I guess this is the same debate that our parents had when we were growing up playing on our games consoles. I think the debate here goes further though as today’s tablets have much more functionality than the games consoles that we had growing up. Our games consoles were purely for games, whereas tablets can be used to teach your kids to read, write, count, all sorts of shape and pattern recognition.
I understand parents who want to limit their kid’s time on tablets, that’s fine I’m all for that, but some parents don’t want their kids to even touch a tablet.
I think the future is tablet based, I do think keyboard skills will be as important as pen skills. I don’t know whether that extends to teaching them to speed text, I think some skills are self taught and learning to text will be self motivated.
Speaking about games and parents not wanting to let their children play games, I want to make the point that there are a lot of jobs in games industry. I’m currently (2013) working in the games industry, I work with a lot of designers, artists, programmers, QA etc. It is a viable career as much as any other, what all of these people have in common is that they have been playing games since they were kids. On the whole it didn’t impact upon their education, I would say the vast majority of them did very well educationally and went onto universities.I do understand the argument that is made that playing computer games takes you away from studying. I think it depends on what games you play as a kid. Some games can teach basic maths and language skills, some teach strategy and how to handle money.
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The future is certainly tablet. Check out the link to a school in Bolton where every student has their own iPad. The success rates improved drastically after this as the kids were much more motivated to study with the iPads. Its a secondary school and I still think there is a need to be age-appropriate with all this.
Too much of anything on a regular basis is bad in my opinion, especially excessive screen time, which tends to be solitary, there is definitely an opportunity cost with that. And from an attachment perspective, the child is not being nurtured by the screen, purely passing time.
There is also the issue of forming bad habits and it’s almost impossible for a small child to self-discipline and say I have played for 20 minutes, that’s enough for today. The content is generally addictive by design and so even though it may start off being something educational and interactive, it opens the door to pure entertainment usage in future I think.
So my take is that screen- based entertainment may not be bad, if we teach our children how to regulate themselves to be balanced individuals. That’s a tough job. If we don’t teach them that self-discipline well then any excesses are going to be damaging in the longer term.
And I don’t own a tablet but the little one does on occasions play with my phone or laptop. I prefer him to play on his Wii though as that involves exercise 🙂
Kids today have amazing computer skills and I think that’s a good thing. I am a brand ambassador for Bookboard, an online reading service for kids on the iPad. It doesn’t replace printed books, but it gives kids an alternative and access to unlimited books which you couldn’t possibly have in your personal library. I’ve written about it a couple times on my own blog. The program will read aloud to your children as well as letting them read. And best of all, it grows with your child’s reading skills. My four year old nephew was completely captivated by it…glued to it for a good hour before putting it down! I’m not an advocate for non-stop computer use, but I think there is something to be said for an educational program that can hold a young kid’s interest like that. I’d rather them do that than play games. I guess my point is, there are some very worthwhile programs out there for kids. But I agree with you, we need to teach kids how to self regulate their usage.
I definitely think that tablets are great and that children can learn a lot from them. But as with most things in life, too much time spent on them can be damaging. I’m concerned that children who spend too much time with technology can fail to develop important inter-personal skills.
Also, I think it’s important for children to play. Just play among themselves, making up games and stretching their imaginations without technology. This is important for their creative and social development