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Digitales Klassenzimmer: Psychiater: "Wenn Kinder nur wischen, haben sie einen Nachteil"

Mar 2018 🇩🇪 Deutschlandfunk

In this Deutschlandfunk radio interview conducted by Tobias Armbrüster amid a German policy debate over "digital classrooms," Spitzer argued against introducing coding lessons and tablets in elementary schools, saying young children's fine-motor and sensory development benefits more from hands-on physical play than from touchscreen use. He told the interviewer that heavy smartphone use is linked, in his account, to elevated blood pressure, myopia, sleep disruption, and depression in children, citing South Korea's high adolescent myopia rate as an example, and pointed to Germany's BLIKK pediatric survey and international PISA data as evidence he says shows classroom WiFi and computers correlate with lower academic performance. He also voiced support for France's 2018 school smartphone restriction. TechKids Foundation summarizes his claims here in our own words as his stated position, not as independently verified TechKids findings.

~8% smartphone dependency in Germany vs. 30%+ cited in South Korea

Spitzer cited Germany's BLIKK pediatric survey (roughly 6,000 participants) as finding many 13-year-olds reported feeling overwhelmed by their smartphone use and losing control over it, and said about 8% of young people in Germany showed signs of dependency, compared with more than 30% he cited for South Korea.

Classroom WiFi linked to an 18% performance drop, per Spitzer

Spitzer told Deutschlandfunk that introducing WiFi into classrooms is linked, in studies he cited, to about an 18% decline in student performance, which he attributed to increased distraction.

~95% adolescent myopia rate in South Korea, per Spitzer

Spitzer cited South Korean data showing roughly 95% of the young population there is nearsighted, against what he described as a baseline of about 5%, attributing part of the gap to heavy screen use.

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CITATION

Spitzer, Manfred. Interview by Tobias Armbrüster. "Digitales Klassenzimmer: Psychiater: 'Wenn Kinder nur wischen, haben sie einen Nachteil.'" Deutschlandfunk, March 8, 2018.

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