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 Results of the small experiment suggest story time with tablets may
not be as good for kids' development.
Pediatricians recommend against any screen time at all for children
under age two. They warn that tablets, smartphones and digitally
enhanced toys and games can get in the way of creative play and
interactions with caregivers that are essential for social,
emotional and cognitive growth.
But many parents who don't sit kids down to watch cartoons or play
video games may still use tablets to read e-books to young kids.
Among other things, e-books can be more convenient than cramming
lots of board books in a diaper bag. Many parents also believe
reading apps and interactive e-books can make it easier for kids to
learn their ABCs.
"We know shared book reading is such an amazing developmental
activity to engage in with children - not only by exposing children
to rich language and vocabulary, but also by providing opportunities
for physical closeness and creating moments to bond," said lead
study author Dr. Tiffany Munzer of the University of Michigan's C.S.
Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor.
"Parents and toddlers know how to engage over a book, but when
adding a tablet into the mix, it deflects from some of the positive
benefits of that shared reading experience," Munzer said by email.
"That isn't to say there is no benefit to electronic book, just less
than when you compare it with a print book."
For the study, Munzer's team videotaped 37 parent-child pairs during
reading sessions done in a lab. Parents read similar stories in
three different formats: traditional printed books, e-books without
any bells and whistles, and "enhanced" e-books with extra features
like sound effects or animation.
During each reading session, researchers observed how much
interaction, conversation and collaboration happened between parents
and kids.
With printed books, parents talked to kids much more about the
stories. The grown-ups paused to do things like ask kids if they
remembered something they did that's similar to what's happening in
the story, or asking kids what they think will happen next, the
researchers report in Pediatrics.
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Enhanced e-books sparked more interactions than e-books without any
bells and whistles, however.
Toddlers also spoke up more to ask questions and share their own
opinions and ideas about the stories when parents were reading from
printed books.
The enhanced e-books sparked more interaction initiated by kids than
basic e-books, however.
The study can't say whether or how specific book formats might
directly impact kids' social, emotional or cognitive development. It
also wasn't designed to determine whether different formats
influence how easily or quickly children later learn to read.
One benefit of reading to kids is the "back and forth" dialog that
can happen while parents are sharing a story with young children and
help put the story in the context of the child's life experiences,
said Dr. Suzy Tomopoulos of the department of pediatrics at New York
University School of Medicine, in an email.
"For example, if the book is about a trip to the zoo, the parent can
talk about their last trip to the zoo and the animals they saw,"
said Tomopoulos, who co-authored an editorial published with the
study.
"Shared book reading with print books has been well studied and has
been found to help child development, language, and social skills,"
Tomopoulos added. "One of the main problems with screens is that
they interfere with these high quality parent-child interactions
that would otherwise take place."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2HTF4Za Pediatrics, online March 26, 2019.
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