Has anybody seen the baby's iPad?

The 21st century is filled with technology. Almost anything you could do in 1990 you can do better now... with technology. In a generation so saturated with the latest and greatest technology it's no secret that those technologies will spill over into the family unit. Almost every child is itching for the time when their parents deem them old enough for an iPhone (and for some of them the wait is short, getting their own fancy iPhones or iPads in toddlerhood). With such an abundance of technology at
our fingertips one has to wonder how this new digital form of interpersonal communication is affecting our families and more specifically, our children.

Long gone are the days when you had to scream downstairs for a new roll of toilet paper. Now I can just text my husband, "Hey babe can you send Kye up with a new roll didn't realize we're out up here" and voila! A few minutes later up bounces my bubbly 4 year old with an armful of Charmin Ultra Soft. Parents can have conversations with the kids in the room and stay inconspicuous. I remember my own parents trying to ask each other questions in their own type of code (something like pig latin mixed with a few abbreviations) and we'd always be onto them and their agenda. Now I can text my husband "Hey wanna take the boys to Jungle Jump or are you not feeling up to it?" and the kids are none the wiser if we decide against it. Families can keep in contact much easier now as well. No longer are they left waiting and wondering why the bus home from the football game hasn't arrived yet. Now they're connected fully and instantly with their children through cellular phones. Students and teachers alike have kept in contact with parents and authorities through tragic disasters and having a cell phone at the ready could save precious moments when emergency services needed to be contacted. The positive ways that technology use impacts the teens and adults in the family unit are innumerable, but such saturation will inevitably spill over to the younger members of the household.

One of the many games in the iPhone app "Monkey
Preschool Lunchbox," the first app I ever downloaded
just for my kids. 3 kids later it's the best $.99 I've ever spent!

I have 3 boys (4, 3, and 15 months) and will admit, they use technology rather frequently. I had to password protect my iPhone by the time my oldest was around 9 months old because he already knew how to swipe the little tab over to unlock it. In the beginning it was just imitation and the occasional time when he managed to swipe it from me while I wasn't looking. Soon after I started seeing a multitude of apps geared towards babies and toddlers and wondered to myself what they were all about. Could they really teach my child something or are they a parental cop-out for actually teaching your child something? It wasn't long before I found out I was pregnant with our 2nd (our oldest was still very young!) and was moping around exhausted, sick, and with an infant to take care of. I decided that I'd try to buy myself a little bit of rest and downloaded a child-geared app.The app did what I'd hoped, and kept him entertained so that I could sit down for at least 10 minutes without having to chase after a newly crawling and curious infant, but I also started noticing that he was getting things right! I only handed over my phone a few minutes a day to try and get dishes done without a child in the dishwasher (oh yeah, that happens, often!) or to give my aching pregnant self a few minutes to rest, but even in that tiny amount of time he went from enthusiastically slapping at the bright colors on the screen to purposefully selecting fruits and putting together puzzles. By one year old he could do almost everything in the app designed for children aged 2-5 (mind, we've since discovered that he's a little ahead of the learning curve for his age, which might have contributed to his quick learning and technological capabilities). It was then that I started to change my tune on technology and toddlers and started to explore other ways that parents could productively use technology with their kids. I am a very nurturing parent by nature and have always kept my babies close and utilized attachment parenting, but I am absolutely not a natural born teacher. I get so frustrated and my kids feed off of that. Instead of just handing over my iPhone or Kindle Fire to get them out of my hair, they were learning colors, numbers, letters, and shapes while I got necessary things done around the house. 30 minutes of technology helped my oldest know all of his colors by 18 months. He could count to 15 by 2. Now at 4 he's blowing through pre-k without an issue.

This is the iPotty by CTA Digital
Yes, that's a potty training chair
complete with an iPad stand...
don't forget the splash guard!
iPad not included (bummer!)

Where technology gets a bad wrap with kids is when it's used irresponsibly and excessively. The American Academy of Pediatrics actually recommends that children under two years old should not be watching any television at all. I don't know many parents that stick to that, we all have those days where you really just need to put on a movie and save your sanity, but if a television can have negative impacts on the development of your child, one must wonder the effects of extensive technology use in the form of touch screen devices (iPhone, iPad, Kindles and other tablets). With iTunes stocking more than 700 kid-geared apps by the end of 2011 (and that number has most certainly grown, if not doubled, by now) it's easy to entertain your children with a simple screen. While a few minutes a day can be harmful (though that is debatable, depending on the study and person you speak to), excessive technology use can be damaging physically (the overstimulation of bright and colorful digital games can affect sleep in toddlers, which is closely linked to overall health), socially, and developmentally. With technology constantly changing and this kind of complete technological immersion being relatively new, there aren't any definitive studies on the matter. Lots of studies show a negative correlation between technology and the learning pathways of young children and some not so much.

How has technology impacted your own family? Do your kids use touch screen devices? Do you think it benefits or hinders their abilities?



Resources:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/20/no-screen-time-for-2-year-olds-do-ipad-apps-count/
http://www.swparents.com/article/is-your-ipad-bad-for-baby-what-you-need-to-know-about-toddlers-and-technology/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-rosen/how-much-technology-shoul_b_3142227.html