Should children be allowed to use technology?

Brown, Laura Lewis. "When to Introduce Your Child to a Smartphone or Tablet." PBS.
PBS, n.d. Web.
When to Introduce Your Child to a Smartphone or Tablet by Laura Lewis is an article
that has tips about when and how one should introduce their child to technology. There are five
different tip categories with two to three paragraphs explaining each. The first tip says to wait
until preschool to introduce technology because children under two years old need to get out and
explore the world. Lewis also explains that your child may be ready sooner or later depending on
their level of supervision. This then leads into our next tip, stating parental guidance is
suggested. Parents should be watching what their children are doing on smartphones and tablets
to make sure they are only using it for learning. Technology can be a really good resource for
learning but according to Lewis, doctors warn not to underestimate the learning power of
reading a book with your child or spending time exploring the outdoors. She proceeds to talk
about when parents should turn off the electronics and spend real time with their children. This
leads into the next tip which is about limiting screen time. She suggests the 20-20-20 rule. This
rules means every 20 minutes you spend looking at a screen, you should stare at something 20
feet away for 20 seconds. Lewis next two tips are about how context matters and using
technology is another dimension of learning. There are many different learning apps and learning
opportunities that go beyond a traditional classroom. These learning opportunities and apps are
designed to keep children interested in the game that is secretly making them learn.
In this article, Lewis uses different resources to get her information. Some of Lewis
sources are very reliable, for example, this article is published in PBS which is a very well
known source for child learning. Lewis also interviewed Dr. Carolyn Jaynes, a learning designer
for Leapfrog Enterprises. Lewis quoted Jaynes many different times during this article. Another
interview was with Jeannie Galindo, a supervisor of instructional technology for the Manatee
County School District in Florida. Galindo emphasized that unsupervised children shouldn't be
allowed to use a smartphone or tablet until they are at least between 11 and 13. Lewis also
quoted Kathleen Clarke-Pearson, a clinical assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of
North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, who is also a spokesperson for the American
Academy of Pediatrics on communications and media. Clarke-Pearson believes that children
need to develop cognitive, social and language skills by interacting with people. Finally, Lewis
gives some suggested websites to search in order to find apps and games they can download that
are designed to teach children.
Lewis did well when she used cites that were in a variety of range, leading to different
ideas and opinions. However, some of the sources in this article arent very reliable and can be
easily questioned. For example, Lewis wrote, doctors warn not to underestimate the learning
power of reading a book with your child or spending time exploring the outdoors. But nowhere
in the article does Lewis state who the doctors were. Lewis also states, Experts recommend

parents be very involved in their childs experience with electronic devices, especially at a young
age but never explains who the experts were or how she got that information. This is a little
questionable because there is no way to tell if that source was real or not. If the source was real,
we dont know if they actually study that information or if that was just their opinion.

Page, Angie, Dr. "Screen Time Linked to Psychological Problems in Children." Bristol
University. School for Policy Studies - PEACH Project, 11 Oct. 2010. Web.
Screen Time Linked to Psychological Problems in Children. is an article about the
PEACH project. This is a study of how more screen time is linked to psychological problems in
children. This study measures the amount of screen time and the psychological well being of
over 1,000 children between the ages 10 and 11. The conclusion of this study was that having
more than two hours of screen time a day, whether its watching TV or being on the computer,
has resulted in a higher psychological difficulty scores. The result didnt matter how much time
a day the child spent on physical activity. The children who spent more time on physical activity
did better in different psychological areas, like emotional and peer problems, but did worse in the
areas related to behavior, like hyperactivity.
This study defined the childrens psychological well being as an assessment on the basis
of a strengths and difficulties questionaire which rated their emotional, peer, conduct and
hyperactivity problems. The children were asked a series of questions and then from that, they
were assessed. This article does not talk about how long this study was conducted for or what the
variety of children were. Overall, this article didnt answer my question completely but it did
help by saying screen time is bad for children and should be limited.

Hill, Davis L. "Why to Avoid TV Before Age 2." HealthyChildren.org. N.p., 21 Nov. 2015.
Web.
The article Why to Avoid TV Before Age 2 by Davis Hill gives many different reasons
to why infants should not have any screen time. It doesnt matter whether its on a TV, a mobile
phone, or a computer. There are three different parts in this article, the first is early brain
development. In this section Hill talks about how an infants brain develops the most during the
first 3 years of life. Then he compares the difference in an infant looking at a ball in real life to
one on TV. In real life, the ball is 3-dimensional and an infant can actually touch it or put it in
their month. But on TV, the ball is only in 2 dimensions and disappears on the screen. The infant
doesn't understand what is going on in the TV. Hill also says that children up to the age of three
learn better from the real world. The second part of the article asks the question: Wheres the
harm? He gives an example of a parent who puts their child in front of a TV in order to put food
on the table. He asks if a little bit of screen time is better than not starving? Then proceeds to talk
about how the infant learns a lot more from banging pans on the ground while the parent sets the

table than the infant would from watching TV for the same amount of time. Hill says that even
when the TV is on in the background and nobody is watching it, is still enough to delay
language development. Normally a parent speaks to their toddler 940 words per hour but when
the TV is on, that number falls by 770. Hill does talk about after the age of 2, watching and
interacting with educational shows like Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street does teach the child
a lot. The third part of the article talks about what you can do. Hill says children learn more when
they watch TV with a parent than they do watching TV alone. He also says that you should limit
the amount of TV time at 2 hours a day.
In regards to answering my question, the overall conclusions of this article suggests
infants to not have screen time ever until the age of 2. Hill gave a lot of good information with
reliable sources. There are different links to where he states the information. The article is on the
website healthychildren.org which is a very reliable and credible source.

Vandewater, Elizabeth A., Dr, Victoris J. Rideout, Ellen A. Wartella, Dr, Xuan Huang, June
H. Lee, Dr, and Mi-suk Shim, Dr. "Pediatrics (Journal of American Academy of
Pediatrics)." Digital Childhood: Electronic Media and Technology Use Among Infants,
Toddlers, and Preschoolers 119.5 (2007): E1006-1015. Web.
This journal article is about a study, preformed on children from the ages 0 to 6, to see
how children follow the American Academy of Pediatrics media-use guidelines. This study was
also used to asses the relation of media use with reading and playing outdoors. In conclusion, the
majority of children between the ages 3 to 6 followed the American Academy guidelines but
70% of 0- to 2-year-olds did not. The journal then proceeds to show all the work in the study,
with statistics and graphs. The most interesting piece of information was the fact that 1/5th of
children between 0- to 2-year-olds and 1/3rd 3- to 6-year-olds have a TV in their own bedroom.
56% of family members say these children have TVs in their rooms because then it opens up the
other TVs in the house for other family members to watch their shows.
This study was kind of helpful in answering my question. It did talked about the
American Academy of Pediatrics media-use guidelines which said when children should watch
TV and how long they should watch it for. But in the overall study, the conclusion was just about
if families followed the guidelines.

Reflection
To start my project, I went onto google scholar and typed in the question: Should
children be allowed to use technology? There I found several different articles and journals
regarding my question. Once I started digging in, I found out that most of the articles were
saying the same thing, limit your childs technology use to 2 hours per day. However, I did run

into some articles that were from technology companies, ads really, that tried to say technology
was good and that it will help your child learn. I tried to get sources that seemed to have the most
reliable sources and links to other articles.
While researching, I found my question to be a little too broad, of course children are
going to use technology because thats the world we live in now. It it hard to get away from
technology, even as a little child. Once off to preschool, children are exposed to iPads and
computers in order to further their education. So I started to look up the question: Should
infants be allowed to use technology? My third source was the most helpful because it gave the
most informations and answered my new question perfectly. In the future, when I have to have
another research paper, I will make sure my questions isnt as broad and do some research before
I even start writing things down so I know I have the best question.