Touch-Screen Devices And Very Young Children
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-05-23/touch-screen-devices-and-very-young-children
Very young children, like many of their parents, can become totally absorbed with mobile touch-screen devices. Some argue that compared to the essentially passive activity of watching television, children and even toddlers using i-Pads, i-Phones, Androids and other kinds of touch-screen devices can have a far more stimulating, positive and educational experience. But parents and their children are way ahead of any research: No one can say for sure how using this technology shapes developing brains,if at all. Please join us for a conversation on young children and touch-screen devices.
Guests
Lisa Guernsey
director, Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation
Ben Worthen
reporter, Wall Street Journal
Heather Kirkorian
assistant professor, human development and family studies, University of Wisconsin , Madison
Liz Perle
editor in chief, Common Sense Media `
Comments
Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Terms of Use before posting your comments.
Did anyone in the show mention about how touch screens devices with easy-to-use operating systems are not the same as computer programming? I think the problem is that devices have become so easy to use for the average person, that a certain level of computer literacy has gone down, in a sense. I learned how to use a computer in the third grade, but it was an old apple computer. Just to start a game required a bit of programming or at least run commands. The games themselves were not "point and click", but rather math-based or required coordinates to draw. The DOS prompt is not even really necessary for anything except certain diagnostic tests with hardware issues these days. In other words, I think touch screen devices are not challenging and therefore do not provide an educational benefit. They are simply for entertainment and should not be used for hours on end with the idea that the child is learning a great deal from a simple device.
One very important aspect of interactive touchscreen devices not really discussed by the panel on the show is how students can easily use these devices (and other technologies) to create their own, unique digital media to demonstrate their skills & knowledge related to educational curricula.
Creating media is different from consuming media; while creating media, students are engaged in a variety of valuable higher order thinking skills.
As an educational technology consultant in Michigan schools, I have the opportunity to work with many students and teachers on these types of projects. The outcomes I’ve witnessed are almost always wonderful artifacts of student learning aligned with technology and content area standards.
Greg Marten
Awesome input, It's so easy for us to downgrade the knowledge of parents, no matter what the academic degree. Many thanks!
One of the main reasons I purchased an iPad was for all of my e-books. It's great resource for keeping all of my PDF magazines and books. I let my grand children read the children books I have and they enjoy them and they don't have to be connected to the internet to enjoy them.
I am an IT professional and I develop applications for these devices and just like there are some appropriate books and inapropriate books the same things apply with smart phone and tablet apps. As with everything, parents just need to be involved and understand what their kids are looking at. There are creative writing apps that children need to monitor themselves on knowing that the parents are involved and will read with them. My daughter is a 4.0 sophmore high school student and I have a son with a TBI from a car accident that these types of interactive media has enhanced their learning and provided them a platform to move forward with the technology of tomorrow. My son has improved with miraculous results that I believe are in part due to progressive memory games that we have downloaded.
I absolutely see this as a readiness issue, akin to those for drivers licenses, voting, etc. Young children, especially those under 3, are simply not developmentally ready to get anything of value form electronic devices. Mammals that they are, their primary concerns are basic trust, desire for connectedness to other humans, and emergence of basic skills and sense of competency with things like getting dressed, feeding themselves, stacking blocks, etc. Computers - touch screen TVs, really - will envelop their lives soon enough, and are best deferred for a time when they have a foundation in these fundamental things. We require children to wait until age 16 to drive cars and think nothing of it, even though we could create all kinds of cool appliances to help kindergartners try. Despite its evolution into a more passive - as opposed to programming - state, technology has retained an "educational" allure, implying that it is not only suitable, but healthy for all ages. This is not the case. E-media should be restricted altogether under 3, then gradually introduced with attention to content, until all restrictions are removed as teens/grownups. A license for success!
I was really surprised by how careful the guests were to not in any way make it sound like it might be possible for touch screen devices to be a bad idea for toddlers. Let's be clear - there is a hierarchy of appropriate activities with babies and toddlers. Interaction with adults, other children, blocks, books, nature and the outdoors trump everything. It doesn't mean kids can never use a touch screen device, but let' s not talk about them as if they are equal to books and the outdoors. Yes, I let my 2 year old use my phone to watch videos of himself playing. He watches videos of himself with his dad, and we talk about what they are doing. It helps him through the day as he misses his daddy, but we are talking 5 or 10 minutes here. Yes, there are really worthwhile aps. But even so, he spent 2 hours playing in the mud this morning. I would freak if a babysitter let him spend 2 hours on an iPad, so clearly they are not equal.
People are grazing the surface of the real issue, but not addressing it all together. Parents, not electronic devices, are primary educators. An electronic device can be a tool, or an entertainment device, but it is not a substitute for parenting.
Devices which deliver information to a person, whether they be books, radio, TV, or electronic devices - are not parents. The prohibition of such devices by parents, will not in and of itself, create a more positive developmental environment for a child. Engaging with the child as a human being is what helps develop the child. If a parent is unwilling to engage with a child, then the child's problems are far more serious than the influence of any electronic device.
In my experience, children tend to use new technologies in rather positive ways. It is adults that use them negatively. It is adults who text and drive. It is adults who cannot draw a line between work time and family time. It is the adults who teach these bad habits to their children, and it is our fault when problems arise.
I scrolled down the comments and only saw one that mentioned creativity as an issue. My granddaughters (now 5 and 9) have very little time with television and computers, but they are pretty technology savvy anyway (I taught the five year old how to crop pictures in no time). Over the years they have spent a lot of time playing games that involve the imagination (role-playing, acting out fairy tales, creating dances, drawing and painting), and the older one is an avid reader. They are pretty confident about making things. I took them to an art exhibit ("Picasso to Warhol"), and the five year old, who had brought a sketch pad, stopped at the paintings she liked and sketched them. I don't know if they would have developed these creative skills if they had spent more time on the computer or watching tv.
As for computer skills, I don't know if we should be worrying about small children learning them. I was about 40 when computers became available and I didn't have a problem learning to use them in many ways, and that was back when they weren't as user friendly.
I would appreciate comments on how these tecnologies under discussion affect creativity.
As an Occupational Therapist who works with general education school children (pre-school thru 5th grade) who at risk for academic failure I can tell you that their difficulties are developmentally based and aggravated by the presence of too much technology in their lives. Common problems include retained primitive reflexes, poor binocular vision, eye-hand coordination, and poor self-regulation and control of their own bodies. They also present with poor pragmatics secondary to limited exposure to the world. If your child is in front of a screen then what aren't they doing? They're not moving. Humans were meant to move. We develop and mature our brains through movement. We integrate our sensory systems through movement and we calibrate our vision through movement. The occupation of a child is play in order to learn and identify the characteristics and properties of objects. A tablet provides only one touch surface activated by one digit. Cut a piece of plywood the same size as your tablet and tell your kid to just touch it with his finger and then ask yourself how much is this going to help my child with what she really needs? In sense of total human development, not much. Let them develop healthy bodies and minds first. They can play with your toys later.
This is a great conversation. However, I feel the need to ask, why are people having children if they do not commit to 'being there' for them in their early developmental years? To hear a parent say that an electronic device is a godsend, makes me shiver. Make the commitment! Yes, it IS hard but I can tell you from experience that it goes by quickly.
We consciously brought up our now 20-year-old without television or videos. I do not want to say we were "lucky" that one of us was able to stay at home for the first three years of her life. That should NOT be luck -- that should be required and it should be supported by our society (family values?), but it is not.
So what did we do? We played 'real' games, we left books for her to discover, we played with blocks, we built things. We went outside and explored nature. If she got bored, then hooray! She learned to figure out what to do with herself. She found creative ways to use her time. She eventually learned to read and to write and is an excellent communicator and critical thinker today.
Of course she is "connected" now to her phone, her computer, the internet. But she also has the discipline to disconnect when needed (she now is at college).
Kids learn to talk and they learn to read, write, and do math; it's been happening for eons. Why the rush? Childhood is a blip on the radar screen. Connect with your child as a human being first -- the rest will fall into place.
Provoking, thoughtful show. Thank you. As a mom of two and a preschool teacher, it seems to me not about "passive television" vs. "interactive devices;" but about finite hours in the day, in our life!, and that every hour a child (or us) spends zoned into a screen, brain activity or not, that is time they/we could be spending doing something else; like hugging someone, drawing a thank you card for grandmom, walking outside, ruminating, eating a ripe mango, making and keeping a friend, digging for worms, the list goes on. Real life and real people will best prepare someone for real life and real people, it would seem, right? The rest is digital sound and fury--like the Kardashians on people.com (which I love and find frighteningly compelling and consuming, btw). The irony that I listened to your show and then posted this comment, all on my iPhone is not lost on me. But it seems a wee better, more a platform for connecting with the real world than say my son playing angry birds (which he loves and finds frighteningly compelling and consuming btw)
As a mom I am trying to stave off impending cyborg takeover while and when I can and being real that when he is on a device I am not educating my son in any real way and that there are one million better things he could be doing including staring at a real ant crawl across our real kitchen floor.