of definite exposure and synthesis from technology have directly contributed.
Analogy
Whereas what made one initially afraid or anxiously awkward, cannot have a macro level theory attached to it as the subjective experiences of each individual cannot be siphoned into a single lump, but what can be focused upon is how the brain physiologically functions under the duress of fear and how it can function despite of it and whether it shuts down or moves forward with courage; the science of brave (Schnabel, 2010). If we then juxtapose the physiological responses of the brain with other behaviors and struggles, we can deduce correlations that will help prepare people to cope with fears. And although it is a difficult and personal process to discover the innate origins of a fear, we could then make strides not to exploit and exacerbate fear, regardless of what they may be (Goleman, 2008).
The learning and development process is young people nearly exponential in comparison to later in life, because of that, it is reasonable to assume that effects are as well. What needs to happen is to find out if there is a specific ratio in which infants through young adult-hood into adult-hood, experience and cope with differing external stimuli and interferences. More precisely there needs to be an understanding of just how much more fragile and susceptible the human is during its infant stage. If this were able to be quantified, then the appropriate measures of what is beneficial and what is harmful could be established because the effects of what is harmful and beneficial is more readily studied in latter stages in life.
Classroom management techniques ought to reflect the specific demographics of different student-groups. There is a fine line, however, between maintenance of a classroom, and leadership of a classroom. Teachers are managers and school is a social management tool at every level (Gatto, 2002). Although students can acquire information from the experience and exposure in a classroom, it is not the objective of a teacher or school to create leaders (Gatto).
Often times, when a person has spent time as authority, it is difficult to understand that others may need emotional and intellectual support to follow their desires. Although support, or discouragement can be shallow from a stranger, there is weight to whether or not another person provides reinforcement, or opposition. Part of the enculturation of the Western world, is obedience to authority, which means that academia and especially teachers, serve a prominent role in developing that cultural habit. The obedience then, to authoritarian persons, and groups, has been the subject of a tremendous amount of study, as with inherent obedience to authority, wherever it is present, possesses the potential to override the originality present in authentic education.
Technology
The abuse and overuse of technology in compulsory schooling is preventing young people from obtaining the skills and maturity to appropriately identify and cope with their emotions. The lack of emotional maturity in young people as a result of the overuse and abuse of technology has placed young people in danger because they do not have the ability to recognize and cope with fear or the ability to genuinely love and the overuse of technology has therefore hindered their ability to have meaningful interpersonal relationships and effectively become social leaders.
. The emotional isolation caused by a lack of meaningful interpersonal relationships causes desperation and depression in young people and they attempt to find relationships from within what they know; young people attempt to find relationships from within technology. The false relationships young people can create with technology exploit the lack of emotional intelligence that they have and place young people in the very danger that they have difficulty realizing.
Future leaders (children) will display internal conflict, which will often appear as social agility as he or she begins to poke and prod to find a leadership role in varying social atmospheres. Although at young age, this sort of disruptive behavior is more attention seeking behavior, rather than leadership, it remains the ore of leadership because so few are even willing to tolerate attention. When values of worth are instilled in a human, there will also be conflict with the surrounding world. This conflict will exert passive pressure for the individual to change, revealing the greater cultural moray of whether or not innovation and betterment is truly desired.
SgACC
The Subgenual anterior cerebral cortex (sgACC) itself is a learning mechanism as well. Evidence suggests the sgACC responds to experiences and draws from previous knowledge to create the ability to overcome fear and act; this is the essential idea behind combat training of any kind (Cell Press, 2010; Uri, 2010; Yang, 2010). What needs to be made clear is that in no way can fear be eliminated as some fear responses are basal instincts that keep us alive, but conditioned fear and irrational fear, fear with no justifiable origin or spawning, such as a fear of snakes of someone who has never seen or been around one, can be as crippling as that which naturally warns to ‘not do that’ (Yang, 2010). With this engineered fear, courage is also created. Natural fear can be overcome by other basal instincts. Hunger for example, can prove to be strong enough to venture places or face beasts or situations that otherwise would be avoided. Now, irrational fear can also be overcome in extraordinary situations as well, but as with natural fear, it does not remove itself.
For the sgACC to develop a high capability and function at the efficiency that can propel a person through an unjust fear, it and therefore the individual, must experience a delicate development of dangers (Gatto, 2002; Goleman, 2008). If the sgACC experiences a traumatic event too early, then its development will be as equally retarded as if it had meager, sanitized experiences. What needs to happen is that the sgACC must experience relevant dangers to the immediate circumstances of life and interpersonal relationships.
An eight year old for example, may need to learn how to walk himself or herself to the school bus stop on their own and how to learn to compromise with the stresses that are associated with that first. On the other hand, a fourteen or fifteen year old who has accomplished that task successfully, feels no tension doing so, but then must learn how to begin to navigate increasingly complex relationships and fulfill varying responsibilities. When a danger is presented too early or suddenly, such as in a traumatic event, fears of similar situations arise as a precautionary measure to protect against re-experiencing the initial trauma.
Superficially, the sgACC’s fear dampening functions appear to be similar and correlated with maturation (Goleman, 2008; Yang, 2010). The difference is that maturation is being synthesized through the pathological use of the Internet and falsely accelerated academia and mythological associations with age (Lam, 2010). Intrapersonal relationships are now snip-its of conversation, as well as the news and information of the rest of the world; depersonalized sound bites and imitations of advertisements dominate points of reference as basis for making decisions, rather than learned behavior and expectations taught from the subjective, anecdotal experiences.
Under sanitized life, achievement, as the foundations of personal pride and confidence, are reached rapidly and the process of failure and mistake as learning tools are being eroded and subsequently replaced with softer rhetoric and euphemisms as personal pride and confidence subsequently become increasingly provisional and illusory (University of Toronto, 2010). Without the knowledge of self, fear becomes a self –fulfilling prophecy as naïve, ignorant, arrogant people, eager for substance without awareness of what substance truly is, venture out, surely as both victims and villains.
Diet
Young people have increased their consumption of both refined sugars, and caffeine. Both of said substances are empty calories that can generate quick energy, but are difficult to burn. Since the change in children’s diet, the ADHD diagnosis have skyrocketed. The correlation of a lack of self-control, emotional intelligence and poor diet have compounded to create an epidemic of ADHD in children.
Conclusion
Children of the 21st Century have to cope with a number of compounding factors that contribute to ADHD and an increased diagnosis. Poor diets and negative effects of technology have significantly crippled the development of young people and increased the prevalence of ADHD diagnosis.
References
Cell Press (2010, June 23). Brave brains: Neural mechanisms of courage uncovered in study of fear of snakes. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 10, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/06/1006231233
Gatto, J. T. (2002). Dumbing us down: The hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling. Gabriola Island, B.C: New Society Publishers.
Goleman, Daniel & Boyatzis, Richard. (2008). Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership. Harvard Business Review.
Schnabel, John. (2010). Your Brain on Courage. Dana Foundation
Yang TT, Simmons AN, Matthews SC, Tapert SF, Frank GK, Bischoff-Grethe A, Lansing AE, Wu J, Paulus MP. (Jan. 7th, 2009). Adolescent subgenual anterior cingulate activity is related to harm avoidance. Neuroreport. 2009 Jan 7;20(1):19- 23.
