Digital tech can offer rich opportunities for child development, study says

Although it has been argued that under-threes should not have any screen time at all, research has found that digital tech can offer "rich opportunities" for young children's development.

A two-year study, Toddlers, Tech and Talk , funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and led by researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), working with Lancaster, Queen's Belfast, Strathclyde and Swansea universities, looked at children's interactions with everything from Amazon Alexa to Ring doorbells, in diverse communities across the UK, to find out how tech was influencing 0- to three-year-olds' early talk and literacy.

It examined how children use technology with parents or by themselves, whether taking photos and videos, using learning apps and playing games, listening and singing to songs, talking about favourite characters, or chatting on video calls.

The researchers found that children were not only interacting with smart devices and appliances when very young, but also that digital tech could have benefits for language development and other skills.

"The evidence generated through this study suggests that young children's digital activity often involves sensory exploration through touch, vision, hearing, movement and embodied cognition," the report said.

"In short, very young children are often feeling, thinking and moving when they engage with digital media, which is integrated seamlessly in many homes as part of everyday life.

"Although parents recognise the many benefits of tech for children's development, they balance this with concern that too much tech is detrimental to their child."

The report described how video calls created "rich opportunities" in multilingual households for children to learn words and phrases from across languages, and about the cultures of relatives overseas.

"Through these digitally mediated conversations, very young children ... develop the capacity to switch seamlessly between languages," promoting "cognitive growth" and "forging loving relationships" with relatives, the report said.

The study, which surveyed 1,400 parents in the UK, including 40 case studies in family homes, with 20 education professionals interviewed, also looked at families' TV habits, and found "several parents mentioned that their child had learned specific words and phrases when watching certain programmes intently".

It added that for some parents, watching TV or listening to music together "offer opportunities for parents and children to forge and cherish shared experiences which sediment over time into strong affective bonds".

The report said that even in homes where the TV was on in the background all day, "each young case study child appeared to occupy themselves with a wide range of play and learning activities in the same room ... and paid very little attention to the TV", with a 25-month-old girl in whose home CBeebies was on, whenever at home, showing "highly developed skills with a wide range of traditional play resources both with and without her mother's help".

"Many parents" reported their child aged under three had learned signing online, the report said, with one child trying to use signing to tell Google Home what they wanted, before gradually learning that "smart home devices respond to very clearly enunciated words".

At the same time, children too young to have "clear diction" were learning through observation to manipulate smart devices in other ways, such as tapping, the report said.

Researchers hope their findings will be used to inform policy and good practice, with parents agreeing there was a need for greater protection of children's privacy and security.

Rosie Flewitt, Professor a professor of early childhood communication at MMU, said: "Parents are highly aware of opportunities and tensions around their children's use of digital technology. They balance beneficial opportunities for their children to communicate with others, play and learn, with concerns over possible damaging effects of overuse."