My friend’s son Billy is two-and-a-half years old. He is familiar with the YouTube app on his dad’s smartphone and knows that it is a source of cartoons. Once his dad renders a search, he can scroll through similar videos on his own and chooses the one he would like to watch. He knows a smartphone can take photos and often requests a selfie.
Even though he’s still very young, Billy is relatively savvy with his dad’s smartphone. But he’s not the exception: most kids his age are pretty much the same. If Billy is more likely to be the rule in today’s touch-screen-based and app-dominated society, what are the implications for today’s kids in their experience of childhood?
Childhood is an exciting period of exploration. Through play, children develop and categorise their thoughts. They explore surroundings, materials, social realities and situations in a safe and unthreatening environment. Play offers social, emotional and intellectual development which is crucial during a child’s early years.
During our first two years of life, the brain is highly malleable and the number of connections formed during this period are formative for the child’s future and learning. Thus, the natural conclusion would be that, since the internet is the present and the future, children should be exposed to tablets and smartphones as early as possible so as to prepare them for the tech-saturated lifestyle beyond their strollers.
Even though educational cartoons and videogames contribute positively to a child’s knowledge, problem-solving and academic abilities, consumption must be selective. International studies demonstrate that too much early exposure to screen technology may stimulate the developing brain in such a way that may be harmful.
Play therapist Jacqueline Abela DeGiovanni suggests that parents are often unprepared for the challenge, especially when it comes to regulating their child’s time with such technologies.
“My work includes working closely with families, and I do believe that excessive television viewing and offering little or no time regulation when it comes to any use of tech gadgets is proving to be somewhat problematic in our society,” she says.
Some of the health implications include a decline in physical activity, which could lead to child obesity, and also a decline in pretend or make-believe play.
“Technology could be keeping children indoors with little or no time left for physical exercise and social interaction. Play activities, such as pretend play and make-believe play, are on the decrease due to children preferring to occupy their time with technology and gadgets.”
For me, growing up in the 1990s meant that a home computer was an essential part of our home set-up, much like having a fridge in the kitchen. And listening to my mother narrating stories of her childhood, filled with days playing with neighbours in the streets of her village, somehow always made me nostalgic for her past. By the age of four I was already spending most of my time indoors, playing games off a floppy disc with quirky 2D graphics and annoying sounds. My mother, on the other hand, holds childhood memories that are based on authentic experiences and intimate friendships.
From my experience, I don’t think that technology is necessarily the cause of a decline in physical and make-believe play, but rather the effect of an accelerated lifestyle. With heavy traffic on our roads, compact housing bearing no room for gardens, and the very little neighbourhood fields left where children could roam around, climb trees and play freely with one another, it is not surprising that they are resorting to technology with which to play and interact.
Speaking with Billy’s dad, he explains that his son still loves toys and spends much more time playing with cars and trains or reading books than on a smartphone. But of course it’s his parents who are consistently trying to instil a sense of discipline and giving their son time-out from tech.
The key is to opt for a balanced approach between technology and traditional forms of play
“He is definitely more excited about a friend coming over to play rather than watching television or a video on YouTube,” Billy’s dad says.
This shows that children still have the natural capacity to create their own games and play with one another, despite being brought up in an electronic era. It is our fast-paced lifestyle that limits them from freely doing so.
Today’s children are growing up in a digitally distracting environment and it’s more than obvious that this isn’t going to wipe out. It is thus understandable that parents should also move with the times, but not entirely. The key is to opt for a balanced approach between techno-logy and traditional forms of play.
Moreover, we must distinguish between passive and active media consumption since the media landscape has changed drastically over the past decades: television and radio now compete with smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles, which are far more engaging on a cognitive level than the passive consumption of television and radio.
Screens are but a delivery mechan-ism, and what is important is to focus on the content that they are conveying. In fact, the Centre for Child Health, Behaviour and Development at Seattle’s Research Institute in the US studied two groups of children aged 18-24 months. While the first group was asked to play with blocks, the second was asked to watch tele-vision. The former group scored significantly better on subsequent language tests. This illustrates how an interactive component during play promotes language development.
Dr Dimitri Christakis, the Director of the Seattle Research Institute, is currently set to replicate this study in order to compare the effects of tele-vision and interactive tablet games. Even though the research is still in progress, Dr Christakis predicts that the effect of tablets on the brain will be much closer to the blocks than television. This could suggest the potential that touch-screen devices might yield as academic tools.
So instead of fully depriving our children of using or interacting through new technologies in favour of traditional play, we need to help them use it mindfully, perhaps even through the help of Facebook pages such as Appropriate, which is aimed at providing information about suitable apps that young children will love learning from.
Speech and language pathologist Veronica Montanaro, who specialised in augmentative and alternative communication, has recently studied the way children below the age of three interact with a tablet and established developmental milestones which would certainly be helpful to parents, professionals and application developers to understand age-appropriate tablet use. The study reveals the ages at which tablet-specific behaviours emerge, including attention skills, behaviour, cognitive skills, language and communication skills, exploration of the tablet, posture and tablet-handing and motor skills.
Billy’s generation is the first to grow up in a networked society with constant connectivity. The way they will process and present information, as well as their expectations of one another, will undoubtedly be different from what we experienced when we were kids. Different doesn’t necessarily mean worse. Detractors may fear that today’s children will eventually grow up to be zombies, lacking inter-personal and social skills, but I believe this is a generalised overstatement. Given the right tools, within the right context and timing, Billy’s generation could potentially be the smartest and most creative yet – but they cannot accomplish this alone.
Billy’s dad believes in the import-ance of restricting the amount of tech consumption during the day.
“We should look into exposing the younger generation to more pretend, make-believe and outdoor play,” says Ms Abela DeGiovanni. “My recommendation to parents is to do their utmost to set a time limit on the use of technology gadgets. If you’re there to guide your children, these devices could be an opportunity for both you and your child to bond and learn from one another.”
Christine Spiteri has specialised in media culture at Maastricht University, the Netherlands.