Preface_Kim Eun-ju

Chapter 1: Smart Parenting with Media | Song Ji-hye

I really wanted to avoid talking about electronic devices | It started with television | As the kids grew up, I started limiting their electronic devices | There was a push and pull with every channel | Finally, smartphones | To my fellow parenting comrades

Chapter 2: The Digital Native Brain | Park So-young

How Fearful Should We Be of Media in Early Childhood? | The Brain's Foundational Laying Period | Principles for Healthy Brain Development | How Media Affects Your Child's Brain | Three Things to Remember for Wise Media Use | What Your Child Really Needs | Q&A

Chapter 3: Elementary School Students' Learning and Media: Friend or Disruptor? | Eunju Kim

The Reality and Developmental Challenges of Elementary School Students | Media Infiltrating Children's Daily Lives | Are Reading Abilities Regressing? | Reading Education Strategies Based on Children's Characteristics | A New Path Created by Generative AI | Parents and Children Together

Chapter 4: The Brains of Adolescents Vulnerable to Addiction | Park Seong-yeol

The Beginning of Adolescence: Puberty | Why Do Teens Act That Way? | Digital Media Seduces Teens | Teens Are Particularly Vulnerable | The Reality of Media Use During Adolescence | Digital Media is a Vital Tool

Chapter 5: Children's Emotions: Swaying Through Social Media | Kim Hee-yeon

The Gift of Social Media | The Dark Side of Glamorous Connections | Sharing Melancholy | Bullying That Breaks Boundaries | The Trap of Perfection on TikTok | Fake Videos, Real Hurt | Social Media That Swallowed the Night

Chapter 6: Children Addicted to Games | Hong Ji-seon

Why do children become addicted to games? | What is Internet game addiction? | Is game addiction truly an addiction? | Are there children who are more susceptible to game addiction? | How does it manifest and how can it be treated? | Can Internet games be positive for development?

Chapter 7: Targeting Children in the Digital World | Park Min-hyun

The Shadow of the Digital World | From Money to Personal Information | The Darkest Shadow: Digital Sex Crime | The Scars of Digital Crime | How to Escape the Scars

Chapter 8: The Current State of Media Use and What We Can Do in the Future | Tae-Yeop Lee

The Current State of Media Use | Thoughts on Media Use | Should Media Use Be Regulated? | Advertising to Children and Digital Literacy | Creating Your Family's Media Use Plan

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References

Why should children be banned from media altogether?
The Impact of Media on Brain Development

The first half highlights the children's development step by step.
From infancy, when we spend most of our time with our parents, to school age, when we experience trial and error at school, to adolescence, when we struggle between being a child and an adult.

Among these, infancy is the period when one must be most cautious about media exposure.
During this period, the children's brains are in the midst of 'groundwork'.
Everything we see, hear, and touch connects neurons and forms synapses.
It's easy to think about pruning a plant.
This is because synapses (branches) grow indiscriminately until 2-3 years after birth, and then around 6 years after birth, only frequently used synapses (healthy branches) remain, thereby increasing brain efficiency.

For example, if you use digital media a lot during your childhood, you will have a lot of synapses related to it.
But the media is very intuitive and fragmented.
Because it can be understood without deep thought, it not only fails to stimulate the frontal lobe, but rather reduces its activity.
You probably know how important the frontal lobe is to cognitive development.
If areas that govern thinking, self-control, and problem-solving skills are neglected because of the media, the likelihood that these areas will be treated as 'trifles' will inevitably increase.

During school age, media influences learning.
Literacy declines as we enjoy short, fragmented content instead of long, complex texts.
What's chilling is that along with literacy, empathy also declines.
Through reading, we imagine worlds we have never experienced before and come to understand others.
Meanwhile, short, fragmented media content may be insufficient to elicit deep empathy, potentially leading to a gradual decline in empathy.

Of course, media doesn't just interfere with learning.
Recent research has clearly shown that there are conditions under which media are more effective for learning than print.
For example, digital media was more effective in teaching story texts to children in the lower grades of elementary school.
What's even better is that it helps children with mental health issues.
Even children with dyslexia who have difficulty learning to read through print can complete texts with the features provided by digital devices.
Examples include TTS, which turns text into speech, and multimodal learning, which utilizes images, videos, and audio along with text.
Although this is limited to English, it is surprising that dyslexia-friendly fonts (Dyslexic, OpenDyslexic, etc.) have also been developed.

In adolescence, things get more complicated.
During this period, another major construction project takes place in children's brains.
The limbic system, which is responsible for emotions, including the amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus, develops explosively.
The frontal lobe, which is responsible for cognitive functions, is also developing rapidly, but it is having difficulty keeping up with the speed of the limbic system.
As a result, an imbalance is created where the power of emotion is stronger than that of reason.
This is the essence of puberty.

In these times when emotions are stronger than reason, it is not easy to control the media.
This is because they are very curious and impulsive, and they also have a strong desire to be recognized by their peers for their cool appearance.
However, just because adolescents generally have difficulty controlling their media, we should not dismiss excessive media use as a characteristic of adolescence.
Some teenagers become overly reliant on media as they struggle with mental health challenges.
They indulge in social media to forget their loneliness or immerse themselves in games to escape academic stress.
For these children, media may be their only outlet for negative emotions.
Rather than yelling or banning the media, it is better to look beneath the surface.

Concerns about emotional contagion
Functional games recognized as ADHD treatment

The book moves on to more specific issues in the second half.
From social media that dominates children's daily lives, to gaming addiction that parents often complain about, to digital crimes that are becoming increasingly complex.

Among them, SNS has long since become an extension of society.
You might wonder how serious something like this could happen on a platform where people share everyday pleasures and interact with their peers, but the reality is far beyond imagination.
For example, there are accounts on Twitter that are active with the hashtag '#depression'.
These are accounts where people can honestly express their depression and connect with people in similar situations.

The problem is that these interactions can actually make the symptoms worse.
Emotions can be transmitted to others through 'emotional contagion', a phenomenon that is particularly strong on social media.
If depressed people gather together, depression is bound to spread.
Due to the nature of the account, self-harm and suicide are often mentioned, which leads to a sense of familiarity.
In the 'depression world', thoughts of harming oneself, photos of oneself carrying out those thoughts, and even specific methods of self-harm or suicide are shared.
In it, the teenager gradually comes to believe that his or her suffering is normal and may actually harm himself or herself.

How about a game?
Although we often scold children who play too many games as "addicts," we sometimes wonder if it is really as serious as drug addiction.
However, game addiction is actually a concept being studied in academia.
In 2013, 'Internet Gaming Disorder' was added as a conditional diagnosis to the DSM, and in 2018, 'Gaming Disorder' was officially listed in the ICD.

What we also need to consider here is whether there are mental difficulties hidden at the root of excessive game use.
The condition most susceptible to gaming addiction is ADHD. Due to the nature of ADHD, individuals are prone to stimulation-seeking and reward-sensitive behaviors, leading them to become even more immersed in the world of games, where stimulation and rewards abound.
Most students who come to the clinic with this problem find that their addiction problems are reduced with just ADHD treatment.
But games aren't just dangerous for them.
Functional games, which aim to improve learning and emotional regulation rather than simply entertain, can alleviate ADHD symptoms.
For example, a functional game called 'EndeavorRx' has been approved by the FDA as a treatment for ADHD.

What makes parents more anxious than social media and games is digital crime.
For the parents' generation, who have only encountered phishing scams at best, the stories in the news are unfamiliar.
Children are participating in online gambling.
Being subjected to unhealthy demands from strangers, or suffering from having your face superimposed on a sexual video…
The fact that terrible things happen in areas beyond our direct observation is disheartening.

Therefore, this book also includes methods for responding to digital sex crimes.
We have detailed how to respond to each type, including what laws can be used to punish them and how to collect evidence.
It can be frustrating when your child is the victim of a grooming crime and there is no evidence.
However, it is possible to file a case based on circumstantial evidence alone, and forensics can be performed if the evidence has been deleted, so please refer to the authors' specific advice.

★

Based on clinical experience in counseling and treatment and brain research, this book provides specific information on children's cases by type and problem, making it highly practical.
What the authors particularly emphasize is the rules for media use.
To summarize, it is as follows:
First, avoid using media while eating or sleeping.
This is because it is detrimental to emotional communication and physical development between family members.
Second, parents should reduce their use.
This is because children tend to imitate their parents' behavior.
Lastly, it is more important to love sufficiently than to control blindly.
Media addiction is closely linked to mental health difficulties.
If you receive plenty of love from your parents and are mentally healthy, there is less chance of problems arising in the first place, and even if they do arise, they are easier to correct.

Children's brains change easily.
They are more easily influenced by the media, but also recover more quickly.
Don't give up because it's too late, but try at least one thing.
Change can start in very small places, such as checking everyone's screen time in the family.