What do we lose when we write by hand?

With the advent of new technologies, paper and pens are no longer as essential, however, once the benefits of writing with these tools are known, a new question arises: What are the consequences of not writing by hand?

Although many adults refuse to give up this habit, the use of computers, tablets and mobile phones leads us to do so almost unconsciously. Little by little, even schools and universities are integrating computers to support students.

  • However.
  • Morocho JaĆ©n and Katherine Malena published in the Internet article some results as a factor of disinterest of students when writing a text.
  • Which demonstrate one of the first drawbacks of the use of technology: “No one wants to write unless it is on a computer and mobile phone”.

Although not writing by hand is perceived as a natural consequence of the influence of technology, its impact is not the same for everyone, anyone who discovered the computer as a teenager or adult has learned to write by hand and has taken advantage of it.

Today, however, children are born, as they put it colloquially, with a mobile phone in hand, and although technologies bring multiple benefits to our daily lives, growing up with them and giving them the predominant space to learn to write can affect children’s brain development. .

“Writing is a complex task that requires several skills: feeling the pencil and paper, moving the writing instrument, and directing movement through thought. “- Edouard Gentaz-

The BBC interviewed Karin James, a neuroscientist and professor at Bloomington University, who, concerned about this reality, conducted several surveys of children who had not yet learned to read.

Although they knew how to identify certain letters of the alphabet, joining them together to form words remained a great difficulty. To demonstrate the consequences of not writing by hand, he divided the children who participated in a survey into two groups:

To learn how each child learned, Karen used MRIs to see the level of brain activation when they were learning to write and also evaluated the changes that occurred in the brain during the learning process.

Karin James’ research has yielded valuable discoveries. The brain also does not respond in children who learn to write by hand and in those who do so by writing words on a computer.

The former have a brain activation similar to that in people who know how to read and write, but this did not happen in the second group.

Karin has determined that handwriting links learning to write and learning to read. So, the fact? Jumping – learning to write by hand can lead to serious difficulties in learning to read (attention to reading, comprehension, written expression, etc. ).

Could technology be used without replacing handwriting?Could you, for example, write on a tablet screen with a stylus adapted to this?Still, we’d still have differences.

We would not put the same pressure on a tablet and a paper, this can tire our hand before writing on a paper if we are not very well trained.

In addition, writing on an electronic device is not as simple as it seems, to achieve this you only have to remember when we are going to take documents and we have to sign on a screen, our signature is very different from the original, mainly because of the pressure we put on the canvas.

With all this, we must not forget that another important consequence of not writing by hand is the loss of readability, if we do not practice we will end up having a weak hand to write, which will make it increasingly difficult to express ourselves through that.

Do you always write by hand?

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