We’ve all had this experience before. You go into a restaurant or on a plane and a child is sitting quietly or not so quietly (insert preferred technology here: Droid phone, iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire etc.) engrossed with whatever flashing app or program is on their screen. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommend limiting kids’ entertainment screen time to “to less than one or two hours per day” and for kids younger than two, no exposure. Also, a recent study out of UCLA showed the impact of screen time on kids’ ability to distinguish human emotion. The study found that sixth graders who went 5 days without using a smartphone, television, or computer screen were significantly more skilled at distinguishing human emotions than peers from the same school who continued to engage in their normal screen activity. Although the study was small and there was indication that for findings to remain constant there needed to be continued human interaction, this posed an interesting dilemma to me. By the way, I’m not here to judge what parenting style a person chooses as it relates to how their kid interacts with technology. However, I am interested in how we balance the educational benefits of mobile technologies without sacrificing our ability to interact on a human level.
As mobile technology and access to information has grown exponentially and it moves into our classrooms with districts adopting tablets rather than textbooks, what are the consequences? Is there a difference between beneficial screen time and non-beneficial screen time? I think most of us can agree that it is probably not healthy for a toddler to be watching 10 hours of Dora the Explorer or Barney on a tablet, but very few families would allow that anyway.
I have spoken with many district leaders, who argue that it is a waste of money to purchase textbooks because they are automatically obsolete as soon as they are printed, so why not provide a tablet where content can be continuously updated? Sounds like a good idea, right? Unfortunately many of these “technology” roll outs have not been very successful. The lack of understanding related to how the technology works, security, socio-economic factors related to access and use, and relevant professional development to assist teachers and administrators to effectively use these technology tools have hindered the process.
I do see the beneficial aspect of being able to provide information that is not static, but I think what’s lacking in this equation is that not all information is created equally. We, as an education system, are not teaching our children skills related to how to differentiate and consume information in a useful way. Our kids don’t always understand that social media sites are probably not the most reliable sources of non-biased information. Instead they read information on friends’ newsfeeds or random articles of questionable origins, then are formulating opinions that may be flawed or misguided. The role of education is not to stop the technology (since it would be going against a tidal wave), but to help our kids navigate and mediate the technology in a meaningful way. How do we, as educators, begin to help create a space for conversation, critical thinking, and the ability to have a higher level of media literacy and communication? We should help our kids be informed consumers of information and content rather than this-is-what-my-friends-are-accessing-so–it-has-to-be-good.
Also, at the risk of sounding overly sentimental, I do still believe that human connection that is not mediated by technology has a lot to teach us, and that piece shouldn’t be forgotten between all of the graphics and texts alerts.
