Is Coding for kids overrated?
April 6, 2023 Do you remember what you learnt during your computer classes back in school? There were some students who paid attention to how Microsoft applications like — Paint, Word, and PowerPoint Presentations work. There were many others like me who lazed around at the back of the class and whiled away time. Surely, because these applications seemed easy enough and did not in my opinion (clearly a smart cookie at seven years old) need as many hours as it was allotted. Nevertheless, we seem to have turned out alright.
Or, did we?
While most of us can work basic desktop applications just fine and make a decent, maybe even a great living out of it, those of us who dug a little deeper into the logic behind what runs these applications are in fact doing better. A story on Business Insider revealed that statistically, Software as a service, computer engineering, and software developer jobs pay anywhere between 30% — 50% higher than other IT jobs and significantly higher than regular jobs.
If you are planning ahead and considering career options for your child, coaching for competitive examinations and what it entails need not be the only trajectory you could pursue. A child with an innate ability to understand problems clearly and understand concepts well may quite well enjoy a career or future in coding.
Let’s break it down and see if it is actually worth encouraging your child to pursue a career in coding or even just learn coding.
1. Coding increases the analytical function in the development of your child
Cognitive Skill Development in Children
The development of children during their early childhood and middle childhood years are greatly influenced by the activities they are engaged in. Their mental development during these years greatly influences their future and the potential to grasp concepts in the following years to come. While their physical activity and school work is generally guaranteed, it is important for us to ensure they pursue an activity that intrigues them.
Online Coding classes like techmentry therefore serve as an ideal hobby for your child. Coding also doubles as a viable career choice in your child’s future. Coding which is a logic-based language of the computer, has a significantly positive impact on the cognitive development of children.
2. Coding increases curiosity in related and unrelated fields
How does the bar-code in your local grocery store work? How do you get a cab with simply the click of a button? How do you find answers to almost anything on search engines like Google?
There is an infinitely connected system in the disciplines that run this world. Every profession creates opportunities for other professions and essentially exists in itself because of another parent field of work; an in-depth study in one field of science ideally requires an understanding (albeit possibly a basic one) of other sciences; even a musical chord only exists as a composition of a number of notes played together. Each of these instances among many others is a puzzle piece that can be understood and solved through an understanding of a programming language. While your child understands one aspect of everyday functioning, they are automatically progressing to their next mental query.
3. It increases the attention span of your child and helps them focus on what they are doing for a longer period of time
Have you felt the satisfaction of the ‘Aha moment’ — referred to otherwise as the Eureka moment? While solving any question in coding, your child is subconsciously longing for the satisfaction of solving it on their own. Solving anything that puzzles you and the satisfaction you derive from that is your brain’s way of rewarding you.
A number of additional benefits to your child’s focus include,
- An increased attention to detail
- Better memory power
- Heightened ability in problem solving
- Increased productivity, and
- Significant stress relief
4. Coding helps your child gain a deeper understanding behind the functional aspects of the regularly used mobile apps and/or software while making them think further
It is only wise to acknowledge the progress of technology on the global scale. Technology runs everything we use in our daily lives and will continue to penetrate further into our lives in the years to come. Even local businesses have started to resort to establishing an omnichannel presence in order to simply hold their market share. Services ranging from legal advice or drafting, healthcare, and education to that of ordering food or groceries and tuning your musical instruments now have mobile applications or websites. This will be a rising trend for the foreseeable future.
A functional knowledge of these applications and software will only be beneficial for anyone and definitely for children who are the very soul of the world’s future. With a working knowledge of how applications and software work, children can develop the motivation to build something of their own and see if it works.
5. Serves as an intellectually stimulating hobby
If your kid loves a challenge, has a number of questions that generally supersedes the kind of questions their peers ask or gets easily bored when their mind is not sufficiently entertained — they are evidently signalling the need for something that better stimulates their cognitive ability.
Coding is essentially a combination of numbers, logic and a larger understanding of the system, product or service that you are working. Together, through a number of languages you are practically talking to an inanimate machine. Now, Is that something that would interest your child?
Owing to the penetration of technology in daily services, coding and programming serve to be an extremely beneficial skill to anyone and can be learnt at any age — even as early as at six! From a career perspective, it is ranked as the #1 in-demand job as per numerous reports by countries like the States, UK, as well as many other developed and developing nations. The respect and discipline of the corporate structure can be largely credited to the Technology Industry. Whether it is the flexibility of the workplace (in-office or work-from-home structures) or the fixed number of working hours and working days, it is generally best in this line of work. Even in the case of starting a business of your own in order to be independent of the structure or for other reasons, coding is a great skill to possess. Your dependency on others reduces considerably and is limited if you can build your own product or service.
To answer the question — no, Coding is not overrated. If anything, it has been underrated for a significantly long period of time. It is only over the past few years that it is slowly getting the recognition it should have and a well-deserved place among the other promoted career choices for children from a young age. From a growth and development perspective to a future and career perspective, encouraging children to learn coding can prove to be very positive. We have long known that children are on an average smarter with each coming generation. In this respect they are evidently capable of better handling an intellectual stimulus faster and possibly better than we could have at their age.