As
Alice tumbles down the rabbit hole in children’s classic Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, she grabs at a jar of orange marmalade and, having no
place to put it when she is done, watches it fall. With the touch of a
fingertip, a child reading pulls the jar of orange marmalade back to the top of
the page and lets it plummet back down again. The child can also dangle the
white rabbit’s pocket watch; stretch Alice taller when she partakes from the
bottle labeled “Drink Me,” and so on. This is the Alice app for Apple’s iPad
tablet, hailed as a new kind of pop-up book for young readers, that enables
children to manipulate images to encourage interactive reading. It’s only one
of countless apps designed for children, including numerous ones that appear to
have the preschool-age audience in mind.
Apps for smart phones and
tablets are just the latest digital media to offer up entertainment for
children. They compete for screen time with television, the Internet, and
computer and video games. And there is no shortage of technology-based toys,
including pretend cell phones and laptops for infants and toddlers and even
functioning digital cameras for preschoolers.
But is
All This Technology Appropriate for the Youngest Children?
Organizations that study
the effects of technology on children are hard-pressed to keep on top of the
rapid updates that occur on a seemingly daily basis. Some are finding the need
to re-evaluate previous positions on the subject. For instance, earlier this
year, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and
the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media posted
a draft revision of the NAEYC position statement, Technology and
Young Children—Ages 3 to 8, which has not been updated since 1996. After
reviewing public comments on the draft, the two organizations will update the
position statement, re-name it Technology in Early Childhood Programs
Serving Children from Birth through Age 8, and release it in the fall of 2011.
As it is currently drafted,
the new statement begins by affirming that digital media and technology can be
viewed as “learning tools that, when used in intentional and developmentally
appropriate ways and in conjunction with other traditional tools and materials,
can support the development and learning of young children.” This is not a
surprising conclusion, especially noting how frequently digital media tools
mimic typical childhood activities. For instance, children can turn the pages
of a picture book on an e-reader, use a stylus to color and draw on a tablet,
and play electronic versions of card and board games on smart phones.
(It should be noted that
the two organizations view only interactive digital tools in this
manner—more rigid and static media, such as television, does not hold any
potential in their opinion. Low-quality day care centers, recently found
in a study to be placing children in front of TV screens on average four
times per month, should be put on notice.)
NAEYC and the Fred Rogers
Center’s position statement goes on to provide guidelines for selecting and
using appropriate technology-based and digital media applications for classroom
use. The two organizations are not alone in promoting digital media literacy –
among others, PBS provides suggestions for teachers on how to use a
variety of technology-based tools in pre-K through high school classrooms. And
it’s not just teachers that are being encouraged to engage with children as
they interact with technology and digital media. Organizations such as
the Mayo Clinic, the Joan Ganz Cooney Centerat Sesame Workshop, and
even the television station WETA encourage parents to make television
viewing and video game playing into interactive family events; to talk to and
ask questions about what children watch and play with; and to play alongside
children with mobile apps to facilitate learning and communication.
These suggestions seem to
acknowledge that technology is a pervasive fact of modern life; indeed ABC
News last month reported on a study indicating that 75 percent of mothers
allow their children to play with smart phones. And, the news program noted,
schools are purchasing tablets for children in kindergarten.
Some, however, are not
convinced that there is any benefit to allowing children to play with
technology. The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to recommend that
children age 2 and under have no screen time at all and older children be
exposed to no more than one or two hours of screen time per day. These
recommendations seem valid considering that numerous studies (although
generally focusing on non-interactive TV viewing) point to a link between
increased screen time and negative consequences including attention deficit,
behavioral problems, higher psychological difficulty scores, less physical
activity, obesity, irregular sleeping patterns, impaired academic performance,
violence, and less time for active and imaginative play.
It is this last point that
is of particular concern to early childhood educators when planning classroom
activities and dovetails with the question of whether children should engage in
play with technology-based tools or be left to their own devices for creative
play. As noted above, some technological tools available do appear to be
mimicking traditional childhood activities such as coloring, reading, and
game-playing so the choice may becoming less of an either-or situation. But in
general, technology-based tools tend toward adult-scripted, rule-based
activities versus child-directed, unstructured play. And the latter has been
found to be incredibly influential in children’s healthy development. Among the
benefits of this kind of play are learning self-control and how to plan ahead,
becoming problem-solvers, and working out emotional and social issues such as
anxiety and sharing.
Indeed, NIEER has long
looked at child-directed, imaginative play as a means for young
children to learn both intellectually and socially. We are not alone in this
approach – the books A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy
Play and A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool:
Presenting the Evidence provide anecdotal and research evidence to back up
the power of play and its potential in early childhood education classrooms.
Imaginative, creative play
was brought to the forefront of the public’s mind this fall with
the Ultimate Block Party, an event that stressed the importance of play in
a day-long festival of child-friendly activities. Play will also be receiving
academic treatment in 2012 when Rout ledge begins publishing
the International Journal of Play, a multidisciplinary effort to examine
all aspects of play across the globe.
These
are encouraging developments and suggest that some have been heeding the words
of psychologist Carl Jung, “Without this playing with fantasy no creative work
has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is
incalculable.” Even with a boundless supply of new technological toys for
children, we should provide children with plenty of time to explore their own
creativity through imaginative, child-directed play for future innovations in
technology and beyond.