The Cyber Effect (14 page)

The tablet is now ubiquitous as a “toy” for toddlers (two to three years old)—and parents often marvel at the swiftness with which their child learns to swipe a touchscreen. So simple, so easy, it seems almost intuitive. These devices, as well as mobile phones, have become a game-changer in terms of screen time for children, lowering the age of the user considerably. Unlike a desktop or laptop, a tablet can be used by any child who is old enough to point a digit.

The fundamental problem, I believe, is the modern perception (or misconception) that children need to be kept busy and occupied at all times. And, like the thinking behind the Apptivity Seat, designed to keep a wandering child confined while enrapt by technology, giving a child a tablet is a convenient way for parents or caregivers to grab a few minutes, or an hour, for themselves.

What's the harm, right?

And besides, what about all those other parents giving their children these little handy screens? Millions of people can't be wrong, can they?

But they are.

This is a field I've researched in depth—and in 2015 published a
review paper, “Cyber Babies: The Impact of Emerging Technology on the Developing Infant.” It's hard to know where to start, as I begin unpacking all my concerns about cyber babies using devices. To begin
with, there could be physical risk. As stated above, we still don't know how the levels of radiation exposure of a mobile phone or tablet can impact children, who are certainly more vulnerable in this regard than adults. A 2013 report in the
Journal of Microscopy and Ultrastructure
warns that fetuses are most vulnerable to radio frequency energy exposure (radiation) and mothers should not carry mobile phones in their clothing.

Next, I have to raise the problem of credibility of the “educational” claims made by the app developers. Thousands of these have already been created and marketed for toddlers and children under five.

Somewhere along the line, a misinterpretation of neuroscience has led parents to believe that all stimulation for a child is good stimulation. They believe, wrongly, that a young brain must be kept constantly challenged and engaged. It's as if parents fear their toddler will become bored with real life, which I guess means life without a screen. And fearing a toddler tantrum may be another reason that
tablets and mobile phones are pulled out of handbags and totes by parents and caregivers to placate and pacify young children. I have seen articles by psychologists referring to these as “shut-up toys.”

Even if these devices in themselves are not proven to be harmful, there is significant harm simply in the lack of time spent doing things in the real world that are known to be important for development. It has been shown repeatedly that at least sixty minutes per day of
unstructured play
—when children entertain themselves, either alone or with another child and without adult or technological interference—is essential. This is when a child uses imagination and creativity, when he or she practices decision-making and problem-solving. This unstructured play is what helps children to develop early math concepts, such as shape, size, sorting, order, and simple counting. At the same time, they develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

This is why many developmental experts believe that the best toys are the ones with the fewest rules. By playing, the toddler has something to learn about the world.

What about a child who spends the bulk of his or her playtime with an interactive app, in which objects explode, appear, reappear, and
don't play by the rules of the physical world? It's possible this habit could interfere with the reaching of
object permanence
. This milestone was discovered when the renowned developmental psychologist Jean Piaget set out to study how a child's knowledge of the world changes with age. He argued that a child is an active participant in the development of knowledge and asserted that cognitive functioning develops in stages. He outlined four stages of intellectual or cognitive development; the one from birth to eighteen months is
sensorimotor development
. At a certain stage in a toddler's intellectual growth, he or she will realize that a toy continues to exist even if it has been removed—or is out of sight. This understanding by the child is called
object permanence
. Some would argue that magical thinking contributes to creativity, but the toy is a physical object—it is matter—and, according to the fundamental laws of physics, it cannot simply disappear. If this developmental milestone of logic is not reached in an appropriate way, during a specific window of time before the age of three, then we have no idea of the consequences in terms of cognitive development.

Given the ethical constraints of doing potentially harmful scientific research on infants, or any children, it is possible that we may never know conclusively the impact of interactive screens until it's too late. Much of what we do know about classical conditioning and early childhood development was produced by an array of pretty horrific experiments, done prior to the ethical debate about proper and humane treatment of lab subjects. Sadly, a string of American psychologists did with babies and small children what Ivan Pavlov, the famous Russian psychologist, did to dogs.

Perhaps the most troubling and groundbreaking work was done by behaviorist John B. Watson and his graduate student Rosalie Rayner at Johns Hopkins University in the 1920s. They experimented with a nine-month-old baby, “Little Albert,” the son of a wet nurse who lived and worked on the campus of the university hospital. The wet nurse was paid one dollar for Little Albert's participation in a series of experiments in which Watson set out to prove that a fearful response to almost anything could be instilled in a child with the proper conditioning.

Poor Little Albert, a trusting and good-natured chubby blond cherub, was put in a sterile laboratory environment and subjected to endless sounds and scary sights as Watson studied the effects of conditioning. The child was shown a series of stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks, and burning newspapers. Initially, the child showed no fear of these things.

Then, in order to instill a fear of rats in Little Albert, when he was next shown a white rat, Watson hit a metal pipe with a hammer to make a loud, disturbing sound. Little Albert began to cry, as any baby would. The white rat and the loud, disturbing sound were paired repeatedly until, eventually, Little Albert started sobbing at the sight of the white rat alone.

Fear—and therefore other emotional responses—had been successfully conditioned. If you go online and google “Watson” and “Little Albert,” you can see lots of pictures of the poor little guy crying.

B. F. Skinner was another behaviorist who did groundbreaking work in what he called “
the Skinner box,” a controlled environment where animals could be closely observed while they were stimulated by lights, sounds, projected images, and even electrical shocks—and also where specific behavior could be reinforced by food and water. That was all well and good, and the animal-rights lobby and PETA weren't around to complain or throw paint on him. It was a different story when Skinner put his own daughter Deborah in a box he designed, a continuously warm, controlled environment that was an oversized metal “air crib” with three walls and a glass window, where she slept and played for the first two years of her life. The point Skinner was trying to make with his air crib (which he designed to be manufactured and marketed) was really about convenience to parents—while creating a warm, safe environment for a baby. Deborah and three hundred other children were raised in such beds, and reported no ill effects. But even so, in 1945 there was an uproar when a photograph of Skinner's daughter in what seemed like a glass cage was published in
Ladies' Home Journal
.

Would anybody cause a fuss if
Ladies' Home Journal
ran a photograph of a two-year-old child playing with a tablet or mobile phone? Has this vision already become a norm? Is there anything we can do to correct that?

Of course, not all technology is ruining childhood or negatively affecting development. We live in a cyber world, and kids need to learn to navigate it—but, more important, parents need better guidelines as to the effects of cyber. I have no doubt that e-books can be useful in promoting vocabulary development and reading comprehension in older children, aged four or five. There is promising research suggesting that they may increase early literacy skills by providing practice with letters, phonics, and word recognition. And they may be more engaging for young children because of all the bells and whistles, the animation, funny voices, sound effects, touchscreen, highlighted text, and embedded games. A roaring 72 percent of iTunes's top-selling “educational” apps are designed for preschoolers and elementary school children. There's a lot of money to be made in technology, and all of us, including parents, are too easily brainwashed by the limited science behind new products. Just go to an online app store and search the word “kids” and you'll get more than sixty thousand results. The so-called educational app media market has grown into a billion-dollar industry. This is
scientism
, or the exaggerated belief in the power of science, at its worst.

But exactly the very things that can make these apps exciting and engaging have been shown to distract children from actual learning. Extraneous e-book enhancements interfere with comprehension or a child's ability to simply follow a story. So while your child seems to be sitting still and enjoying the “book,” he or she is actually just stimulated but learning nothing.

It is well known that young children learn less from video than from live interactions, something developmental psychologists call the
video deficit effect
. Often what can be achieved by live learning in one instance takes repeated attempts in a video. When young children are spoken to directly by parents or caregivers, they absorb and learn language very quickly. But they do not learn language effectively from the television or from observing conversations between adults because their attention is not directed enough. They are distracted by other stimulation. Along the same lines, studies have shown that having the television on at home all day as background noise causes similar language
delays. Children can't hear human speech properly when there is constant sound in the house.

The promotions for apps always refer to them as “interactive,” a buzzword for parents, probably because they've heard or read somewhere that children learn best through “interaction” rather than passive observation. And indeed, using a highly interactive app is an entirely different dynamic for a child than watching television, but I would argue that it is not a better one. The interactive aspects of a tablet could make it even more distracting and far too stimulating for a young child. Not all screen time is created equal.

What's the best route? What age to start, and what screen?

There are a growing number of voices and opinions on this matter. My concern is primarily with the millions of parents who have been left adrift while new norms have been established with the help of marketers and the clever tech industry rather than based on behavioral or social science. (I find it ironic that there's been such a proliferation of “science” content for kids and yet apparently little actual science about developmental impact.) Without governance or cyber ethics regarding the claims of the app manufacturers, the nursery is a free-for-all, making the conundrum more daunting for a new parent. How can we expect them to parse out these new devices, new apps, and new technology, and make the best decision for their families?

On one end of the spectrum, there's the toy industry, which will happily thrust the iPad into the face of the newborn infant. On the other end of the spectrum, there are some very conservative views, as expressed by Cris Rowan, a pediatric occupational therapist, child development expert, and founder of
Moving to Learn, who recommends limited to no screen use for children:

According to Rowan, as many as one in three children now enter school developmentally delayed, negatively impacting literacy and academic
achievement. The recommendations of Moving to Learn may seem harsh, but the signs of trouble are becoming more prevalent, as schoolteachers and primary school administrators are beginning to report a higher incidence of developmental delay in children entering kindergarten. In Britain, an escalation of problems associated with pervasive tablet use among preschool-age children has been reported by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, including developmental delays in attention span, fine motor skills and dexterity, speaking, and socialization—as well as an increase in aggressive and antisocial behavior, obesity, and tiredness.

British teachers report a growing number of young children who are beginning school with an expert ability at swiping a screen but not enough dexterity to pick up and play with building blocks. One gathering of teachers in Manchester called for help with “tablet addiction.” And a teacher in Northern Ireland described young students who were allowed to play computer games excessively before bed arriving at class the next day with what you might call a “digital hangover,” and attention spans “so limited that they might as well not be there.”

What happens when a child plays on a tablet but never has a chance to look at a real book?

Sadly, you don't have to go very far for the answer. You can see a one-year-old girl on YouTube, in a video that's had 4.5 million views.

A print magazine is given to the child. She puts the magazine in her lap. With her fingers, she expertly makes the touchscreen flicking motion on the printed magazine page and is stumped when the image doesn't change. Then she tries to make photographs larger by pulling apart her index finger and thumb, another touchscreen cue. But the concept of turning a page is alien to her.