Technology is great, not using it is even better

There is a proliferation of apps targeting worried parents, financially strapped child care centers, and even state agencies looking to decrease the delays that Covid-19 and life in general has wreaked on our preschool aged children. The belief is that if we can find a perfect curriculum, box it in an iPhone, iPad or tablet and make sure that toddlers to four-year-olds engage with the app consistently, then perhaps those delays will fade away electronically.

I was scrolling my early childhood education groups on FB the other day and came across more than a dozen requests from owners and directors, teachers and parents, asking for the panacea in tech form to help attract more families to their centers and to increase and speed up development.

Sorry folks! there is no panacea in tech form. The small gains you may find today will likely end up being large losses later on when we realize that by keeping these children focused on small screens when they were small themselves created older people with many more issues than the ones they were facing when they were young. If a child needs to learn to count, then counting out potatoes in the grocery store and helping dad put them into the bag is a real life math lesson AND a bonding experience between father and child. If a child has not mastered letter recognition, then pointing to letters while walking through the neighborhood serves the same dual purpose AND the added benefit of fresh outdoor air and getting familiar with the neighborhood for later on when the child walks to school alone.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has put out some strong recommendations for screen time. None for children under two and less than an hour a day for children two through five years of age. We need to start taking these recommendations seriously and eliminate the need for screen time in child care and preschool. Nothing beats learning information about the world around you like actually getting out into the world around you. Nothing beats learning about the people around you like being with the people around you. Screen time should be shared time, at home, and used in meaningful and appropriate ways. Just like young children are too young to handle a car, cook on the stove, or take their own medications, young children are too young to be left to using apps and tech on their own and for extended periods of time.

Finally, we need to remember what is most important about the first five years of development: it is about creating meaningful relationships and understanding how to ingratiate ourselves into the lives of those around us. We use the first five years to understand the world into which we were born and to become socially and emotionally ready for what that world has in store for us. I promise you that the real world is not 1280 X 720 pixels.