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“Parents shape their children’s media habits from the time of infancy, through setting limits on amount and content of media use, helping children understand what they encounter on screens, and role modeling technology use.” (Redesky et al., 2016, p. 694)

An important facet of my inquiry is determining how adults and young children (particularly infants) actually communicate in an environment where digital and/or mobile technologies are being used. In A Naturalistic Study of Child and Family Screen Media and Mobile Device Use by Domoff et al. the authors studied what was being said by, and to, young children when any screen or mobile device was in use in their immediate home environment. They had several interesting findings:

• Parents’ mediation of screen media tended to be reactive and aimed at restricting use or explaining technology functionality.
• Active mediation was initiated most by the children (in preschool and school-age groups) asking or commenting on the content of the media. This was less evident in the infant group as they lacked the speaking skills to initiate those dialogues.
• Siblings played a more dominant role in mediation than parents.
• Parents and children negotiated screen time limits.
• “Parallel family media use was common. Multiple family members engaged with their own mobile devices while simultaneously being exposed to background screen media (i.e., media multitasking).” (Domoff et al., 2019, p. 401)
• “Active mediation of TV has been found to mitigate the risks of exposure to violent media (e.g., aggression; Nathanson and Cantor 2000), and enhance positive effects of prosocial media (e.g., Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood; Rasmussen et al. 2016).” (Domoff et al., 2019, p. 402)

The second point was the most interesting to me as my research to date has highlighted the importance of mediating screen media with very young children. Domoff et al. describe active mediation as “consist[ing] of parents’ communication with their children about media content, including characters’ actions and motivations”. It looks then like this is not happening very much with the youngest children. If parents don’t often initiate active mediation, then the ones with more consistent speech skills are privileged, as they are able to initiate these interactions. The authors last point about family members engaging with separate devices while together made me wonder about whether the adults were so wrapped up in their own device use, that their interactions with their children were reactive rather than proactive.

Then I wanted to know about parents’ perceptions of their own media use around their children. Enter Parent Perspectives on Their Mobile Technology Use : The Excitement and Exhaustion of Parenting While Connected by Radesky et al.. In it, the authors describe a study where they conducted a series of interviews to elicit parents’ nuanced and complex feelings toward they way that they use screen and mobile technology around their infants.

“Cognitively, they described the act of multitasking between technology and children as stressful or less effective; specifically, they described how the cognitive load of doing work or accessing information via technology often makes it difficult to read and respond to children’s social cues in the moment” (Redesky et al., 2016, p. 699).

Parents felt tensions between their tech use and their parental and daily responsibilities. This supports the Domoff’s findings that parents interactions around technology use tend to be reactive and rarely focus on the content that their children are accessing unless the child brings it up. It seems that parents are distracted by their own devices and so are less mindful of their children’s experiences with screen and mobile media than they might like to be. The question is, how does parental use of mobile tech influence children’s socialization and development? Does parents’ attention to their devices impact their child’s sense of self worth? What kind of role-modelling are we adults doing? It brings me back to the idea of consciously role-modelling tech etiquette with young children. It seems we also need to be more mindful of actively mediating young children’s tech use, especially if they are too young to ask us about it.

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As I was reflecting on technology use within the infant/adult dyad, I remembered an article from a previous class, A threat to childhood innocence or the future of learning? Parents’ perspectives on the use of touch-screen technology by 0–3 year-olds in the UK by O’Connor and Fotakopoulou (2018). In it the authours conducted a study on the relationship between parents’ perspectives and young children’s use of touchscreen technology. I was also drawn to a study recommended by a peer on tech use by a toddler within the social context of her family as a form of multimodal literacy. The article was ‘i’Babies: Infants’ and toddlers’ emergent language and literacy in a digital culture of iDevices by Harrison and McTavish (2018).

In their article, O’Connor and Fotakopoulou raised a seemingly obvious point, that need to be articulated none the less: parents’ views on the appropriateness of tech use for young children determines the degree to which they allow their children to access it. I further posit that parents’ views also determine the degree to which they mediate their children’s tech use.

Harrison and McTavish remind us that as we consider multiliteracies and the skills associated with them, we must also consider that tech use is a literacy as well. However, O’Connor and Fotakopoulou acknowledge that many do not accept touchscreen use (and other tech skills) as a part of “normal development and “reflects a conceptual separation between technological skills and other skills that young children need to develop, as well as a common bias towards more ‘natural’ occupations for very young children.”

Discourses of childhood

O’Connor and Fotakopoulou went on to assert that the there are competing discourses of childhood and depending on how an individual views children and childhood their attitudes toward tech use among children will be either positive or negative.

The first discourse they identified is that childhood is a natural time of innocence, and children need to be protected from the harsh, polluting influence of the adult world. This leads to protectionist behaviour toward children, and people who hold this view tend to protect children’s innocence from the dangers of tech use.

The second discourse recognizes the opportunities that technology offers children. This is a future oriented view where children build important skills that will enable them to effectively navigate the future worlds of education and work.

Parents’ views

“Parents are the main gatekeepers of their young children’s use of technology. It follows, then, that their beliefs and behaviour in relation to parenting, child development and learning are going to be instrumental in the access their 0-3s have to this technology.” (O’Connor & Fotakopoulou, 2016, p. 236)

In their study, O’Connor and Fotakopoulou found that both discourses were represented. Many “parents encouraged and supported their children’s early experiences with digital technologies” for the perceived future benefits. Harrison and McTavish also report that studies find that parents make time for young children to play on tablets, especially with open-ended educational apps.

“This awareness of the need for future technological skills has not been documented before in relation to children as young as this and is an important indicator of the impact touch screens may be having on perceptions around very early childhood education and play.” (O’Connor & Fotakopoulou, 2016, p. 241)

Parents also expressed concerns about the potential dangers of touchscreen use such as accessing inappropriate content and the possible negative impact on social and communication skills. These fears represent thinking within the ‘natural childhood’ discourse, where the innocence of childhood needs to be protected.

Although I am not a parent, I have been thinking about my own views on children and technology and talking to others. In my line of work, I have access to several parents of infants and have been casually collecting viewpoints. The parents I’ve spoken to tended to lean toward a more protectionist view, and heavily limit their children’s use of digital tech, although the second discourse was represented as well.

The seductive nature of touchscreens

A worry expressed by some of the parents I spoke to was the seemingly addictive nature of touchscreens (and other screens). This was also taken up in the literature and Harrison and McTavish described a scene where their toddler subject woke from a nap and immediately sought out her mother’s phone to watch videos before even greeting her mother. O’Connor and Fotakopoulou also reported that parents were concerned about how ‘the iPad version of reality [was] more colourful, easier and more appealing than real life e.g. colouring in an iPad [was] much easier than on real paper with real pens”.

How children use tech

The 23 month-old subject of Harrison’s and McTavish’s study demonstrated sophisticated manipulation of the software on the touchscreen devices she used. She used her index fingers and thumbs to tap, swipe, and expand certain areas. She was able to navigate to her favourite apps and galleries and within YouTube.

Both articles discussed children using touchscreens to FaceTime or video chat with absent family members, and according to O’Connor and Fotakopoulou, this was the least contentious use of touchscreens. Educational apps, and games were also used by participants in both studies.

Although not identified in O’Connor’s and Fotakopoulou’s questionnaire, Harrison and McTavish reported that their study participant’s use of touchscreen technology was heavily mediated by family members.

Parental mediation

“Ally interacts both culturally and socially with her family members through her smartphone and tablet activities. Ally’s family members are constantly mediating her use of symbolic tools (iDevices) simply because an iDevice belongs to that member and they have a vested interest that Ally does not accidently Skype or text someone inadvertently, or delete photos, contacts and apps. Hence, Ally’s interaction on these iDevices is, more often than not, a shared activity, which makes it inherently social.” (Harrison & McTavish, 2018, p. 184)

From all that I have read so far, there seems to be a growing consensus that when (or if) very young children use digital technologies such as touch screens that their use should be mediated by an engaged adult. This is in recognition of the fact that children learn through interaction with more experienced others (Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory).

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In the article Infants, Toddlers and Learning from Screen Media by Courage & Troseth (2016), the authors conducted a literature review to examine whether or not infants and toddlers can learn from screen media. The evidence they examined indicated that no, infants under the age of 2 do not learn from screen media. They said that “although infants and toddlers are remarkably capable learners in direct social interaction, their language and story comprehension skills are limited and they are unlikely to follow the narrative content, story line, or content to be learned from a video or app”. Starting at about 15 months, with co-viewing and explicit adult participation to mediate the child’s understanding of screen media, children can learn from educational programming. The big caveat according to the authors is that they still don’t learn as much through mediated viewing as the would through regular play and interaction with a caring adult.

These findings aligned with the Canadian Paediatric Society’s position statement, Screen time and young children: Promoting health and development in a digital world, which also argued that there were no substantiated claims that children under the age of 2 received any benefit from screen time. The statement further claimed that “there [was] solid evidence that infants and toddlers [had]difficulty transferring new learning from a 2D representation to a 3D object (e.g., from screen to real life) and [were] unlikely to learn from TV at this age”.

Another aspect of screen media that Courage and Troseth examined was background television use. They claimed that children exposed to background television were less engaged in their play, they directed frequent quick looks at the television, and showed less focused attention on their toys. When they engaged with adults, the adults tended to give delayed and less focused responses when the TV was on.

This made me think about how we as adults role-model screen use, and how children are learning the norms of social interaction with, and around screens. Another student in my cohort posted this blog post by Karen Nelson that, although aimed at pre-K and kindergarten teachers, brought up an intriguing point:  we should be modeling appropriate tech etiquette. In my practice, children often use anything that will fit in their hand as a phone, and walk around ‘talking’ on it, or passing the toy to a teacher to take the call. They have obviously seen people using phones, but in what contexts? We might be play eating in the housekeeping centre when one of the children passes me a phone. Normally I would accept the call and talk briefly on the phone to engage with the child and scaffold their play. But am I just role-modeling poor tech etiquette? By accepting the pretend call, I am indicating that the phone takes precedence over the face to face interactions I am having while I pretend to eat with other children. And I hate when people answer their phones at dinner!

I’m beginning to get some vague ideas about where I want to take this. It has something to do with role-modeling tech use, distraction potential of background screens for both children and adults, and the necessity to mediate young children’s use of digital and screen media. I guess the intersection of tech, infants, and adults and how to optimally navigate these interactions. It seems to all boil down to mindfulness.

One of my course readings this week was Using multimedia for e-learning by Mayer (2017). In it, the author discussed 12 research-based principles for designing computer-based learning tools. As an ECE practitioner working with infants and toddlers, I initially had trouble relating it to my practice.

I do not use computer-based learning tools in my work, but as a practitioner living in the 21^st century, it behooves me to have the skills and knowledge to evaluate tools as they become more and more a part of our lives. The reality is that children have digital technologies available to them at younger and younger ages. These technologies are a part of most children’s and families’ lives where I practice. So, while I do not use these technologies with the children I interact with, I can’t predict the future and so should be able to make research-based decisions about what I include in my practice, as well as what I exclude from it. In the spirit of growth and understanding, I thought I would deepen my comprehension of the 12 principles that Mayer outlines by relating them to a multimedia tool that I am intimately familiar with – the picture book.

Multimedia

• Mayer describes multimedia as the combination of words and pictures to enhance learning. Words can be either spoken or written, and pictures can be either static or moving (such as animation).
• In a children’s picture book, both the written text of the story and the illustrations combine to enhance children’s learning. The varying degrees of quality in picture books can, in part, be explained by the following principles.

Reducing Extraneous Processing

Principles 2 through 6 all relate to increasing the efficiency of cognitive processing by reducing extra processing tasks. They are:

Coherence

• “People learn better when extraneous material is excluded” (Mayer, 2017, Table 1).
• When an illustrator includes images not related to the words in the illustrations, these act as distractions for children who are trying to process the meaning of the words and pictures. For example, in a book on farm animals, on the page labeled ‘Pig’ it would be distracting to have pictures of other animals alongside the pig.

Signalling

• “People learn better when essential material is highlighted” (Mayer, 2017, Table 1).
• In Wild Berries by Julie Flett (2013), the vocabulary words in Swampy Cree n dialect are highlighted by the red colour of the text, indicating that this is important material.

Redundancy

• “People learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and on-screen text” (Mayer, 2017, Table 1).
• Honestly, I had trouble relating this to picture books, and the best I could come up with was comparing a felt-board story performance (no visible text) to a picture book narration. However, that crosses over into other principles like embodiment described further below. Perhaps there are limitations to using children’s picture books as a metaphor for everything. How disappointing. If you have ideas, I’d love to hear them!

Spatial Contiguity

• “People learn better when on-screen words are placed next to the corresponding part of the graphic” (Mayer, 2017, Table 1).
• For example, in a picture of a construction site, having the names of the machines and equipment next to the corresponding image helps to connect the written word to the object it is representing.

Temporal Contiguity

• “People learn better when corresponding narration and graphics are presented simultaneously” (Mayer, 2017, Table 1).
• It is easier for children to integrate the illustrations with the story if they can see the pictures as they are hearing the words, rather than having the reader first read the text aloud and then show the picture.

Managing Essential Processing

The following 3 principles are related to managing the cognitive processing of complex or difficult learning. They are:

Segmenting

• “People learn better when a multimedia lesson is presented in small, user paced segments” (Mayer, 2017, Table 2).
• For example, infant board books that depict a single word with only the corresponding image on each opening allow the user to absorb the material at their own pace before turning the page.

Pre-training

• “People learn better when they learn the key terms prior to receiving a multimedia lesson” (Mayer, 2017, Table 2).
• Through daily practice and through their knowledge of the children, practitioners are able to select picture books that reflect and expand on children’s knowledge and interests rather than introducing new topics without preparation. This is scaffolding as I know it. Building on a foundation of prior knowledge.

Modality

• “People learn better from a multimedia presentation when the words are presented in spoken form” (Mayer, 2017, Table 2).
• This is an obvious one for the children I work with since they do not yet read. Even for children who are able to read, if the material is complex, it is easier to understand if it narrated while you look at the illustration than if you are trying to reconcile the text with the illustration. This means that the child is processing the auditory information in conjunction with the visual information, rather than having two separate sources of visual information to reconcile.

Fostering Generative Processing

The following 3 principles discuss research-based methods for encouraging the learner to engage in greater depth with the material presented in a multimedia lesson.

Personalization

• “People learn better when the words in a multimedia lesson are presented in conversational style rather than formal style” (Mayer, 2017, Table 3).
• Some picture books draw the reader in by asking questions of the reader or making them part of the story. Books about body parts may talk about ‘your belly-button’ or ‘your toes’. Or they may say something like ‘here’s Teddy’s belly-button. Where is your belly-button?’. This draws children in and it’ more engaging to them than anybody’s old belly-button.

Voice

• “People learn better from a human voice than from a machine-like voice” (Mayer, 2017, Table 3).
• There are many battery-operated picture books out there where the child can push a button and here the corresponding sound or word. My experience with these types of books is that they are great for Pavlovian cause and effect learning. The child pushes a button and hears a mechanical voice. They aren’t however increasing the child’s understanding of the material presented in the book. Children seem to get more from books if someone reads the book to them, rather than just pushing a button over and over so that the mechanical voice continuously says ‘Triangle. Triangle. Triangle…”

Embodiment

• “People learn better when an on-screen agent uses human-like gestures and movement” (Mayer, 2017, Table 3).
• This point makes me wonder about the popularity of anthropomorphizing animals and inanimate objects in children’s books. Obviously, books are different from screens, but the idea of humanizing non-humans in order to teach concepts has been in practice from the earliest storytelling traditions. I have never liked the idea of vehicles having human-like faces and emotions, but they are ubiquitous in children’s literature (and toys). So, do children learn better with anthropomorphic animals and objects? Is this related to the principle of embodiment, or am I drawing a false correlation?

I am cognizant of the fact that the source article was specifically about e-learning, and by taking the tech out of the principles, I was sort of missing the point. I do feel that this exercise allowed me to engage more deeply with the concepts, even if it was a bit of a stretch. Yes, picture books are a multimedia learning tool, especially if they are narrated, as they frequently are in my practice. No, they are not computer-based. I could have examined all these principles through YouTube narrations of picture books, but since these are not part of my practice, it would have been disingenuous.

Did I learn something? Yes. Was it a bit of a stretch? Yes. Will I use the principles in my practice? Well, I have a new tool-set for choosing and reading books to my babies. That’s worthwhile. Maybe I’ll be able to use these principles for computer-based learning in the future. Who knows what infant practice will look like in 10 years!