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The American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) has revised its guidelines on screen/television exposure for infants to allow for the indoctrination of 18-month-old children, from its earlier recommendation of 24 months and older:
The American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) has announced new screen time guidelines for children aged up to two. It had recommended that children have no screen time before the age of two. But it now says children aged over 18 months can use video chat with family, and 18-month to five-year-olds can watch "high quality" programmes with parents. However, it also says physical activity and face-to-face interaction should be prioritised.
[...] Dr Steiner-Adair also called for more research into the benefits of educational apps, describing them as an "unregulated" industry. "I haven't seen who is developing the measures of learning for young children - what is actually going on?" she said. "What we do know is the toddler brain lights up for learning language the most when they are being spoken to in real life, face-to-face, by a caring adult. I would like to see more of how they assess the actual learning that goes on between 18-24 months [via screens] and how they compare it to learning from being read to by an adult from a real book."
Create a Family Media Plan here.
Media and Young Minds (open, DOI: 10.1542/peds.2016-2591) (DX)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday October 28 2016, @12:15AM
This is true, whether or not the gadget is a tablet or smartphone. I am not a parent, but many of my friends are, and they've fallen into the trap of distracting their kids with kid-oriented phone apps. Take away the phone, and the kid starts screaming.
Back when I was a kid, when I did anything like that, my parents smacked me upside the head and threw me outdoors on my scooter or bike before making sure to lock all doors and windows for a few hours. I'm sure they were chuckling at my expense inside while they heard the occasional attempted opening of a side window, but then again that was back when you could ride your bike across town and knock on a friend's door only to have their parent delighted to see you play with their kid rather than call CPS on your parents.
Gadgets are worse for kids than TV is, because TV took a lot more control out of their hands. Back in the days before this 1000 channels nonsense there would be plenty of times that even every channel of cable TV would suck, but now everything is portable kiddy-crack with rounded corners.
Even Steve Jobs, the enabler-in-chief of recent gadgetdom, was notorious for keeping his own kids away from gadgets [nytimes.com] and even my own moron parents' decision whether or not to buy me a NES was a weighty one, because they already knew -- They'd read 1984 and saw THX-1138 and knew instantly that kind of shit was bad news.