What Does a Tablet Do to the Child’s Mind? - NYTimes.com

What Does a Tablet Do to the Child’s Mind? - NYTimes.com

• A report published last week by the Millennium Cohort Study, a long-term study group in Britain that has been following 19,000 children born in 2000 and 2001, found that those who watched more than three hours of television, videos or DVDs a day had a higher chance of conduct problems, emotional symptoms and relationship problems by the time they were 7 than children who did not. The study, of a sample of 11,000 children, found that children who played video games ? often age-appropriate games ? for the same amount of time did not show any signs of negative behavioral changes by the same age.
• But Dr. Small says we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills.
• Conversations with each other are the way children learn to have conversations with themselves, and learn how to be alone,? said Sherry Turkle, a professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of the book ?Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.? ?Learning about solitude and being alone is the bedrock of early development, and you don?t want your kids to miss out on that because you?re pacifying them with a device. If you don?t teach your children to be alone, they?ll only know how to be lonely.?