Month: September 2019

Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

I have narrowed down my inquiry for this blog (and this course) into an exploration of the effects of digital technology use on young children’s development. I know that there are some strong feelings from both sides: those who see technology as a barrier to healthy child development, and those who feel that by providing children with these tools we are giving them an edge in this technologically driven word. My goal is to sift through the studies and explore the academic and professional literature to come up with an evidence-informed guide for practice. As I work with infants, my focus will be for very young children, but I expect there will be more literature for school-aged children, and this will likely take some sifting.

The task I’ve been set this week was to explore some of the existing projects submitted by UVic students in partial fulfillment of their MEd degrees. I selected Pina Hendry’s project entitled What is the Impact of Digital Technology on Young Students? , which seemed an obvious fit for my inquiry.

Right away I could tell that the author approached the topic with a fair amount of caution. As a kindergarten teacher practicing for over 20 years, she had noted the decline in fine motor skills of entering students, among other changes to things like attention, and language skills. The literature she reviewed seemed to provide evidence to support her opinion that digital technology has detrimental effects on cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development. As a practitioner, I have shared this opinion and abide by the Canadian Paediatric Society’s screen time guidelines for young children (found here). However, as with everything else in life, I find that the more I examine a topic, the more nuanced it proves to be. When one refers to digital technology there are so many possible candidates that lumping them all together under the umbrella of ‘digital technology’ and making sweeping proclamations seems disingenuous. Indeed, the literature reviewed looked at samples as varied as television, violent video games, pornography, and social media. I did not see any reference to the apps, programs, games or sites designed to educate or encourage healthy development, of which even I know there are at least some out in the world.

My impression of the project was that by focusing on the dangers of digital tech use for children, we can really see how dangerous they are. I agree that unfettered and unsupervised access to these technologies can be detrimental to each aspect of development. However, while engaging my inner skeptic, I did not see that the opposing argument was adequately accounted for.

In order to balance my view on the topic, I wanted to hear an argument from the other side, and came across the TED talk by Sara DeWitt called 3 Fears About Screen Time for Kids – and Why They’re Not True. Now, my inner skeptic was engaged for this too, and this whole experience is supporting my hypothesis of learning: the more you learn about something, the less able you are to give a definitive answer to a simple question about it.

DeWitt addressed the 3 fears (a. screens are passive; b. playing games on screens is a waste of time; and c. screens isolate parents from their children) and responded to each one with an example. The problem I found was that for each fear, she provided an example of a single app or program that addresses that fear. She did not say that the fears are unfounded, or that they were not true, despite the title of the talk.

So, in reflecting on both the master’s project and the TED talk, I found that neither Hendry nor DeWitt support unfettered, unsupervised access to digital technology for young children. They also both advocate for thoughtful planning and supervision by parents to ensure that the digital tools children are accessing are appropriate, and if not support, at least not hinder healthy development. Despite seeming to come at the issue from opposite sides, Hendry and DeWitt come to the same conclusions: caution is necessary.

“Copeful: Get Through Grief Together” by Megan Daley is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Over the past week I have been making informal inquiries at work about our technology policies and how they are formed. My director informed me that we do have a technology policy, but it was related to staff use of tech, rather than how we implement tech use with the children. In a search of our policy manuals available to the parents, I found no mention of it. I suggested that through the resources available to me through the EDCI 567 class, I may soon be in a position to provided advice on appropriate guidelines to inform future policy with regard to technology use with children. My director was supportive, and this feels like it may be a start to my research for this course. However, there is so much to learn, I’m not quite ready to pigeon-hole myself just yet.

Another interesting development that came out of one of those conversations with the management team was that our program coordinator pointed me in the direction of a free webinar at Early Childhood Investigations called What the Research Says About Documentation Systems & Outcome for Families, Teachers & Children, by M.E. Picher, Ph.D.. Since it’s a free webinar, and based on research in Canada, I will check it out. My only hesitation is that it is sponsored by Storypark. I’ll look a little deeper into whether the research was funded by Storypark or whether after its completion they merely funded the production of the webinar. It’ll give me a little more insight into the integrity. I’m a somewhat suspicious person, and I don’t like to take things at face value. I guess that is one of my core media literacy skills.

The webinar isn’t until September 18th, and I’ll likely watch it asynchronously as it falls during work hours, but look for a mini review in the weeks to come.

Children in the 21st century are avid users of technology – more so than generations past. This rise in use has led to much attention on the consequences of technology use, and how this impacts children’s brains and their socio-emotional, cognitive and physical development.  – Gottschalk, OECD, 2019

As new technologies arrive and make themselves at home in our lives, I am not alone in wondering about the impact they have on children’s development. How should we negotiate a place for these technologies in early childhood, particularly infancy?

I am interested in exploring how digital technologies impact very young children’s development and finding a balance between gaining important digital and media literacy skills and potential negative developmental outcomes. The focus of my inquiry is the age range from birth through two years.

Through the master’s of education program in Early Childhood Education at the University of Victoria, and more specifically through the Interactive and Multimedia Learning Theories course, I expect to begin my journey toward answering some of my questions about young children and technology, and most likely, finding new questions I hadn’t considered.