Who has a smartphone? Pretty much everyone does these days. You can still get a flip phone with actual buttons, but they are getting more scarce all the time. Now, how about iPads? Kindles? Microsoft Surface? Anything with a touchscreen? If you don’t own one, you at least see it all the time. And the next generation may be losing their fine motor skills because of this technology.

Who says so? Professor Roger Kneebone, of Imperial College, London, says we have a problem with incoming surgery students.

A professor of surgery says students have spent so much time in front of screens and so little time using their hands that they have lost the dexterity for stitching or sewing up patients.

Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College, London, says young people have so little experience of craft skills that they struggle with anything practical.

“It is important and an increasingly urgent issue,” says Prof Kneebone, who warns medical students might have high academic grades but cannot cut or sew.

“It is a concern of mine and my scientific colleagues that whereas in the past you could make the assumption that students would leave school able to do certain practical things – cutting things out, making things – that is no longer the case,” says Prof Kneebone.

The professor, who teaches surgery to medical students, says young people need to have a more rounded education, including creative and artistic subjects, where they learn to use their hands.

Prof Kneebone says he has seen a decline in the manual dexterity of students over the past decade – which he says is a problem for surgeons, who need craftsmanship as well as academic knowledge.

“An obvious example is of a surgeon needing some dexterity and skill in sewing or stitching,” he says.

“A lot of things are reduced to swiping on a two-dimensional flat screen,” he says, which he argues takes away the experience of handling materials and developing physical skills.

Such skills might once have been gained at school or at home, whether in cutting textiles, measuring ingredients, repairing something that’s broken, learning woodwork or holding an instrument.

Students have become “less competent and less confident” in using their hands, he says.

“We have students who have very high exam grades but lack tactile general knowledge,” says the professor.

Now, who among you has had surgery? Or who has even needed stitches for yourself or a child? I had my gallbladder out in 2012. You bet there were stitches involved (internally, if not externally – I was fortunate enough to able to have laparoscopic surgery and my external incisions were small enough to be glued shut).

One of my favorite YouTube channels is “Vet Ranch,” where a group of veterinarians located in Texas perform surgeries or give other medical care to animals in the effort to make them adoptable. You bet there is a lot of stitching involved in vet work. (Vet Ranch offers both censored videos, and uncensored videos for those who can handle more graphic surgery footage.)

So, what happens when all the kids who want to be veterinarians someday can’t handle a needle and thread? Not to mention those kids who have all the book smarts and the STEM grades to become a doctor, and are confounded the first time they are told to close up a wound?

Fine motor skills are critical for so many things. As a special needs mom, I was made aware very early on when my oldest son was diagnosed with autism that his fine motor skills were critical to his continued development. At the time, he could barely hold a pencil with enough force to press down firmly and write his own name. Over time, he developed that skill. He now takes art classes, and one of his particular talents has been in sculpting.

My youngest son, who also is on the autism spectrum, has the same fine motor difficulties as his brother. We have him writing his name and drawing shapes with markers at school and in therapy, because he doesn’t press hard enough for a pencil line to be seen. Someday, we’ll get there. But my boys, as much as any other modern kid, know how to manipulate touchscreens.

In school, we have gone so far over to focusing on STEM subjects and making sure that kids don’t fall behind in math and science, that we long ago gave up requiring home economics or wood shop. Some of these classes are still offered by elective, but how many high school kids can actually sew a button back on their own clothes these days? And how many of their parents can actually do it?

Crafts have a therapeutic effect as well as promoting fine motor skills (look at the explosion in intricate adult coloring books). These skills need to be brought back into our schools, into our hobbies, and into our homes. Otherwise, I see a future where medical students are going to be required to take a sewing class to improve their fine motor skills before they get within ten feet of a living patient who needs stitches. Now there’s an entrepreneurial opportunity for someone out there!

Featured image via Pixabay