Unfortunately, after more than 7,000 words, Rosin came up with very few answers. I don’t exactly blame her. The problem is no one really knows how tablets and smartphones might affect a young child's development. Not yet, at least. As Rosin herself writes in the piece, "To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter or teach her to speak Chinese, or alternatively that it will rust her neural circuitry — the device has been out for only three years, not much more than the time it takes some academics to find funding and gather research subjects."
Exactly. The iPad debuted three years ago this month. So before 2010, a grand total of zero toddlers could be found playing with one — in a restaurant, a grocery store line or anywhere else. Before June 2007, no toddler had ever used an iPhone, either. (The Apple App Store, with its endless apps for small kids, didn’t appear until 2008.) Today’s toddlers are truly the first in the entire history of toddlerhood to ever use such touchscreen devices. So research in this area is understandably in its infancy. Rosin herself notes, "Because interactive media are so new, most of the existing research looks at children and television." Indeed, most experts agree: There’s a lot we just won’t know for some time.
"Free yourself from this neurosis and guilt," Rosin said on NPR's "Weekend Edition." "Technology is with us. Just accept it. The phones are with us. The iPads are with us. Some of them are amazing — they're super cool."
Generalizing about "toddlers" — especially based on one experiment with
one 4-year-old — seems dangerous here. And that’s one problem The
Atlantic piece has: It discusses some research involving kids of certain ages — Rosin cites one study (unpublished as yet) her own child participated in that documented behaviors of 32-month-olds using iPads, for example — but offers nothing regarding any new research or data on even younger children, say, the under-2 set.
Even research on children and TV, after so many decades, becomes more scant when it comes to kids under about age 3. And we know kids 2 and under are being handed tablets and smartphones (forget about TV) with increasing frequency these days. But The Atlantic, despite its promised focus on "toddlers," seems to wander away from any real focus on touchscreen use by the very youngest of our children.
- From "Taylor," responding to a post on The New York Times' parenting blog "Motherlode," by KJ Dell'Antonia, about The Atlantic's article: "[A]fter introducing the iPad to my toddler to keep him entertained on a
long car ride, we are now awash in a sea of regret. He asks for it CONSTANTLY,
cries and throws things when we say no, already knows how to navigate to the
movies we've downloaded, go back to the beginning, etc. It's crazy to me. We've
done a great job of standing our ground so far - he's allowed to use it only
once a week, only supervised, etc. But it's the whining about it that drives me
crazy. Anyone with tips, please let me know what worked for you to curb iPad
cravings."
But here’s something we do know: Toddlers and preschoolers are being
targeted like crazy by app developers. The apps-for-tots market is exploding
today as more and more developers scramble to get in the game. Over 80% of the
top-selling paid educational apps in the iTunes App Store now target children,
and of these, a full 72% are aimed at preschoolers. (See this study by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center.) Thousands of apps
for kids are being released every year. And it doesn't stop at the toddler/preschooler level. At a conference of children’s
app developers Rosin writes about in her piece, developers were testing apps for kids
as young as a year old.
It’s not surprising that today’s parents have many concerns and
questions about the effects of smartphone and tablet use by young
children and babies. How much screen time is appropriate at different ages? Are
there any risks of longterm harm from using these devices? Many
parents are legitimately struggling over how to use this technology with
their little ones. Some tell tales of toddlers begging for their iPad
and throwing fits when forced to give it up. Some call it an obsession — even
an addiction. Some worry their toddlers are zoning out on touchscreens to the point where they won't answer when they're called. (Just take a glance at this recent story about a 4-year-old in the UK being treated as an iPad "addict," or this follow-up in The New York Daily News on small kids hooked on iPads.)
For all its promise, Rosin’s article did not adequately address these
concerns. It’s a lengthy piece, but in the end the big message seemed to be
that parents should simply relax. Rosin writes that parents today have a
“neurotic relationship with technology” and feel guilty about giving their
small children tablets and smartphones to play with. She made the case in her
piece — and in a slew of radio and TV and interviews that followed — that
because there are interesting and various things kids can
learn from interactive apps, parents really should shake their negative
attitudes about them.
In an interview with Boston's WBUR show "Here and Now," Rosin said
we’re
"in a neurotic place" now and talked about parents' "instinctive
horror" over children using touchscreen technology. She urged parents "not to instinctively, automatically treat it like poison — talk about it like
it's poison and a lollipop and sugary sodas. It's really not the same."
On "The Leonard Lopate Show" on WNYC in New York, she said, “Don’t pass onto your children the idea that 'this is
poison, use it sparingly.' Understand
that even for little kids there are interesting things that they can do and
learn with this technology. It's not time wasted, it's not brain rot. It's
actually something more interesting than that."
OK, we get it. But the interviews — and indeed the article itself — seemed too dismissive of many genuine concerns and real-world parental choices about technology and kids today. Two years ago, The New York Times ran an in-depth piece about Silicon
Valley execs who chose to send their own kids to a Waldorf School that uses no computers or screens at all. It quoted parents like Alan Eagle, a Google employee with a computer science degree, who said, "The idea that an app on an iPad can better
teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that's ridiculous." Parents like Eagle had reasons for feelings as they did. Rosin mentioned this
article on "Here and Now" but quickly
brushed aside these tech execs' choices.
"When you deal with a technology so much what I realized is that your
paranoia maybe gets increased instead of decreased," Rosin said.
"Paranoia"? There’s no question that tablets and smartphones have a high coolness factor and can potentially offer kids great experiences and opportunities for learning. Indeed, Rosin spends a big chunk of her
article detailing exactly how cool various interactive apps for kids really are, in her opinion.
But does it do parents any favors to call their cautions and desires to limit screen time a "neurosis"?
In interviews, Rosin repeated one story again and again — something she
seems to be basing much of her conclusions upon. As she writes in her article (though you have to get to the very end to find this out), she conducted an experiment with her youngest son in which she
gave him unlimited access to an iPad for six months. She put it in the toy basket
and let him use it whenever and however he wanted, no restrictions.
While it was "extremely annoying" at first — Rosin's son wanted to use the device for two-hour stretches at inconvenient times — Rosin says he eventually dropped it under a bed and forgot about it. It fell out of rotation for weeks. "Now he picks it up every once in a while, but not all that often," she writes. "It took the edge off my thinking, 'Oh my God, his brain is turning to mush, he’s going to become addicted to this thing,'" Rosin said on "The Leonard Lopate Show." "I no longer have that thought."
While it was "extremely annoying" at first — Rosin's son wanted to use the device for two-hour stretches at inconvenient times — Rosin says he eventually dropped it under a bed and forgot about it. It fell out of rotation for weeks. "Now he picks it up every once in a while, but not all that often," she writes. "It took the edge off my thinking, 'Oh my God, his brain is turning to mush, he’s going to become addicted to this thing,'" Rosin said on "The Leonard Lopate Show." "I no longer have that thought."
Rosin told Lopate she wishes she "could urge all parents" to try the same
experiment to put their minds at ease. Does she mean all
parents of kids of all ages? Is any age too young for giving unlimited use of a touchscreen? Rosin calls her son a "toddler" in the
article but doesn't specify his age. On NPR's "Weekend Edition," though, she said
he was 4 when she conducted this experiment. Is a 4-year-old toddler with
unfettered access to an iPad any different from a 15-month-old toddler with
unfettered access to an iPad? (Are 4-year-olds even technically "toddlers"?) What
about a 12-month-old? A 7-month-old? A 3-month-old? Would Rosin have conducted the same
experiment on her son if he had been 18 months old at the time rather than 4? Would
she have drawn the same conclusions?
Even research on children and TV, after so many decades, becomes more scant when it comes to kids under about age 3. And we know kids 2 and under are being handed tablets and smartphones (forget about TV) with increasing frequency these days. But The Atlantic, despite its promised focus on "toddlers," seems to wander away from any real focus on touchscreen use by the very youngest of our children.
The hundreds of comments from online readers — on The Atlantic’s website
and elsewhere — were telling. What they told is just how complex an issue this
really is. Some commenters pointed out what else wasn't covered in this
7,000-plus-word article – big topics like the importance of manipulating 3D objects to the early development
of young brains. A month later, the comments are still coming in. I’d like to let some speak for themselves here. First, a few comments from The Atlantic’s own site:
- From Rob O'Daniel, who calls himself "a career IT guy, not some head-in-the-sand Luddite": "…children only have a tiny sliver of time in which it's allowable for them to be children. So why cut into that precious time by preemptively trying to mold them into junior technologists and rapid media consumers? My son will have the rest of his life to be enslaved to PCs and other techogadgets, While he's 6 yrs old, I'd like for him to indulge every Lego-playing, finger-painting, bike-riding, earthworm-digging, silly-dancing, fort-building impulse possible. If I've given him a strong foundation that will allow him to survive and thrive in the analog world, the digital will come effortlessly."
- From "Robert SF": "Children need to learn to manipulate
3D objects in a 3D world. Playing ball and getting hit, running around and
falling, building something and watching it collapse, all teach that, but a
flat screen cannot teach that."
- A similar thought from "djoelt1," who has three young children who aren't allowed to use screens: "At the stage of life the children are in, the laws of physics, chemistry, magentism, optics, and sound are so everpresent and fascinating that nothing on a screen could rival it." This person wrote about the activity of constructing jumps for bicycles, for example. "No amount of fancy graphics or imaginary bike jumping program can teach about how to harness balance, center of gravity, speed, and ramp angle to ride off a jump and land on one wheel or two."
- A similar thought from "djoelt1," who has three young children who aren't allowed to use screens: "At the stage of life the children are in, the laws of physics, chemistry, magentism, optics, and sound are so everpresent and fascinating that nothing on a screen could rival it." This person wrote about the activity of constructing jumps for bicycles, for example. "No amount of fancy graphics or imaginary bike jumping program can teach about how to harness balance, center of gravity, speed, and ramp angle to ride off a jump and land on one wheel or two."
- On a different note, from Natalie Danner: "How are children learning social skills,
self-control, attention, persistence, and the ability to entertain themselves
without technology?"
- Dennis Noble brings up the possible dangers of radio waves emitted by wireless devices: "Anyone with any awareness these days knows that exposure to wireless is considered a risk to health. The International Agency on Reseach [sic] on Cancer classified the Radio Frequency radiation as a possible carcinogen, the same classification as DDT and lead. Children are far more vulnerable to this and as we expose young children to this technology, we are playing Russian roulette with their brains, their bodies, and their DNA." (See the IARC's 2011 press release on this here. For more on the subject, see what the National Cancer Institute says about cell phone use.)
- From "sammybaker," a point, made rather pessimistically, about what kind of foundation might be laid when kids use screens at very young ages without a parental "media plan" in place: "Handing
little kids a tech device is like handing them a bag of cookies and expecting
them to have the frontal lobe ability to not scarf them down. What they learn
at 3 or 6 or 8 will stay with them as teens. Those years go by fast. If you
don't navigate childhood with a media plan, be ready for that chubby cheeked 'pester power' pro to mutate into an entertainment obsessed
7-year-old and then a texting, sexting force of nature risk taker at 13. When
mine turned 8, we had a written set of rules they had to agree to for that
iPod, etc... If they are not able to do that, don't hand them a tech device,
unless you commit to the time to sit next to them and play with them, edu apps
or not."
- With more on possible down-the-road effects of being plugged
in early (and often), reader Anthony Davis commented on "digital natives," whom Rosin defines as "the first generations of children
growing up fluent in the language of computers, video games, and other
technologies": "Yes, and I still have to teach these 'digital natives' in
college that copying and pasting from Wikipedia and checking out the first
entry on a search engine don't qualify as research. The smartphone is not a
back up for poor short-term memory during a quiz. The squiggly green and red
lines on the documents in their word processors are actually trying to tell
them something basic about their writing ability. Skimming off Sparknotes.com is not the same as
synthesizing and analyzing…" (He continues on from there...)
- "Kira" observed that not having access
to digital devices makes kids work to find creative solutions:
"We restrict use quite a bit in our household and I've noticed that in
those ‘I'm bored’ moments, not having access, makes our two kids work together
to have fun - build things, play cards, play keep it up with a ball, etc...To
me that is worth restricting the app use."
- Reader Hal Horvath had similar thoughts to "Kira": "We use
breaks, including days at a time, from the finite world of apps/games, and I
can tell you from repeated experience that an interesting thing happens. After
a day or two without the Wii, computer, or Kindle, our daughter doesn't even
seek them out, but continues building and creating her own stuff, out of found
materials."
- Another reader, "pavopax," linked to this recent article from Fast
Company,
"Why Your iPhone Addiction Is Snuffing Your Creativity," also on the importance of, well, boredom.
A few more interesting comments from other sites:
- From "mld," on Rosin's interview with WBUR's "Here and Now": "I think its [sic] the wrong question to ask. More important to ask 'why are we so enamored with a toddler's ability to operate a touch screen?' So what? It isn't difficult--not like they learned to play the violin or learned to read."
- From "Sally," on the interview with WNYC's Leonard Lopate: "I have an 11 year old son, and I find that he becomes very aggressive when he spends a lot of time on an electronic device, especially when playing video games. I limit screen time for him."
- From Mike Kaplan, also commenting on the "Motherlode" post: "One thing missing from iPad play is the tactile
interactions with objects, and I wonder what we're losing when we replace
three-dimensional playtime in the world of objects and space with 2-dimensional
time in the world of simulated objects and simulated space. The coordinated
input from multiple senses that you get when handling and looking at an object
may be more important than it appears, especially during early
development."
- Elaborating on this same idea, Amy L. Slutzky, a pediatric occupational therapist of 33
years, wrote in to "Here and Now" a rather
technical explanation of exactly why it's important for babies and toddlers to explore
their 3D world. Part of her post: "I
think we are wise as adults to be
cautious regarding exposure of very young
children to any electronic screen
use. When
we talk about child development,
development of the brain, it is easy to limit
our thinking about cognitive
development to visual and auditory learning.
However, development, especially
during the earliest months and years, depends
on a gradual expansion of sensory-motor,
or physical control of the body and
the hands during movement, directed by the
visual system…. Spontaneous
three-dimensional manipulations with infinite varieties of
intensive tactile
qualities and resistance is critical to development of
skillful dexterity, or
eye-hand coordination. Each specific interaction with
the environment contributes
to a storehouse in the brain for future reference."
Slutzky cites two experts who each "estimated that one-third of our children are failing to develop the musclulature of the hand, and the eyes for competent use... The precision muscles in the palm of the hands and the fingers, as well as the tiny but all-important eye muscles that control movement of the eyes hands [sic] do not have the opportunity to develop in the complex context of the three dimensional world no matter how 'interactive' a designed program might be."
Indeed, while Rosin lauds the interactiveness of many children's apps, several online commenters argue that apps necessarily have built-in restrictions and limitations. Here's "Jane," for another example, responding to the Leonard Lopate interview: "As interactive and educational as the apps may be, they are REPLACING children's imaginations with pre-determined choices, rather than allowing the children to come up with their own ideas, or allowing them to learn to interact with the world around them."
In a recent New York Times piece called "The Child, the Tablet and the Developing Mind," reporter Nick Bilton quotes Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at UCLA, saying, "We really don’t know the full neurological effects of these technologies yet." Bilton writes that Small, author of iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, says "we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills."
When it comes to our children, caution seems prudent on so many fronts — especially in an area of life in which so much is yet unknown. Hardly anyone would criticize a parent for wanting to limit her young child’s or baby's TV time. Why such a different response to parents' choices about mobile screens held inches from their children's faces? Parents’ concerns need support and understanding. Let’s respect the challenges parents face when it comes to technology use and tots and keep the "neurosis" talk out of it.
Slutzky cites two experts who each "estimated that one-third of our children are failing to develop the musclulature of the hand, and the eyes for competent use... The precision muscles in the palm of the hands and the fingers, as well as the tiny but all-important eye muscles that control movement of the eyes hands [sic] do not have the opportunity to develop in the complex context of the three dimensional world no matter how 'interactive' a designed program might be."
Indeed, while Rosin lauds the interactiveness of many children's apps, several online commenters argue that apps necessarily have built-in restrictions and limitations. Here's "Jane," for another example, responding to the Leonard Lopate interview: "As interactive and educational as the apps may be, they are REPLACING children's imaginations with pre-determined choices, rather than allowing the children to come up with their own ideas, or allowing them to learn to interact with the world around them."
In a recent New York Times piece called "The Child, the Tablet and the Developing Mind," reporter Nick Bilton quotes Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at UCLA, saying, "We really don’t know the full neurological effects of these technologies yet." Bilton writes that Small, author of iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, says "we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills."
When it comes to our children, caution seems prudent on so many fronts — especially in an area of life in which so much is yet unknown. Hardly anyone would criticize a parent for wanting to limit her young child’s or baby's TV time. Why such a different response to parents' choices about mobile screens held inches from their children's faces? Parents’ concerns need support and understanding. Let’s respect the challenges parents face when it comes to technology use and tots and keep the "neurosis" talk out of it.
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