Harnessing the Benefits of Touch Screen Tablets in Early Childhood
Like them or not, touch screen tablets are here to stay. What do we know about how they’re impacting young children’s development?
By Dr Michelle Neumann, School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University (m.neumann@griffith.edu.au)
Like them or not, touch screen tablets (e.g., iPads) have landed into the hands of our little ones. It seems that they are here to stay. Wherever you look there’s a good chance you will see a young child on a tablet. You will see the child giggle in delight, totally engrossed in what they are looking at on the screen — oblivious to what is happening around them. Interestingly, we see many of the same behaviors in children as we do with adults — but more importantly the question needs to be asked: What effects are these experiences having on young children’s social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development? Are these early experiences good, bad, or ugly?
The popularity of tablets in the homes of young families is rapidly increasing — and the trend is rising. The television is the only other electronic device that young children spend more time on (but that’s another story). Tablets are simple to operate and make it easy for little fingers to navigate a digital world using simple tactile gestures such as tap, drag, flick, pinch, and spread. Their mobile nature lets children take the device outside and explore both their natural, real, and digital worlds. Young children interact with wide range of media, texts, images, communicate with family members on line through Skype, type, write, read, and search and view YouTube clips on Google. They also play app-based games that encompass topics on the world, mathematics, literacy, languages, story books, drawing, science, music, and create photos and videos, to name a few.
Although many adults embrace the concept of “tablets and young children” some believe that tablets do little to benefit children’s learning. They argue that tablets can be addictive and negatively pervade the lives of young children and families. Surprisingly, there is currently little empirical research to fully support either view.
Much of the academic community avoid the alarmist view in preference for a more rational approach. This approach should be strongly built around evidence based findings that arise from the collection and analysis of non-biased data from researchers, parents, teachers, policy makers, app developers, and industry partners. But this takes time. The relatively recent launch of tablets and the iPad (around 2010) has meant that there are significant gaps in knowledge that need to be filled before conclusions can be made.
In truth, there could be very valid reasons to be “anti-tablet”. Negative views have grown out of the observations that so called “educational” apps are in reality not educational at all. The argument goes further in stating that the apps have not been rigorously designed and tested around sound and established early learning theories. Clearly, improvements need to be made in the review and evaluation of the quality of educational apps available for young children.
To highlight this point, recent research has shown that the majority of parents do not read electronic books to their children preferring instead to read traditional paper printed stories at bedtime. It is possible that parents do not embrace story book apps because many are highly commercialised, filled with distractive animations and pop-up advertisements, have not been written by quality authors, and do not allow sufficient time for young children to fully digest and comprehend a story’s content and message.
There is no doubt that early experiences with tablets have the potential to influence children’s future learning. These experiences can also help children to effectively use digital devices at school.
Parents, carers, and teachers play a key role in determining how tablets are presented to young children, how they model and scaffold the use of these devices, and what types of apps to use. Researchers, in collaboration with teachers, parents and children, need to ascertain the effects of tablets in all aspects of children’s early physical, social and emotional, and cognitive development.
For example, how can we empower young children to become critical evaluators of apps? Or are there key strategic questions parents can ask their child during tablet use? For example, could a 5 Ws approach work to support use of tablets in the home environment?
- Who (ask your child: who are you playing the app with? — It’s important for young children to play on their digital devices in a social environment with others so family members can scaffold and support the child’s interactions — tablets should not be used in isolation).
- What (ask your child: what app are you playing with? Is it age appropriate and of reasonable quality).
- Where (ask your child: where are you playing your tablet? Being in a room away from others is not a good place for tablet time).
- Why (ask your child: why are you playing that app? Is there a learning purpose or is it a repetitive gaming app?).
- When (ask your child: how much time have you spent on the tablet? 15 to 20 minutes is a suitable time frame for a tablet session and playing on tablets at bedtime should be avoided).
Only through joint-collaboration of researchers, parents, teachers, children, app developers, and policy makers can answers to these important questions be addressed and the benefits of tablets be truly harnessed for early learning.
For more information on this topic, see:
Neumann, M. M. & Neumann, D. L. (2014). Touch screen tablets and emergent literacy. Early Childhood Education Journal, 42, 231–239.
Neumann, M. M. & Neumann D. L. (2015). The use of touch screen tablets at home and pre-school to foster emergent literacy. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17, 203–220.
Neumann, M. M. (2015). Young children and screen time: Creating a mindful approach to digital technology. Australian Educational Computing, 30 online.
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