Childcare Experts Warn Parents to Control Their Kids’ Tablet Usage

A group of experts on child welfare were speaking at a panel regarding how parents needed to monitor how often their children are using their tablets. This is a comparatively new field of study since the inception of the tablet two years ago. Even then, Warren Buckleitner, who is the editor of Children’s Technology Review said, you can’t pull it from their hands. Another speaker Rosemarie Truglio from the children’s TV producers Sesame Workshop advised for a child’s balanced use of technology as it maybe fosters some things but at the same time, it would dampen other things. On the other hand, Lisa Guernsey, author of ‘How Electronic Media – From Baby Videos to Educational Software – Affects Your Young Child’ said that things are bad when your children cannot focus on your conversation with them for 30 minutes without looking at a screen.

Truglio went to to say that researchers have proven that children need that adult-child interaction in addition to electronic interaction and parents were urged to not use tablets and other technology based items as “digital babysitters”, a trend highlighted by Nielsen, a market research firm. According to the results of the survey conducted by the firm, there are a few ways in which children used tablets. 75% of the children said that they play downloaded games on their tablets followed by 57% who used the tablet for educational purposes. 55% of the children said that the portable tablet could be used as entertainment during travel, followed by 43% who watched TV shows/movies, 41% who used the tablet at restaurants/events and a drastic drop to 15% for children who used the tablet to communicate with friends and family. Apparently that part of tablet usage only kicks in later. Do you think that tablets would have a positive impact on your children? Drop us a comment with your thoughts on the subject.

Pradeep Chandrasekaran
Categories: Tablets
Tags: children