What can an iPad teach an infant? Not much, at least according to most research. And now the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has filed a complaint with the Fedteral Trade Commission against Fisher Price for claiming otherwise.
According to the group, Fisher Price advertises that its “Laugh & Learn” apps, which have been downloaded more than 2.8 million times, can teach babies spatial skills, numbers, language or motor skills, but there’s really no evidence to back this up.
The campaign filed a similar complaint regarding the Disney-owned Baby Einstein videos in 2009, and the company offered a refund to anyone who’d bought the products in the five years prior.
Which all raises the question: Exactly who thinks that their child is going to learn basic spatial, language or motor skills from a screen?
Mind you, it’s not just salesmen pushing technology as the key to learning. Look no further than City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s Web site, where you can see her plan for “reducing the digital divide” by providing “Cradle to Career Tech Education” for “kids at every income level.”
Quinn, with her plan for an iPad for every student, is only the most recent example of a politician pushing the “digital divide” as a major reason that the poor and working class find themselves at a disadvantage. In June, President Obama announced a program to expand Internet access to schools rural areas in an effort to “level the playing field” for these kids.
OK, there’s certainly good reason to expand the use of technology for children at certain ages and in certain settings – but the politicians are implying that tech is a cure-all for kids in low-income homes.
Alas, there’s little evidence for that. In May, the National Bureau of Economic Research released results on “the largest-ever field experiment that randomly provides free home computers to students.” The researchers concluded: “Although computer ownership and use increased substantially, we find no effects on any educational outcomes, including grades, test scores, credits earned, attendance and disciplinary actions.”
And while the pols are worried about getting more technology into the hands of poor kids, upper-middle class families are worried about how to reduce “screen time” for their children.
A school in Silicon Valley that serves the children of people like the chief technology officer at eBay has no screens in its classrooms. In a 2011 interview, another parent who worked at Google told The New York Times: “I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school. . . The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.”
Educated parents not only significantly restrict the hours their kids can spend on a computer or tablet, they also go out of our way to buy toys that don’t have all the electronic bells and whistles. Toymakers “Melissa and Doug,” for one, managed to sell enough wooden puzzles and baking sets last year to earn $325 million in revenue. The most sought-after item for elite suburban preschool classrooms these days is wooden . . . blocks.
There’s a reason for that, says Geula Zamist, who directs the early-childhood center at Agudath Israel in Caldwell, NJ. “What we know about children’s learning and what we know about brain development is that they need to be working with all their senses. Nothing that’s so one dimensional as a screen is going to make that happen.”
Kids are learning, she says, when they are “touching and feeling and building and experimenting.”
Aurelie, the mom of a near-4-year-old in Weehawken, NJ, says that she has a “love-hate relationship with the iPad” when it comes to her son. On the one hand, a number of apps that have helped him learn to write letters and numbers and sound out words; he even knows where all 50 states are.
On the other hand, she says, “There is something troubling about too much screen time rather than face-to-face contact.” Like many well-educated parents, she tries to limit her son’s time with the device to no more than an hour a day (maybe more if they’re eating in a restaurant).
“Like a lot of parents,” she says, she longs “for more simple time when we grew up, not with this technology in your face all the time.” Her son’s current favorite toy is “a very basic wooden train set with no batteries.” There’s nothing like it for “sparking creativity.”
Indeed, there’s no app for that.