Monthly Archives: January 2012

A popular pep rally cheer for baby apps and other screen-based media for young children is that they develop skills offering advantages in the New Digital Economy: “Watch baby slide the screen and open things on that iPad!  He’s going to be Steve Jobs!”  A related wail is an anxiety air rad siren warning that children raised low-tech will “fall behind.”  How far behind a baby/toddler could fall is a good question, as watching videos isn’t exactly complex, nor pressing flashing buttons, and software and gadgets are designed to be easy to use at any age (except Microsoft, maybe).  If anyone should find tech difficult, it’s parents who grew up in a world where it didn’t exist, and we seem to adapt pretty quickly.

Both cries imply that normal developmental stages are like software, today’s children representing  3.0 or 4G upgrades of the laughable analog creatures we were.  Unfortunately – or fortunately – they are hardware.  They do not change quickly, unless your time scale is geologic.   Thus, we must interpret learning and experience – the stuff we feed to kids to help them learn, including media – in this context.  Children: small, analog humans primed to grow and do great things.

And so, a key question: which ecosystem of experience is the most robust?  Analog or digital?  Which offers the greatest learning opportunity?  Which is more memorable? The answer is: the one that’s most open-ended and prone to exploration, i.e. the real world.  Not that technology is bad, that we can or should go back, or that today’s conveniences aren’t super cool.  The real world is simply a really important – indeed critical – place for a child to spend quality time.

Consider pets: Fido vs Webkinz.  Does caring for a digital pet fed with tokens and who can’t actually die teach a child responsibility, empathy, or how to read behavioral cues, i.e. when it is sick, happy, or prone to bite?  Fine motor skills: will sliding and poking to dress an e-doll enhance manual dexterity more than figuring out real snaps and buttons?  Ball: which teaches more about the physical world, a ball on a screen defined by a programmer or a real ball, on variable terrain under the influence of real gravity?

Yard: which is the better science lab – the garden, or Diego and Dora in the rainforest?

The better teacher: Eebee or people?  And what of books – is reading a word that flashes yellow as it is read by a chipper cartoon voice more advanced than sharing a book with a real person, asking questions, adjusting pace, and identifying words and pictures based on self-generated curiosity?

And how about the most existential challenge of all, “boredom:” is it more instructive to learn to cope, calm, and create, or press a button?

All parents want what’s best for their kids.  A central message of Baby Unplugged is reassurance that, because of hardwired developmental stages, “old-school” – Blanket, Pets, Yard, Ball, Book – is exactly that.  The real risk of falling behind in the digital age is in traditional skills, those where technology and the distraction it brings, gets in the way.  Though traditional skills are perceived as a given – e.g. “all children love nature, and are curious and creative” – they are learned, and take time, focus, and practice.  They are also best learned in early childhood, when growth and caregiver engagement are at their peak.  Kids afforded maximal time to practice will be at a major advantage.  Computer skills are important but will come later – this is unavoidable, and many of us prone to work at our computers at night and on weekends often wish it wasn’t.

Herein, opportunity: the first three years.  Shorter than college, but far more potent. And with a guarantee: unplugged babies will be the leanest, strongest, most curious, creative, calm, confident, and self-motivated, with the longest attention spans, of their peers.  They will run circles around them.  Given this analog base, like the founders of Intel, Oracle, and Apple, they will also be the ones who will go on to assimilate what they’ve learned with the tools of the digital world.  And importantly, they will be more likely to see technology in its proper context – as a tool.  Not as replacement for people, or face-to-face/pet interaction, or creating something from imagination.

I was impressed by an excellent article about this issue in the Christian Science Monitor forwarded by a friend: Toddlers to tweens: relearning how to play.

I welcome your thoughts and feedback.  Which kids do you think will have the advantage?   At what age do you think they should learn to use technology?

The first driver’s licenses were issued in the late 1800s to give drivers permission for the noise and smell they created.    They evolved into measures of  aptitude, and later were adjusted in response to injury and fatality rates.  The trend is towards later rather than younger, ironically fueled by increasing risks of technology use – most notably texting – by teens while driving.

Though not draconian by any stretch, the rules for gaining permission to drive are clear, including driver’s education classes, a trial period with grownups before driving independently, and then restrictions on passengers and where they can sit.  The law mandates seat belts, car seats, and speed limits.  Parents make kids tell them where they are going.   The rationale for all of it is that driving requires skills that take time to mature.  It is a privilege dependent on judgment, temperament, and public health.

Key concept: Teenagers are not small grownups.

We wait for a lot of things in our world.  In addition to driving, we wait to get married, vote, drink alcohol, and have children (I’d say have sex but this is a G-rated blog).   In each case, the rationale is maturity.   Somehow, though, despite the eruption of e-media over the past 30 years, spasms of censorship aside, we have mostly gaped dumbly into the smoky crater and failed to define – much less enforce – readiness.   Pediatricians have tried, but their urgings have mostly been sucked into a whirlwind of guidance alongside eating vegetables and going to sleep on time.  Some argue this is due to a lack of evidence, which stems from the difficulty conducting long-term studies (i.e. one group of babies watches Barney all day, the other hangs out with grandma, then compare life skills in college) especially when technology is advancing so fast.  Are baby e-books neurotoxic or OMG cool?  Do violent video games create sociopathic 8 year-olds?   Is Facebook reducing or increasing our ability to interact with one another?  Is the Internet a gift or a curse?  A bit of both?

For kids under 3, though incomplete, the evidence of health risks is actually strong, reinforcing that one size does not fit all with bits and bytes and the need for limits.  Numerous studies have validated that for reasons beginning to emerge, developing baby/toddler brains are simply not ready.  And why should they be?  After all, they are mammals, not software.  Human evolution does not conform to upgrade cycles.  Kids under 3 are just getting a hang of the real world.  Why do we even need proof?  Akin to just knowing that tweens aren’t ready to borrow Dad’s Mustang, it’s reasonable to just know that they aren’t ready to drive an iPad.

Key concept (and prior blog post), revisited: Children are not small grownups.

I propose a media driver’s license.  Rather than wait decades for a once-and-for-all study – at which time we will likely have forgotten we’d demanded one, distracted by an unending series of amazing YouTube videos and Tweets – why not be proactive akin to our 1800s predecessors, and declare a child’s third birthday as a reasonable age.  At three, we award them “temps,” celebrated with a shared viewing of Sesame Street, and then gradually ease restrictions as they mature: scary things at 8, PG13, social media, etc.  Beyond reducing health risks and media pollution (see: restaurants), embracing a minimum age affords the huge and undeniable (hopefully never in need of a definitive study) benefits of living 3 years in a multi-sensorial, utterly unplugged way.  And akin to how 12 year-olds might look forward to but not really miss driving since it’s not an option, a 2 year-old won’t have tantrums about wanting to watch Eebee’s Adventures  if raised on a steady diet of blocks, dirt, and (real) books.

As for enforcement, that’s where we parents and caregivers come in.  Whether viewed as optional, mandatory, or a badge of honor, a commitment to limits is important – and worth it.

What’s your view?   Should we restrict baby media?  Ban it?   Regulate health claims?  Or leave well enough alone?   What age do you think is best?  Are we being too old fashioned?  Should toddlers learn to drive cars from the Cars cars on their Leapster and then drive them?   Let’s hear it!