Smartphones are an excellent way of staying connected with your near and dear ones. And they have indeed made communicating with our connections so easy and quick. Whether through voice calls, video calls, messages, mails or social networking. Everyone is within an easy reach now, isn’t it?
On the other hand, it is also argued that smartphones are causing negative effects on our social skills. And as much as I love smartphones, I fear that this might be true. These days, even when people sit with or visit friends, they spend more time looking at their phone screen instead of at their friends. In the past few months I have noticed that no matter who visits our home, sooner or later the conversation gets directed to some content someone received on WhatsApp. And then, that video or image or message is shown to everyone in the room. And from there starts the competition of everybody else digging into their smartphones to bring out the photo or video or message that the other must see. Result? Everybody becomes busy with their phones.
But anyway, that is really the fault of us humans, instead of the smartphones. How can the dear gadgets help if we humans are so apt in turning anything good into something bad?
Besides, here’s one proof that smartphones don’t just have a negative effect on social skills. They can even help people build up these necessary skills.
Recently, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. Introduced Look At Me App that has been designed to help children with autism develop their communication skills.
Children with autism have difficulty in making an eye contact with others. It is also hard for them to judge the emotions of others. All this can leave a severe negative effect on their life.
However, it has also been observed that autistic children like interacting with smart devices. And Samsung has found a way to use this to help the autistic children. Samsung, in collaboration with the doctors and professors from Seoul National University and Yonsei University has developed the Look At Me App. This brilliant app was developed with the joint efforts of professor Hee-Jeong Yoo from Seoul National University Bundag Hospital and professor Kyong-Mee Chung and Sang-Chul Chong from Yonsei University Department of Psychology.
The clinical trials of the app have been conducted on 20 children over a period of 8 weeks. And the app has been found to have positive effects on the social skills of the children with autism.
The Look At Me App is an interactive camera app that helps the child learn to understand other people’s moods and to remember faces. Children also learn to take their photos showing different emotions and poses. The app achieves all this through seven missions. The missions are fun and interesting enough to keep the child’s attention engaged. And their reward system also keeps the children motivated to do better and better. Each mission has been so designed to keep the child engaged for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Talking about the app, Professor Kyong-Mee Chung at Yonsei University, said, “60% of the children tested showed improvement in making eye contact. They could also identify emotional expressions more easily. This app will help children with autism improve their perception and expression of diverse emotions, such as happiness, surprise and fear.”
The idea for Look At Me was generated from Samsung’s People Campaign that crowdsources from around the world the ideas that can use technology to help people and make the world a better place.
Look At Me App can be downloaded from Google Play and can be used on Samsung devices like Galaxy S5, Galaxy S4, Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy Zoom 2, Galaxy Zoom and Galaxy Tab S.
As per Chung Lyong Lee, Vice President of Corporate Citizenship Group at Samsung, “Over 60 million people are diagnosed with autism globally, and there is a lack of hospitals and readily-available facilities to treat them effectively. Treatment costs are also high and there are often long waiting times associated with the condition. Knowing that autistic children interact well with technology, we wondered if we could help in some way to support the development of their communication skills. Look At Me is a light, fun and game-like app that parents can play with their children to get them accustomed to making eye contact and reading people’s emotions. We hope we can play a small part in improving the lives of children around the world.”
I sure hope that Look At Me app will help children with autism and will prove useful in improving the quality of their social life and interactions. I also hope more and more companies would come forward with such unique and brilliant initiatives. There’s really no end to what we can achieve with technology.
Download Look At Me from Google Play
