Friday, November 2, 2012

Children and Digital Media

I found an absolutely fascinating study the other day while researching this topic. It was a study done to determine in what ways children in America were using digital media and at what ages they were using it.



What they determined was amazing to me. To quote the report, “Computer use is pervasive among very young children, with half (53%) of all 2- to 4-year- olds having ever used a computer, and nine out of ten (90%) 5- to 8-year-olds having done so. For many of these children, computer use is a regular occurrence: 22% of 5- to 8-year-olds use a computer at least once a day, and another 46% use it at least once a week. Even among 2- to 4-year-olds, 12% use a computer every day, with another 24% doing so at least once a week. Among all children who have used a computer, the average age at first use was just 3 ½ years old.”

Now this just blows my mind. The world has changed so much since I was a kid. And I'm only 33 so we're not talking about the stone ages here, even if my kids think so sometimes. In my mother's generation, entertainment was outside. You left the house, you came back at supper. And how you filled your time was only limited by your imagination and what trouble you didn't want mama to find out about. In my generation, we had outside too, but we also had tv we could veg out in front of at any given point and by the time I was a teenager, video games were just getting started. I still remember my first NES. But now I have kids, and they and their friends not only have tv and video games, they have hand-held Nintendo DS's and Facebook games and virtual classrooms, cell phones and texting and twitter. They're so much more technologically sophisticated than we were and at such younger ages. I have to wonder, how is this altering our development? What changes in our cognition, in our thinking patterns, in our ability to process data is this all creating?

In researching this question further, I came across some interesting information. The entire thing would be too long to post here in its entirety, but I'll include the link if you're interested.** One of things discussed that was pertinent to this post was that the required multi-tasking the comes along with our children's increasing immersion in technology and the digital world can sometimes make it harder for them to learn and remember than it has to be. Now in my last post, I was praising the virtues of technology in the classroom and talking about how much it helped our kids learn. But bear with me for a minute, I'm not pulling a 180 on you here. I still absolutely believe that our kids need access to technology in the classroom and at home as well if they're going to get ahead in our modern world.  

But what I got from all of this was that, as parents, we need to make sure that we're providing BALANCE for them. Do our kids need to be savvy? Absolutely. They've got to be to get by these days. But sometimes, and maybe more often than we do now, we need to unplug them, take away the IPad, and make sure they're experiencing things in the real world as well – things that don't move at quite such a frenetic pace. So even though this is a blog for a digital media class, I guess what I'm saying is that every now and then we need to kick their little butts out the door and tell them to be back by supper.

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1 comment:

  1. UnknownNovember 5, 2012 at 5:54 AM

    I agree with you.

    Children do need to unplug and find their own imaginations. Too many children are unable to entertain themselves and the resulting behavior is seen by many as kids acting up.

    On the flip side, I recently started programming iPads and iPhones and have I have been amazed at how young a child can comprehend and purposely interact with computers and mobile devices. I was in a restaurant and observed a family near our table. There was a set of grandparents, a set of parents and a toddler who I estimated to be 18 to 24 months in age. The grown-ups were engaged in conversation and not engaging the child. At some point the toddler patted her mother’s purse and mother proceeded to pull an iPad out and hand it to the toddler. The toddler lit up with glee and began accessing different applications on her own. There were with purpose. She understood when the view was tilted in the wrong direction. She knew when she needed to swipe the page or tap an icon to get the desired result. I watched n amazement as she went through several applications pulling up pictures and sounds of things.

    We are still looking for the best ways to educate using digital media. It is funny that as pervasive as digital media is plays such a small role in the computer science departments of out colleges. Yes it is used for presentations and as an object of programming, but its power has not yet been successfully applied to class. I think at this time, our young children will benefit the most from the learning aspects of digital media.

    Maryellen Bailey

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