To iPad or not to iPad, that is the question. At least for the
digital age parent. Whether you are the parent of a newborn, a toddler, a
preschooler or a school-aged child, the question of whether the child
should use an iPad (and how much!) becomes ever more pressing,
especially as similar-aged children huddle around tablets at
restaurants, concerts, sporting events and almost any place where both
children and adults gather together. In fact, the few holdouts where you
don't see a mass of children focused on the digital world are those
places that focus on the child: the playground or the swimming pool.
Is this good for our children? Should your child use an iPad? Or should you avoid it?
The answer: Yes. Sort of. Maybe. In moderation.
It seems everyone has an opinion on the iPad. We have people arguing that tablet use by toddlers is tandamount to child abuse and those who believe there are good educational uses for them.
Even the American Academy of Pediatrics
is a little confused, having updated their longstanding policy that
screen time should be avoided at all cost by those two and younger to a
more nuanced approach that we live in a digital world and that the
content itself should be judged rather than the device that holds the
content.
Which sounds nice, but isn't quite a practical guideline.
Kids Need to Be Bored
Let's
start with something that isn't quite obvious to everyone: it's good
for a kid to be bored. This applies to the two-year-old, the
six-year-old and the twelve-year-old. And one thing the iPad shouldn't
be is the end-all-be-all cure for boredom. There are much better ways to respond than handing the kid an iPad.
It
is not about the cure. It is about the hunt for the cure. Kids need to
stretch their creative muscles and engage their imagination. They can do
this by playing with dolls, drawing with crayons, building with play-do
or Legos, or any one of hundreds of other non-digital activities. In
this way they not only engage their creativity, they learn more about
their own interests.
Kids Need to Interact With Other Kids
Imagine
a world where every time a toddler argued with another child over a toy
they were both given a tablet. When would they ever learn how to be
frustrated, how to overcome conflict and how to share? These are some of
the dangers pediatric psychologists fear when they warn against tablet
use. It is not just a question of how much (or little) the child is
learning from the tablet, it is also what they aren't learning when they are using the tablet.
Children learn through play.
And an important element of this is interaction. Children learn by
interacting with the world, from learning to open a door by twisting a
knob to learning how to deal with frustration when a headstrong playmate
takes a favorite toy or refuses to play a favorite game.
The Displacement of Learning
One
thing these two concepts have in common is how they displace key
elements of learning and child growth. It isn't so much that the use of
the iPad is doing harm to the child -- in fact, iPad use be good -- it's
that time with the iPad can take away from other vital lessons the
child must learn.
While children gathered around an iPad are being
social in the sense that they are together, they aren't being social in
the sense of playing with one another. This is especially true when
each child has their own device and are thus locked into their own
virtual world. This time around the iPad takes away from time that could
be spent playing outdoors, using their imagination to defend a
make-believe castle or simply telling each other stories.
And this
is just as true for the lone child as it is for the group of children.
When a child is playing with an iPad, they aren't feeling the tactile
sensation of opening a book and touching the letters on the page. They
aren't building a fort with sheets and chairs, and they aren't baking an
imaginary cake for their baby doll.
It is this displacement of learning that can become the true danger of the iPad when it is used too much.
Learning With the iPad
The American Academy of Pediatrics' revised recommendations on screen time come as new research reveals
how apps can be just as effective as real-world lessons on learning to
read in children as young as 24 months. Unfortunately, research in this
field is still very limited and there isn't much to go on for
educational applications beyond reading.
By way of comparison, the
study referenced how television programs such as Sesame Street usually
don't provide educational benefits until the child hits 30 months. This
is about the same time as the child learns to interact with the
television by spouting out the answer to questions posed on the show.
The iPad, it seems, can generate some of that interaction that is so
important for learning at a younger age, which demonstrates its
potential both as an educational tool and a good purchase for a parent.
Everything in Moderation
My
wife's favorite quote is "everything in moderation." We live in a
black-and-white society where people often deal in absolutes, but in
truth the world is very gray. The iPad can be determent to a child's
learning, but it can also be a real boon. The answer to the puzzle lies
in moderation.
As the father of a five-year-old and someone who
has written about the iPad since before my daughter was born, I've paid
special attention to the subject of children and tablets. My daughter
received her first iPad at the age of 18 months. This wasn't a conscious
decision to introduce her to the wonderful world of digital
entertainment and education. Instead, she received her first iPad
because I noticed the old one I intended to sell had a small crack in
the screen. I knew this would reduce the value, so I elected to wrap it
in a protective case and let her use it.
My rule of thumb before
she turned two was no more than an hour. This hour limit included both
the television and the iPad. As she turned two and then three, I slowly
increased this to an hour and a half and then two hours. I was never
strict about it. If she had a little more than her limit on one day, I
just made sure we did other activities the next day.
At five, my
daughter is still not allowed an iPad in the car unless we are taking an
extended trip. If we are driving around town, she's allowed dolls,
books or other toys. Mostly, she must use her imagination to entertain
herself. This also applies at the dinner table whether we are at home or
out at a restaurant. These are times when we interact as a family.
These are our
rules. And it is important to have rules, but you should not feel like
you have to follow someone else's rules. The real key to this puzzle is
understanding that (1) iPad time isn't bad time, (2) kids need to learn
and play with other kids and (3) kids need to learn to play alone
without a digital babysitter.
If you prefer to give your kid an
iPad at the dinner table so you and your spouse can enjoy each other's
company, there is definitely nothing wrong with that! After all, don't
we all hate the person that thinks everyone should parent their child
like they parent their child? Instead of restricting your child's use of
the iPad at the table, perhaps you might restrict it after school until
the time they get to the dinner table.
How to Use the iPad and How Much Time to Spend With It?
Instead
of thinking of it as hard set rules, think of iPad use as units of
time. If you don't mind your child playing with the iPad at the dinner
table, count that as a unit of iPad use. Perhaps they get a second unit
of iPad use after their shower and before bed time. On the flip side,
the time between getting home and dinner can be devoted to play time and
the time between dinner and the shower can be homework time. Or
vice-versa.
How many units?
While we still lack research on
just how helpful the iPad can be to early childhood learning, it is
clear that toddlers aged two or older get a lot more out of tablets than
before the age of two. This shouldn't be too surprising. Two-year-olds
are better at a lot of things compared to younger toddlers. But what is
important to remember is this is the age where kids are really starting
to figure out language, and interacting with their parents and siblings
is a huge part of that learning process.
The new American Academy
of Pediatrics guidelines don't answer the question of how much time
should a toddler or preschooler use a tablet. However, one of the
authors does take a stab at it. Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis wrote about
media use before the age of 2 in an article on JAMA Pediatrics and pointed to an hour in what he admitted was a completely arbitrary number.
There
simply isn't enough research to come to a scientific conclusion on the
issue, but as I mentioned, I used the same time limit of an hour with my
daughter before she turned two. There is no doubt toddlers can learn
some things from a tablet. They are very interactive devices. And the
simple fact of introducing them to technology can be a good thing, but
at that age, much more than an hour a day might displace other learning.
My
personal recommendation is to add a half hour per year of the child
until they have about 2-2.5 hours of iPad and TV time. I offset this
time by having specific times of the day when the iPad and television is
not allowed. For our family, that is at meals (lunch and dinner) and in
the car. We do make exceptions for long car trips. She's also not
allowed to bring an iPad when going to day care or similar gatherings
where there are other children, even if the day care or child camp
allows an iPad. And she's not allowed TV or an iPad for at least an hour
after she comes home from school.
We came up with these
guidelines to ensure she had the opportunity to use her imagination in
the car, interact with other kids when she was around them and time to
play non-digital games, which can be very important to learning.
If
you plan on using the iPad as an educational tool as well as a great
toy, remember that interaction can be the best form of learning. This
can mean using the iPad with your child. Endless Alphabet
is one of many great educational apps that are even better with the
parent. In Endless Alphabet, kids put words together by dragging the
letter to the outline of the letter in the already-spelled words. While
the child is dragging the letter, the letter's character repeats the
phonetic sound of the letter. My daughter and I turned it into a game
where I would say the sound of a letter and she had to pick out the
right one to place in the word.
This type of interaction can help
supercharge an already educational app. Most pediatricians and child
psychologists agree that interaction is very important to early
learning. Spending time playing together is a great way to interact,
especially for toddlers.
