Laps and Apps: Early Childhood and Parenting

Dr. Justine Cassell: There does not seem to be evidence for the role of screens, but we need more data.  The age for autism spectrum disorder diagnosis is getting lower for several reasons.  One reason is that diagnostic techniques are getting better.

Dr. Justine Cassell: If the necessary research were done, then a lot of data would emerge.

Dr. Hirsh-Pasek: It is difficult to diagnose autism in early childhood.  One identified contributing factor, from the Sibs Study, is that a younger sibling is more likely to be autistic if an older sibling is.  Another relevant finding is that contingent human interaction – “a lot of good back and forth” – can offset first-year factors that might aggravate symptoms of autism.  Caution is appropriate here. The bad science about vaccines and autism shows the danger of making unfounded claims about causation.

Dr. Christakis: All this is rife with complexity. Studies have tried to draw inferences about people’s feelings by counting the emotional words in Facebook responses. You can’t just count words and come up with something that’s psychologically meaningful. With real-time data on subjects’ emotional states as they post, and synchronized data on other people’s assessments of those posters’ emotions, it’s possible to establish correlations between self-reports and third-party observations. Whether or not this might lead to the creation of more sophisticated algorithms – more capable of predicting emotional states – is an open question. This has implications for other psychological constructs, too, including identity.

Dr. Kirkorian: The nearest thing to propensity score match or anything like it is cross-lagged longitudinal analysis (which helps to identify the order of phenomena).  The few examples of that technique being used suggested that behavior problems preceded increases in media use. Dr. Jenny Radesky’s work is one example. Dr. Radesky found that toddlers’ lower self-regulation abilities predicted greater media use later (rather than their high screen media use predicting poor self-regulation).

Dr. Coyne: This predisposition question is where the research needs to go.

Dr. Tom Robinson: Nothing important enough to know is beyond experimental testing.  It’s unethical to experimentally expose children to digital media if you hypothesize that such exposure will be harmful.  Instead, you can test interventions to hypothesized adverse effects. “You may never prove that digital technology is bad, but you don’t have to if you have proven that one of your interventions actually is successful, or it’s not.”  Such solution, rather than problem-oriented, experimental studies offer the best way forward for childhood media effects research.

Dr. Hirsh-Pasek: As Justine Cassell’s keynote suggested, we should no longer be asking whether technology is good or bad.  We’re no more likely to dump technology than we are to dump television. Our predecessors feared that the telephone would ruin office interactions.

Dr. Christakis: Email did that.

Dr. Hirsh-Pasek: Dr. Cassell also raised the idea of technology as a prompt, rather than a partner (or replacement), for humans.  Companies had spoken to two members of this panel were interested in developing partner devices.

Dr. Christakis: Their motives were strictly financial (rather than philosophical).

Dr. Hirsh-Pasek: That might have been true in some cases, but other companies were explicitly interested in providing children with substitutes for the experience of personal interaction.  That effort must be thwarted. There is a more benign, or event positive, role for technology to play in social activities with technology. Osmo and the enhanced block game Kimeo illustrate how technology can “jump the screen” and prompt interactions. Watson is a counterexample.  “They were really thinking about a delivery mode into an empty vessel head. That’s what they wanted to do with little kids.”

Dr. Cassell: Digital friends can serve constructive purposes.  Evidence of a “… transfer effect from children programming a virtual peer . . . to their being able to better use, in fact, contingency with other real children” supports that contention.  “[I]t’s cheaper for companies, it’s better for companies, if the digital friend is spending all of its time selling, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only use of it.” There are examples of both productive interactions with industry (for example, Cassell’s work with Mattel), and less productive ones (such as Cassell’s and Hirsh-Pasek’s Fisher-Price experience).

Dr. Hirsh-Pasek: Justine's relatively positive view of collaborations between industry and academia may reflect the fact that isn’t focused on children as young as those with whom Dr. Hirsh-Pasek is concerned.

Dr. Kirkorian: A Common Sense Media Census found that 97% of children had access to at least one mobile device.

Dr. Hale: That statistic does not address different manners of use.

Dr. Kirkorian: ”There is an “app gap” as to which children are using what content.  “… [T]here are still disparities, it seems, in the types of experiences that kids have when they have those devices, both in terms of the content they’re consuming and the context in which they’re using those devices.  So, there might be differences based on especially socioeconomic status and especially parent education in terms of the media mentorship that happens.”

Dr. Hale: Are parents with multiple jobs more likely to use devices as babysitters than parents who work at home?

Audience Comment: A birth cohort study of children growing up in rural poverty in Pennsylvania and North Carolina found that loud television was a marker for household chaos.  The phenomenon was more a matter of noise pollution than content. This environment was seen more in disadvantaged households. It is different from the distraction generated by tablets and cell phones, and the way that those devices inhibit interactions.

Dr. Christakis: “[T]echnology can queue up situations for parent-child interactions” and narrow socioeconomic divides.

Dr. Coyne: Dr. Coyne has investigated this in adolescents, but not yet in young children.

Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair: Researchers need to talk with teachers to capture their perspective on the differences between screen-based and classroom learning and children’s responses to those differences.  The instant, personal rewards and stimulation provided to children by their screen interactions differ from their slower, more frustrating experiences among 16-30 peers in a classroom.  Teachers worry about their ability to inspire their students to imagine their next topic sentences rather than simply look them up online. Children’s capacity for deep play, persistence, and the patience to learn are at risk.  Young interview subjects are expressing anger, sadness, loneliness, and frustration as they struggle to capture their parents’ attention

Audience Comment: There is an important difference between talking about the youngest children (0-18 months) and 3-4-year-olds.  “When children are at an age where they understand what they’re seeing on the screen … there is a lot more ability for them to learn from that, but the very youngest children, they are seeing lights and movement but they don’t have the context.  They don’t understand what those things mean.” Research has identified an association between lower socioeconomic status and earlier (and more hours of) screen viewing.

Dr. Coyne: Discussion of chat in this age group is lacking.  Note, for example, what Dr. Kirkorian said about how the context around media use can promote shared family activities.