Digital decisions: Educators, Caregivers and Parents must be Well Informed when Making Decisions about Children's Use of Technology and Media.
| Author | Pepper, Stephanie Puckett |
Introduction
Technology's role in daily life is pervasive--providing for our needs from morning to night. We rely on it for everything from storm tracking to child tracking. Undeniably increased exposure to media has changed the fabric of daily life for everyone in developed countries, and especially the young. Children are a vulnerable population who must be protected; they are easily influenced and need guidance to make wise choices. They lack the life experiences to have the knowledge of "caveat emptor" or buyer beware (West 2013) which is a warning that alerts the buyer, or in this case the consumer, that the product may be inappropriate for her needs.
The increased importance given to media impacts communication and the social development of children. However, according to Gullo and Hughes (2011), the basic developmental characteristics of young children have not changed. Parents, caregivers, and educators today face the challenge to stimulate and unlock the learning potential and creativity of children when competing with tablets, smart phones, texting, social media, videos, gaming devices, TV and the Internet. The preference of portable devices, as opposed to desktop computer use, has made it easier to multitask--using the computer while watching television. Media multitasking may involve various combinations of devices (Christensen, Bickham, Ross, & Rich 2015) and as individuals and families acquire more and more devices, children are becoming quite adept at media multitasking (Brasel and Gips 2011) In fact, at ever-younger ages children acquire personal devices and successfully use them (Wallis 2006). Are educators, like many families, abandoning the time-honored methods of hands-on, active learning for screen time? This paper attempts to challenge parents, caregivers, and educators to evaluate their own perceptions of the influence of the media and technology on children and thereby be better prepared to adopt a balanced approach to daily activities which promote active learning.
Conceptual Framework
The basic needs of children have not changed, though daily life continues to see phenomenal change due to technological advances. This paper is based upon the conceptual framework of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) which promotes active learning with the use of concrete materials. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) issued its first position statement (Bredekamp, 1987) regarding DAP which provided principles of child development and learning that could inform decisions about young children's educational needs. This position statement has been twice revised, yet, continues to provide guidelines for professionals who work with children from birth to age eight. This approach upholds the value of play and social interaction. Copple and Bredekamp (2009, p. 14) note that, "young children construct their knowledge and understanding of the world in the course of their own experiences, as well as from teachers, family members, peers and older children, and from books and other media. They learn from the concrete (e.g., manipulatives)." Children need many experiences working with three-dimensional objects before they view the two-dimensional world of screens where many objects are being represented as three-dimensional when, in fact, they are only two.
Children need to work with concrete materials that relate to their daily lives. Any activity in which they engage, that is a worthy part of their daily lives, is preferable to watching an activity being performed on a screen, whether it is children's programming, videos posted to Facebook, or reality TV. A young child needs to hold, possess, and work with three-dimensional objects in order to begin to develop spatial understanding of the world around him.
Making Informed Decisions Concerning Media Use
Media for Infants
In an effort to help their children be prepared for a competitive environment where children are expected to perform at increasing levels of achievement, parents began to seek help in commercially available products such as Baby Einstein. Also, they began to place younger and younger children, even babies, in front of screens with hopes of getting an early start with fundamental knowledge such as colors, shapes and animals. However, many educators, policy makers, and parents began to dispute the educational claims found on the packaging and in the promotion of these and other commercial products. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) filed a petition with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) concerning the claims on Baby Einstein products. The owner of these products, Disney, agreed to remove the claims that the products were educational (Lewin 2009).
Fenstermacher, et. al (2010) examined the educational claims made by the producers of television programs designed for infants across five domains--physical development and motor skills, social and emotional development, language and literacy development, cognitive development, and general knowledge (p. 559). These researchers found that there was often little connection between the claims and the content of the programming. Much of the...
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