Are kids really smarter than us?

Khalil is only six but he can download and install apps on daddy’s tablet. His father had to lock the tablet for Khalil was actually downloading paid apps that were directly debited from dad’s credit card account which details and number were saved in the device’s settings.

Mark is nine and has found, by himself, how to migrate already installed apps from the device’s main memory to the external micro-SD memory card so as to save space on the main storage area. Leila is seven and shows her mother how to make better use of the virtual keyboards on the screen and to enter non-alphabetical characters in a faster way, and also how to attach cloud-saved images to a WhatsApp message. The list is authentic and goes on and on.

Stories abound of young children doing what seems like magic with high-tech devices, often putting adults to shame with the ease and speed they display when dealing with the machines and the software. Are they really very smart kids? Is their IQ higher than their parents? Or is it just because they are exposed to high-tech at a very young age and, therefore, find it natural, comfortable to interact with it, perhaps at the expense of other skills?

Understandably, being exposed to any art, skill, language or technique when you are very young makes a big difference. This is after all the core, the essence of the learning principle and process. People who had started learning say how to play the guitar before the age of 10, stand a much better chance to become good performers than those who decide to learn the instrument once past the age of 30.

While obeying the above general, time-honoured rule, high-tech, however, seems to exhibit something more. Something that at this stage is still hard to analyse and to fully comprehend. Perhaps those that we consider as being whiz kids are simply imitating, replicating a touch-screen process the same way a chimpanzee would “learn” by watching a human being accomplish this or that task. Is this intelligence as we know it? The subject is vast and can feed a number of academic research papers.

For many observers, interacting with high-tech this way definitely makes the young smarter for it constitutes a perfect practice of the logical ways in life and in most disciplines. The menus structure found in virtually all software applications, the sequence of actions that is behind most programmes, and the binary, non-whimsical reactions of the machines, they just make perfect sense; in a way they are fair — and the young like it this way, they understand it.

Educators have found a direct correlation between playing a musical instrument, the piano in most cases, and practicing mathematics. There is a positive feedback between the two disciplines, each coming to reinforce the other when you practice it. High-tech in general and Information Technology in particular, act like mathematics but in a more direct, an even more powerful manner.

But whereas maths can appear to be a rather dry, austere matter for most, high-tech is always very attractive thanks to an unprecedented combination of elements: sound and image pleasure, infinite communication possibility, instant gratification, fun, feeling of power, feeling of not being alone, a window open on the entire world, etc. For the young it is hard to find a more motivating activity.

It remains to be seen whether the smartness acquired by using high-tech leads to actual, proven intelligence in other disciplines, or if on the contrary it reduces the ability to perform well in some others. It may take another generation or two to find out. In the meantime, watching the very young deal with high-tech is a most fascinating, often humbling experience.