I was recently approached by a young mother who was harbouring the question of whether she should introduce her six yo to electronic gadgets such as a tablet or a laptop.
She has raised her child with minimal screen time while maximising sensory exposure. Experiences of exploring performing art forms and sporting activities, including regular unstructured play time in the apartment garden with other children of similar age have been the other staples of the child’s weekly rhythm.
Her question was coming from a place of anxiety induced from parental peer pressure and some degree of FOMO in her daughter’s developmental journey. Below is a gist of my counsel.
Your six yo belongs to a generation of digital natives and hence will pick up applicational usage of technology in no time whenever she is introduced to it. The delay in introduction is not going to define her ability to learn. On the contrary, the learning curve might be steeper the later she starts.
Extrapolating from the example of learning to write, my experience as an early educator has been that children who picked up the pencil to learn writing the alphabet by age five, six or even seven were at no disadvantage as against other children who had already been introduced to the skill early on. They were able to master the letters in less time, and sometimes pick up the nuances of cursive letter formations with greater accuracy. This, of course, was possible with the foundation of their fine motor skills having been sufficiently activated through plenty of activities in the preceding years. Similarly, any child who is cognitively stimulated and has their innate inquisitiveness intact, should not have trouble picking up how to use a device. And what to do once on the device is never a worry! :)
Do keep in mind that once you place a gadget in her hand, the time spent on it will be carved out of her present schedule. If the trade-off is acceptable to all parties concerned, and you can define/evolve clear guidelines of when, where, how much and what-for to use (the device), please go ahead and give it a try.
Also, when a child is not doing something structured, she is growing in some other way, which we may not always fathom. We do not need to be paranoid on maximising learning through everything a child does.
To my mind, there seems no real need for a child to access electronic devices for academic work till they enter middle school, unless the school has explicit requirements. However, having a conversation with the teachers in school and knowing what is their take on introduction to technology and the possible recommended contexts for usage may help be more in sync with the classroom and the current times. Many concepts are fun or easier to learn when done in an audio visual format. Then, some children learn better using more than one medium or through a mode different from the conventional classroom format.
Fear of wandering on the internet or app-hopping, getting exposed to undesirable content on social media or getting addicted to the screen and not being able to put it away are also there. Yes, those are real fears besides several others. However, from a long term view, it is desirable for some difficult experiences to happen and allow room to learn from them while you as a parent are available to help, instead of curating a perfectly sheltered life. Then, when a child is away from the scaffolding of parents’ constant guidance and vigilance in older/teen years, they hopefully will have confidence to navigate these challenges without getting overwhelmed, and fearful of reaching out to you for support.
Children (and all of us grown-ups) thrive from a sense of belonging to our peer group (and community) through shared interests, activities, experiences and contexts. It will be prudent to stay alert to signs of alienation from peer groups exhibited by the child due to our stand on any matter. Keep channels of communication open and plenty of room to discuss and renegotiate.
That said, be bold and choose what works for you and your family.
If you want your child to be a tech explorer (being savvy yourself or being a tech phobe), embrace that with suitable boundaries and safety mechanisms.
If you want to be a purist, and keep devices out for as long as possible, go ahead and run your experiment with joy! There is nothing to lose. Steve Jobs is known to have kept his children away from devices, specifically the iPad. What did they do instead? Or the more pertinent question perhaps is, what would you and your kid like to do instead? Be creative, find your own engagements and explore what makes you curious.
Of course, there is the sweet space in between, where you want to use access to an electronic gadget as a limited dosage privilege, a fun weekly ritual together or a tool to make some aspects of life easier.
I will not get into the negative impacts of unregulated / excessive screens on young children as that scientific literature can be easily dug out from the internet as a personal side-quest.
Whatever choice one makes in their journey as a parent, it is important to not judge the choices made by others and allow room for a perspective there, so that we and / or our child do not fester a sense of superiority or the opposite in our heads. We can all have different ways of leading our lives, however these need not be classified as better or worse, and just be left at ‘different.’ And if possible, a respect for others’ reasons to choose what they do.
I would greatly love to hear where you lie on this spectrum and how you find your balance and navigate any challenges that get thrown your way.
