The iPad and your kid—digital daycare, empowering educator, or something bad?

It was love at first sight—the infatuated gaze, the flirtatious giggles. He just couldn’t keep his eyes or hands off her. I can still hear the cry of agony when I, his mom, mercilessly tore her away from his small chubby hands…

“He” is my two-year-old son. “She” is the iPad. It’s a love story familiar to almost every parent who has both a toddler and an iPad (or presumably other tablets) in the house. And as this unnatural bit of natural attraction surfaced, it made me and many other parents wonder: “What on earth is the iPad doing to my child?”

Dr. Heather Kirkorian, an assistant professor in the Human Development and Family Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is one of the few scientists trying to answer this very question. And for the past few years, she has been studying how touchscreen devices affect early childhood learning.

Before focusing on the small, mobile screen, Kirkorian started her career studying the effect of television on childhood learning. For decades it’s been known that infants and toddlers under two years old learn less from video than real life experiences—it’s called the “video deficit.” For these young minds, face-to-face interaction is crucial for learning language and social skills. Excessive TV exposure at this early age has been linked to language delays and social impairment such as lack of expression or eye contact. In fact, Kirkorian’s early studies showed that even background television—adult programs that children do not pay much attention to—could disrupt play behavior and parent-child interaction.

The video deficit effect diminishes for children around three years of age, when educational video viewing can actually facilitate learning. But because of the known negative effects of television on young children, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero screen time for children under two years of age, and no more than two hours for older kids. However, this guideline was established back when there was no such thing as a touchscreen device—let alone an interactive app.

iPad speed vs. research speed

Within moments, anyone who plays with the iPad knows the experience is different from watching television in many ways. Instead of passively accepting information on the screen, we’re able to interact with the device using the tip of our fingers. Researchers call this “contingency”—the image on the screen changes in direct response to one’s behavior.

Young children are captivated by contingency. They are fascinated by the iPad in the same way they enjoy throwing toys on the floor (after you’ve picked it up the hundredth time!). They see something happen as a result of their behavior. And unlike the action and reaction of a traditional computer, using an iPad is much more intuitive. Anyone with a finger can do it—literally even a baby.

Apple released the first on-device app store in 2008, and the number of educational apps for kids has exploded since then. An analysis by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in 2012 showed that three out of four top-selling apps in the education category targeted elementary-age children or younger, and the most popular apps are aimed at preschoolers. But although many apps claim they have educational value, there is almost no published research on the effect of interactive apps on infant or toddler learning.

Why? Kirkorian believes one reason may simply be the development cycle. Things change fast in touchscreen technology. Contrast this again with television. There is plenty of research on the effect of TV on childhood learning, not only because it’s been here a long time, but also because it has changed relatively little over the past few decades. “If I study the iPad today, it may not be relevant in the next five years,” Kirkorian says. “This gives researchers less incentive to study.” As a result, there are only a handful of scientists studying the effect of touchscreen devices on infants and toddlers, and no one has published much yet.

To add another complication, studies with children generally take a long time. The first step begins with recruiting volunteers to participate in the study.

“People who do research on kids pretty much are desperate for research participants all the time,” Kirkorian says. “It’s probably the most challenging part of doing research with kids. Even more challenging than getting kids to agree to participate is getting parents to bring them in.”

Kirkorian has recruited volunteers through preschools, sent e-mails to faculty and students at the university, and hung up flyers around the city. “We might purchase an ad in the local newspaper too. We are willing to try everything,” she says. But many parents are uneasy about releasing private information about their child. In some studies, the child has to be videotaped, which is a non-starter for many parents. Individual study sessions take time, and parents are busy. Taking kids to a research session just seems like another task to fit into their already hectic schedule. And although each child often receives a small toy at the end of such a session, there really is no compensation besides the satisfaction of contributing to educational research.

As a result, Kirkorian’s first study (which began in 2011) is only now under revision. It may take up to a year for the paper to actually be published.

Volunteering

To understand more about her research, I volunteered my two-year-old son, Jeremy, to participate in one of Kirkorian’s research sessions (without his consent, of course).

On a sunny Saturday morning, we were greeted outside the Cognitive Development and Media lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by Koeun Choi, a graduate student working in the lab. We were bought into a small study room and I was seated at a table with Jeremy on my lap. Koeun sat across from us and warmed up with him by reading Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?—an all-time favorite children’s book.

Once Jeremy got comfortable, she tried to put an eye-tracking device (a hat with a small camera sticking out in front to capture eye movement) on his head—unsuccessfully. I knew there was no way he was going to wear that thing; it’s hard enough trying to put a hat on him when it’s 20 degrees outside.

Dr. Heather Kirkorian.

Credit: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Apparently, Jeremy’s not the only one. About a third of kids simply refuse to put the tracker on. “One of the difficulties in working with toddlers is they have no problem telling you what they will and will not do,” says Kirkorian. Luckily, although the eye-tracking device helps researchers determine what the child is focusing on during the session, it’s not completely necessary. “We don’t want to upset the kids at all,” says Kirkorian. “If they seem upset, we just move on.”

So we move on.

Koeun brought out an iPad and began showing Jeremy a video of a woman standing behind four boxes. The woman took one object out of each of the boxes and named each of them. They were weird-looking things and were given random names like “modi” and “toma.” After viewing the video, Koeun brought out a box containing the four objects in real life and asked Jeremy to give her the “toma.” He immediately picked up the correct object, indicating that he was able to learn the information from the video and link it to real-life experiences.

In some sessions, children were required to touch anywhere on the screen to see the person open the next box. In others, they needed to touch specifically on the box to have it opened. According to Kirkorian’s results, toddlers above 30 months of age are able to learn the names of the objects equally well with or without interaction with the screen (Jeremy was 32 months at the time). However, this is not the case with younger children. For younger two-year-olds, the requirement to specifically touch the box doubled the likelihood that they picked the right object, whereas touching anywhere on the screen did not help. In other words, specific interaction with the screen significantly improved their learning.

Despite the slow progress, Kirkorian’s studies have revealed some interesting results. This finding in particular has important implications. Engaging children to actively participate and interact with the screen may overcome the notorious video deficiency effect. Perhaps children under two years old can learn from screens after all.

“Kirkorian’s study is a significant first step that demonstrates that not all interactivity is the same,” says Dr. Alexis Lauricella, who researches media and childhood learning at Northwestern University. “Depending on the age or developmental abilities of the child, the location of interaction may be a crucial factor in helping them learn.”

Of course, the study has its limitations. Like any lab-based experimental design, this study is limited in how it can be generalized. “The study used very specific and experimenter-created videos, which are very focused and designed to test these particular research questions, therefore more research needs to be done before these findings can truly be generalized to more traditional producer-created media,” Lauricella says. “But this is the necessary first step to understand how interactive technologies influence learning.”

With the information being collected, what should we look for when selecting an app for our young children? First of all, it should have engaging and interactive features that aim to enhance learning without causing a distraction. For example, an e-book about colors may have a dog that barks when you touch it. That may be a fun feature, but it doesn’t help learn about the concept of colors. Instead, it distracts from the main topic. In contrast, if it were a book about animal sounds, the barking dog would be relevant, thus help learning.

Selecting age-appropriate apps is also important. Dr. Georgene Troseth, an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, notes that in Kirkorian’s study, “the particular tasks were easy for 3-year-olds even if they watched passively, so interacting offered no added value. Thus, parents need to be selective to pick apps at the right level of difficulty for their particular child… Parents should monitor their child's use of an app to make sure their child understands how to play and foresee aspects that could be frustrating for their child. It's good to keep in mind both that children can learn from apps and that they still need real interaction with people.”

Ideally, educational apps should also be a language-rich experience that includes other people in their environment. Children learn much better when working with a caregiver, someone who can answer questions and provide feedback about whatever is happening on-screen. A tablet should thus be used as a tool to increase interaction with your kid instead of a replacement for interaction.

Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and colleagues recently provided a set of standards for evaluating the educational value of interactive apps—what they call the four “pillars” of learning. This includes active “minds-on” learning, engagement with the learning material (without distraction), meaningful experiences that relate to the child, and social interaction. These pillars, all based on current science, could serve as a future guide for parents, educators, and app designers alike.

Backlit babysitter

Of course, even for a toddler, an iPad is more than a learning tool. Besides aiding learning, tablets are increasingly being used as a kind of “digital pacifier” to calm our kids in moments of frustration. You’ve probably seen this before, a child starts crying in a restaurant or on an airplane, the mom hands him an iPhone, and magically the kid stops crying and becomes hypnotized by the screen. Problem solved. Right?

Dr. Jenny Radesky, a clinical instructor in developmental-behavioral pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, has raised some concerns around this practice. In an interview with The Guardian, she prompts the question: “If these devices become the predominant method to calm and distract young children, will they be able to develop their own internal mechanisms of self-regulation?” So little research has been done so far, it’s hard to say how this could impact their social-emotional development.

Kirkorian agrees that it is important for kids to learn to self-regulate. As a parent, we should teach them how to calm themselves down—perhaps find an activity to distract themselves or talk about how they feel. More importantly, parents need to understand the capability of kids at different ages and not expect too much of them.

“Parents have been bringing books and toys to restaurants for decades,” says Kirkorian. “If parents expect their kids to wait at a restaurant for 45 minutes, let them get fussy, and respond by giving them an iPhone, they are probably rewarding that tantrum. But if you anticipate that your child is not capable of waiting 45 minutes without a distractor, then sure, bring an iPad along to entertain them. This is a proactive approach and is no different from bringing toys along. It’s much better than having age-inappropriate expectations. Come prepared with some tools, and if that tool is an iPad, it may not be the worst thing you could do.”

Credit: Getty Images

"Don't feel guilty"

Seeing young children completely “zone out” while using a tablet often makes parents cringe, wondering what it’s doing to their small, developing brains. There’s the idea that “if they love something so much, it must not be good for them,” like candy or ice cream. But no kind of technology is inherently good or evil. It all depends on how you use it. Kirkorian’s research suggests that interactive devices do have the potential to help young children learn in ways unachievable by television or other passive screen media.

The medical community is just starting to recognize this. And lately, scientists and doctors are debating about whether to revise the current screen limit guideline. In the future, there may be a separate recommendation for “interactive screen time;” however, right now there is no evidence to suggest there is long-term benefit (or harm) in using interactive devices; hence most medical professionals tend to take a conservative approach. Science is lagging far behind technology at this point, so undoubtedly more studies like Kirkorian’s are desperately needed.