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Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

bath.ac.uk

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Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#41

Post by dublin »

dx87 wrote: post #31
lordnacho wrote: post #17

One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of those adverts that's made of a big flatscreen. What confuses them is that some flatscreens aren't touchscreens, eg my macbook, while most of the smaller screens like phones and tablets are. Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing the…

> One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen I've talked to teachers who said that they've started seeing young children with picture books doing the zoom in/out pinching motion on pages.

This was even true 15 years ago, when I was CTO for a startup that put displays on restaurant tabletops. Even back then (before the iPhone was even released), we saw that most users tried to touch the screen to control it! People reasonably expect all screens (especially any screen displaying information) to be touchscreens they can interact with. We need the hardware to catch up. Fortunately, newer technology now makes it possible to build large (up to 100 inches or more) touchscreens with no compromise.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#42

Post by turtlebits »

lordnacho wrote: post #17

One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of those adverts that's made of a big flatscreen. What confuses them is that some flatscreens aren't touchscreens, eg my macbook, while most of the smaller screens like phones and tablets are. Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing the…

The problem is that parents are using screen time as a nanny, and are training their kids to rely on them as such.

IMO, kids need to be taught self-control and have the ability to entertain themselves before screens are introduced.

Toddler age is definitely too early, I am in the opinion that as little as necessary until it starts to be required in school.

My 2nd grader knows that screens are useful and has seen limited use, wikipedia, video calls, but he is always accompanied by me. And he has no reliance on them.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#43

Post by hibby »

The headline is a little misleading - from the article itself.

"Dr Ana Maria Portugal, main researcher on the project points out “We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention as it may also be that children who are generally more attracted to bright, colourful features seek out touchscreen devices more than those who are not.”"

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#44

Post by jewelry »

RYFN wrote: post #6

This is a shamefully clickbatey title from the University press office! To quote the article, "...We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention".

Well, maybe that's also a relieving result that use of tablet is not causing harm at this area, if not helped. Which I believed strongly as long as the material is carefully curated for education not just youtube Kids. Even science channel video is better than youtube kids.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#46

Post by ksdale »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #18
lymenlee wrote: post #4

For this little gain, at what cost to the future growth of the kid? Attention span? Ability to focus on anything other than small screens? Social ability? This research should really address the pro/con for the kid in the long run rather than just benefit of finding target using their fingers.

> at what cost to the future growth of the kid? Does there need to be a cost? From my experience, it's just like most activities you do with your children. You can use it as babysitter or you can use it as a learning tool by participating and engaging with your child. Here's how I've done it and he's doing great: - We mostly use the tablet together, especially when we try a new app. - I avoid the crack-head apps. The…

Anecdotally, we don't exactly practice moderation with screen time, and we've been constantly surprised at how much our kids learn from even the crappy alphabet/number/animals/shapes videos on YouTube Kids. We're also not big into milestones, but our kids have absolutely flown past every educational milestone for their ages. We are very present, attentive parents with above average education, but we spend (what we think is) an unexceptional amount of time teaching them things, and they have learned an exceptional amount.

What's funny is that everyone just assumes the screen time is bad, and that our kids are naturally very smart (with the implicit suggestion that they'd know more without screen time). That may be true, but it isn't borne out by observation in our case.

We've found a lot of parenting is like that - people are pretty sure about what's good and bad, and the child's behavior/response one way or the other is either expected or a fluke, depending on what confirms assumptions about what's good and bad.

Our oldest is only 7, but we have 4 and we've noticed no ill effects from screen time, the kids are all social, they love to go to the park and play with friends (which we don't get to do nearly enough now...), to go for walks and ride bikes, in short they all seem well within the bounds of "normal" development for their ages.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#47

Post by dublin »

lordnacho wrote: post #17

One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of those adverts that's made of a big flatscreen. What confuses them is that some flatscreens aren't touchscreens, eg my macbook, while most of the smaller screens like phones and tablets are. Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing the…

A good study would be to compare how these screen-trained toddlers compare with screen-free toddlers (you might have to go rural to find those) in interacting and recognizing things in the real 3D world. My guess is that screenies exhibit a marked bias towards 2D perception and thinking, with weaker 3D.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#49

Post by microtherion »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #29
crmrc114 wrote: post #14

So, per this page: "The study followed them over the next 2.5 years, bringing them into the lab at 18 months and 3.5 years. At the 18-month and 3.5-year visits, toddlers took part in a computer task in which they were trained to search for a red apple amongst a varying number of either blue apples (easy search), or blue apples and red apple slices (difficult search). An eye tracker monitored their gaze and visually r…

Your "better" study is not an experiment and its conclusions are not supported by empirical evidence. If it were true that usage of touchscreens cause lower intelligence test scores, we would have seen this show up as a population-wide reduction in scores as touchscreens became widely available. No such effect can be observed. Instead, the children who were neglected with random household items to play with by themse…

Yes, unless I'm greatly misunderstanding the tables, what the study actually measured is that:

* Spatial intelligence is positively correlated with socio-economic status.

* Screen (TV + Digital) time is negatively correlated with socio-economic status.

Concluding from this that spatial intelligence is negatively correlated with screen time is dubious. Similar reasoning is used to promote all kinds of class-correlated fashions, e.g. breast feeding.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#50

Post by DevX101 »

PMan74 wrote: post #24
the-pigeon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite can argued too. That children who don't use tablets have shorter attention spans and worst social skills. The "natural is better" argument is not research based. Society has long preached that things like reading books is great for kids but it's entirely unnatural just like tablets. Generally research in this area has been extremely biased against electronics. You also have to control for the type of act…

> Society has long preached that things like reading books is great for kids Wasn't always the case, Plato felt it would dull your memory. "They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks."

Plato was probably right. As access to information has become ubiquitous, we increasingly don't need to rely on our memories. Ancient scholars would be able to recite long passages from memory. The printing press made that unnecessary if you could access a book. Now Google has made even books obsolete for some types of information. The internet is the world's memory.

What Plato missed was that our ability to do higher order reasoning and synthesis has grown by leaps with books and now the internet. That's a pretty good trade-off for losing some memory.

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