The title of an article in the April issue of the Atlantic magazine, The Touch -Screen Generation by Hanna Rosin takes a look at the effects of tablets and smartphones on the minds of young children. It began with a meeting of about 30 developers of children’s apps for phones and tablets, with some apps were aimed at attracting children as young as a year old. The author of the article was surprised to learn that several of the developers she spoke to limited their children’s screen time to half an hour on weekends only. The most permissive said their limit was half an hour an day, which is the author’s philosophy as well. According to the article, many parents are increasingly wary of the impact of technology on their children’s lives. Although parents want their kids to be technologically adept, they are afraid of the impact of too much media time. Since the I-Pad has only been around for three years, so far there has been no definitive research that proves agility with an I-Pad will make your preschooler smarter, nor on the other hand, will it “rust her neural circuitry.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics takes a dim view of the value of apps for young children. The Academy updated its policy on very young children and media in 2011, and still discourages passive media use by children younger than 2 years of age. The article also takes into account many parents’ concern with what is termed the “zombie effect” where children seem to “zone out” from the world surrounding them, as they become consumed by an I-Pad screen. Ben Worthen, a Wall Street Journal reporter, falls into this category of parents. But not all parents limit their children’s screen time. The education and technology writer Mark Prensky feels that by not doing so, his son will eventually tire of playing a new app for hours, and move on to another activity. Roisin’s own 4 year old son demonstrated this, as he initially played with his I-Pad for 2 hour time periods, several times a day, but after 10 days, it wound up under his bed and he now plays with it occasionally, using LetterSchool to learn the alphabet.
The article quotes journalist Lisa Guernsey, author of Screen Time, who lays out a framework in her book. She calls it “the three C’s” for thinking about media consumption by young children: content, context, and your child.”Is the content appropriate? Is screen time a relatively small part of your child’s iteracton with you and the real world?” She then suggests using the answers to these questions to develop your own guidelines for the individual child.