YOUNG CHILDREN spend numerous time utilizing screens: watching tv, taking part in on touchscreen apps, or facetiming with grandparents. The truth is, analysis on international display time pointers has discovered that round 75% of youngsters aged as much as two years use some type of digital media day by day, and 64% of youngsters aged two to 5 years use it for greater than an hour a day.
Digital media is a part of youngsters’s lives and is ready to remain that approach. This implies it’s essential to grasp easy methods to use this expertise so youngsters can profit from it, and easy methods to maximize its instructional potential.
A key approach to do that is for folks and different adults to make use of digital media along with youngsters. This is called co-use, and might vary from mother and father actively discussing the media content material with their youngsters to easily watching a present collectively.
Our latest analysis with colleagues has investigated how adults utilizing digital media with youngsters aged as much as six impacts youngsters’s means to be taught from digital media.
We carried out a meta-analysis: a wide-ranging examination of current analysis research to determine developments and themes.
We discovered that, general, parent-child co-use is useful for supporting younger youngsters’s studying from digital media. Adults utilizing digital media along with youngsters might help them perceive and relate to the digital content material higher. Our analysis chimes with different research which recommend that, as an example, mother and father utilizing digital media with youngsters can increase language abilities.
Our findings recommend that by being actively engaged, adults might help their youngsters profit from the tutorial advantages of digital media. This might contain one-to-one interactions directing their little one’s consideration to the tutorial content material and relating it to real-world conditions.
Listed below are some sensible ideas for folks to maximise the advantages of co-using digital media with their youngsters.
BE AN ACTIVE PARTICIPANT
Don’t simply sit subsequent to your little one whereas they use digital media — interact with them. Ask questions on what they’re watching or taking part in, and encourage them to assume critically in regards to the content material. For instance, if they’re watching a video, you would possibly ask “what do you assume will occur subsequent?” or “why do you assume the character did that?”
‘SCAFFOLD’ LEARNING
Scaffolding is a educating method during which mother and father can present assist to assist their little one perceive new ideas, then allow them to use that idea by themselves. Throughout co-use, you possibly can scaffold by explaining troublesome phrases, relating on-screen content material to real-life experiences, or serving to your little one apply what they’ve realized from the media to different day-to-day conditions.
CHOOSE HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT
Not all digital media is created equal. Search for instructional content material designed to show particular abilities, whether or not it’s language, maths, or social-emotional studying.
An academic app ought to have a transparent studying aim, embody issues for youngsters to unravel, and provide clear and particular suggestions to assist youngsters’s studying. It needs to be offered with an entertaining narrative.
Apps and exhibits that encourage interplay and problem-solving are significantly useful. Different analysis means that the high quality of the content material performs a vital function in how a lot youngsters be taught from it.
ENCOURAGE DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION
After participating with digital media, encourage your little one to speak about what they watched or performed. This helps reinforce the fabric and permits you to handle any misunderstandings. Reflection helps youngsters make connections between what they’ve realized and their very own lives, deepening their understanding. As an illustration, if a present teaches about penguins, you possibly can observe up by discussing if you happen to would possibly see penguins on the zoo, or which books your little one has learn that they seem in.
ADAPT YOUR APPROACH AS YOUR CHILD GROWS
As youngsters grow old, they might want much less direct assist throughout media use — however co-use stays useful. Older youngsters would possibly profit from discussions that problem them to assume critically in regards to the media they eat. It may assist them discover associated actions, reminiscent of researching a subject they noticed in a documentary or creating one thing impressed by what they watched.
BALANCE SCREEN TIME WITH OTHER ACTIVITIES
Digital media might help youngsters be taught. But it surely’s necessary to steadiness display time with different actions that assist improvement, reminiscent of studying, taking part in outdoors, and interacting with others face-to-face. Our examine emphasizes that for digital media to kind a part of a well-rounded day, households ought to attempt to co-use it with their youngsters.
Jamie Lingwood is a senior lecturer in Psychology on the Liverpool Hope College whereas Gemma Taylor is a lecturer in Psychology on the College of Salford. Lingwood receives funding from Instructional Endowment Basis whereas Taylor has beforehand acquired funding from the ESRC.
