To tell you iPads are actually good for kids

[PennyRa]

This is something I researched extensively for my thesis in technology and education. iPads, tablets, phones, they all show positive effects on their development. Yes, including social.

I've seen a lot of anti screens on here recently but there is nothing wrong with kids in buggys on tablets, kids in cafes on iPads.

There are obviously caveats, some content is bad. It's on a scale but it's easy to see; a child playing Duolingo is vastly better than candy crush, a child watching How it's made is vastly better than cocomelon. Also the content needs to be locked and monitored for safety. However, tailored content can be better than a teacher.

I actually think the explosion in mental health problems in children is because of the increase in screen use.

Lots of knowledgable people agree with you. But OP knows better.

How many kids were in your sample to ascertain this? I imagine watching hours of Royal Institution lectures is niche even for an adult let alone enough children to add weight to your analysis.

The problem with most research is that it is usually funded by someone or other...

I wish iPads and iPhones had never been invented.

there's this:

"these results suggest that the impact of increased screen time on the prevalence of mental health problems among young people is likely to be negligible or small"

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735821000647

it seems like it would be a very hard thing to measure though, and as OP says, dependant a lot on what you watch/read.

Pathetic isnt it.

Where has op said that then?

No, no, darling, you can't have Peppa again but there's a perfectly lovely lecture on the science of gun shot residue analysis.

I've a DC with autism and at some of the parenting courses I've done in relation to asd this comes up time and time again. Many parents of children on the spectrum have found that screen time has really helped their children with speech and communication skills.

Not sure why you are worried about “doxxing” yourself- I thought that the whole point of PhD theses was that they had to be published?

Well, 18 hours after posting and still nothing. How incredibly surprising.

Loved 'I'm not going to dox myself' 😂
Imagine the thesis, with 'an old paper' and 'lots of people' in place of actual citations. Couldn't be putting names to research, could we, that's doxxing!

You know what’s even better than iPads though? Minding your business. You buy your kid an iPad and enjoy your research knowing you’ve done the ‘good’ thing. And I’ll just talk to my kids when we go out to eat together. We’ll both be doing what we think is good.

Maybe OP learned how to do research from a You Tube video?

Given OP's lack of supporting evidence I don't think she'll be publishing any time soon!

I’d also be really interested to see how that thesis research looked - it ‘can be’ better than a teacher, hours of lectures are better than hours of unboxing videos, phones are good for all types of development. How did you undertake this type of research?

A child watching Royal Institute lectures has basically no educational benefits. I mean look at uni - we have primary and secondary reading assigned, then we attend the lecture, including opportunities for questions at the end, then we attend seminars to discuss and understand the information. Sitting staring at a iPad lectures you couldn’t possibly access? No, that has no educational benefits. Otherwise teachers would just stick a video of a lecture on and sit behind their desk relaxing.

Ah, Its You

The poster who homeschools their incredibly gifted primary school child, 7 days a week. The child that is far to clever to ever do GCSE's because to them it would be 'pointless'.

Careful op, You are giving all your homeschooling secrets away now thhrow them in front of an ipad

I’d be interested to hear what level of degree your thesis was submitted for, OP. Was it Bachelors/Masters/Doctorate? And the title of the course too, please?

Khan Academy kids is a free app for iPad. Loads of content. Pretty sure you can change language too.

Oh one of those!

Positive effects on development compared to what, sitting doing nothing?

Or are you trying to claim that watching How It's Made is as positive for a child's development as building a lego model from instructions, or creating a den in the garden, or riding a bike in the woods.

Most young children only consume media on tablets. They don't often create anything, solve a problem, work out how do something, take turns with peers, exercise, socialise, or build gross & fine motor skills.

Older children who can play more complex games may employ & develop some useful skills but the flip side is screen addiction.

Don’t know where to start. Communications scholars have long de bunked screen time myths and drawn out the nuances of our relationships with media and technology. Evidence is complex, neither suited for euphoria nor panic - and decades of evidence in communication studies show that media “effects” aren’t linear nor causal.

iPads are neither “good” nor “bad”. That’s not how our relationships with tech works. The context of use; the content being consumed; the broad overall contexts of the child all matter.

id love to link to my faculty staff page but I obviously can’t. So - instead May I suggest reading Parenting for a Digital Future and work by Sonia Livingstone and colleagues on the Global Kids Online project?

There's no such thing as them being "good" or "bad". It all depends. It depends basically on what they're being used for, how the user uses them, etc. If someone is spending hours per day watching inane youtube videos of fluffy cats or playing mindless games like Candy Crush, then clearly that's not good.

But lots of games have very valuable educational value, such as Minecraft which is very creative and educational, especially when you come to create your own Worlds, create your own interactive games, etc. No one would whinge if your son spent a few hours playing with Lego, but Minecraft is basically the same virtually, in fact it's better as you have unlimited "bricks", world sizes, etc.

Even the likes of FIFA can be useful in terms of "managing" your money (coins), to earn them, strategically buy/sell players, etc. My son used to spent more time on playing the transfer market than actually playing football on it - identifying players who may increase in value over the year, etc.

As for googling, etc., he was always looking at different things, just out of curiosity/nosiness.

We've always been a bit worried about his screen time, but we've always made sure we know what he was doing on it, had comprehensive parental controls in place so he couldn't watch unsuitable content, buy things with real money, etc. and insist on him playing/watching in a room with us instead of being in his bedroom alone.

We needn't have worried. He's just about to graduate with a first degree in Mathematics, and is a mature and well rounded adult now, already secured a good job in a blue chip firm that he starts in the Summer. All his online activity/gaming has given him a massive amount of knowledge and he is his Uni college quiz team captain in inter-college quizzes.

By the way, he's not read a book since primary school, yet still got grade 9's in his GCSE English Language and Literature, as well as grade 9s in History and Geography - all "traditional" subjects where you'd think reading books was essential - he got those grades by watching online videos!

How are you posting on MN without a device?

I’m not sure how you expected anyone to agree with you OP. We’ve all experienced the opposite. It’s even more far fetched when you refuse to tell us what you were studying, where and to what level. Anyone can write a thesis.