Will mobile phones make children "stupid"? ---Wang Bing, PhD in Mental Health, Peking University

Recently, some known as "problem-solving artifact" of the operation of the APP has captured the potential of students mobile phone. Children are said to be able to find answers when they are having problems-voice or photo uploads, and teachers or genius who are encouraged by the program will return the answer. The developers say they want to help the students who are stumped by their homework, but they are afraid that "genius" is getting more and more bullish, and that "learning slag" is becoming more and more delicate, and these apps and the web search engine being widely used will make children more and more "stupid"?

I made an experiment, in the Baidu search box input "I have a Dream" and "500 words" of the key words, instantly jumped out more than 50,000 search results, most of these results in a keyword "composition", estimated that many children's homework are in these search results under the guidance of the completion. Perhaps the ultimate dream of this generation of children is to invent a search engine that can give out ready-made answers regardless of the type of assignment, preferably with a handwritten printer.

But laziness always pays a price, according to a Columbia University study published in the journal Science, which shows that when we know we can extract information from search engines at any time, our brains are more bothered to remember that information, as if I had friends who always ask mom the same recipe, but they don't bother to remember. Some people might say, "Can't remember where the capital of a country is, what's the big deal?" but the study of cognitive science has shown that the development of children's ability to think and solve problems depends on the knowledge stored in the brain, which is empty, but how can the brains of Baidu and Google's Web site exercise the ability to think?

Not only that, according to a survey, more than 90% of American teachers think their students are already studying a problem equivalent to Web search, and many children are no longer patient enough to go to the library to read in depth, let alone do some fieldwork, and they are accustomed to ten fingers to get the answer right away, even if the answer is probably the same. The consequence of this phenomenon is that the macro point is in a encourage diversification, the pursuit of the era of alienation, independence and originality is precisely a national core competitiveness; The micro view is that every life is a unique individual, not independent thinking of people can only have the same, the flow of life.

As electronic devices increasingly penetrate education, Britain's education sector has made a counter-trend decision to prohibit pupils from using calculators in exams from 2014 onwards. While some experts have questioned the ban as a setback, the UK Education Department warns that the reliance on calculators has allowed children to stop mastering basic subtraction capabilities, which are fundamental to survival. When someone asked painter Picasso what he thought of the newly invented computer in 1964, he said, "they are useless." Because they can only give you the answer. "Maybe one day the phone will give you all the answers, but even if that day comes, our children still need to think for themselves to face an uncertain life." You know, Baidu again intimate can not tell you how to live.

Will mobile phones make children "stupid"? ---Wang Bing, PhD in Mental Health, Peking University