So Young, and So Gadgeted

New York Times
June 12, 2008
Basics
So Young, and So Gadgeted
By WARREN BUCKLEITNER

EVERYONE knows that babies crawl before they walk, and that tricycles come before two-wheelers. But at what age should children get their first cellphone, laptop or virtual persona?

These are new questions being faced by 21st-century parents, and there is no wisdom from the generations for guidance. You can’t exactly say to your teenager, “When I was a boy, I didn’t have an unlimited texting plan until I was in high school.”

Some parents eagerly provide their children with technology. “My 4-year-old has been on the Web since he could sit up,” said Samantha Morra, a mother of two from Montclair, N.J. “My 6-year-old has an iPod and wants a cellphone, although my husband and I aren’t sure who he’d call.”

Others, like Christine Jorgensen, a mother of three from Flemington, N.J., are more cautious. “I’m not a huge fan of flooding my children’s lives with the latest gadget,” Ms. Jorgensen said. “My children go online for schoolwork, but our computer is in my sight, and protected to the teeth.”

What’s the right approach? Studies of child development offer some middle ground. Long before the invention of the first microprocessor, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget identified four stages of cognitive development by watching his own children. His theories bring some logic to the debate about how to support your child’s growth with the latest technology.

AGES 0-2 Babies and toddlers cannot use a mouse until at least age 2 ½, and flat monitors do not offer much in the way of stimulation in Piaget’s first stage, “sensorimotor.” To work at this age, technology products must act like a busy-box, with lights or sounds that respond to a child’s actions. Toys like the Laugh and Learn 2-in-1 Learning Kitchen ($71, www.Fisher-Price.com), which has doors and switches for a baby to explore and a crawl-through doorway, fit well with this stage.

But even these activities should take a back seat to real experiences. It makes sense to stick to materials that squish in a child’s hand. Invest instead in a camcorder to catch those first steps.

AGES 3-5 “Preschoolers today are growing up in a digital world, and they see their parents using devices like cellphones and computers,” said Prof. Sandra Calvert, director of the Children’s Digital Media Center at Georgetown University. “They like to play with pretend cellphones as if it were the real thing.” This pretend-play is actually an important part of the Piaget “preoperational” stage, when children first understand that they can control the events on a flat screen.

This is an age when they can take real pictures with cameras like the V.Tech KidiZoom ($60, www.vtechkids.com), and can explore interactive versions of their favorite shows on PBS Kids (www.PBSKids.org) or Nickelodeon’s Noggin (www.noggin.com). For $10 a month, the subscription version of Noggin removes the ads, and the activities adjust to a child’s level.

A TV can be made interactive with the growing number of TV toys like ClickStart: My First Computer (www.leapfrog.com, $60), or video game consoles running games like Go, Diego, Go! Safari Rescue ($40, www.take2games.com, for Wii and PlayStation).

Portable game systems that can make it easier to wedge a wriggling preschooler into a car seat include a Leapster (www.Leapfrog.com, $60) or Nintendo DS, running software like Scholastic’s Animal Genius ($30, www.animalgeniusds.com).

All of these are well suited to this stage of development.

AGES 6-11 At the age a child can ride a bicycle comes the ability to search the Web, and the whole digital world starts to open up. Suddenly they are hooked on favorite video games and watching funny videos on YouTube. But Piaget labeled this stage “concrete operations” because children still have trouble with abstract ideas. Professor Calvert reminds parents that electronic devices should be used to “supplement rather than replace real experiences,” and encourages them to “make sure there’s an overall sense of balance” in activities during this stage of life.

This is a time when parents need to keep an eye on the screen and steer children toward good sites, like Club Penguin (www.clubpenguin.com), which introduces the notion of chatting and the online stand-ins known as avatars. It also teaches them that there is no free lunch online, and that paying members ($6 a month) can have a fancier igloo.

While video game consoles like the Wii and PlayStation have fewer gimmicks, they have been known to eat up large chunks of a childhood if used unmonitored in dark basements. Fortunately the number of games with redeeming qualities is growing. The just-released Pokémon Mystery Dungeon for the Nintendo DS can exercise reading skills, and Wii Fit has recently captured the curiosity of phys ed teachers. Wild Earth: African Safari (http://www.majescoentertainment.com) can turn a child into a wildlife photographer, and Boom Blox ($50, www.ea.com for Wii) and Lego Indiana Jones ($50, www.lucasarts.com for multiple platforms) are thick with collaborative problem-solving opportunities.

By age 10, many children can start editing videos and programming with software like M.I.T.’s Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu), a free download for Macintosh or Windows. Scratch lets children drag and drop routines that take the form of jigsaw puzzle pieces.

AGES 12 AND UP Besides being much harder to wake up, middle- and high-schoolers are reaching the cognitive functioning of an adult. They have entered Piaget’s “formal operational” stage, able to juggle synchronous streams of information from phones, MP3 players and laptops. Communicating with friends is on par with breathing, to the delight of your wireless provider.

In fact, cellphones are now more or less mandatory for children at this age. Besides providing a social advantage, phones can reduce parental stress in a crowded mall, get children in touch for homework help, serve as a call to dinner — and be withheld as punishment that really works.

Parenting skills for this age include reading phone bills. Lori McCoughey of Mahwah, N.J., a mother of two, saved $200 a month by switching to Verizon’s friends and family plan. There are also pay-as-you-go plans like those from Tracfone (www.tracfone.com). For $50, you get a working LG 225 camera phone, preloaded with 100 minutes. A meter counts down the remaining time.

Giving collegebound children their next digital prize, a laptop, while they are still in high school gives them time to set up their MP3 players, learn how to find Wi-Fi zones and write papers before they are on their own. They can also create portfolios on Google Page Creator (http://pages.google.com) to show off their accomplishments to college admissions offices or future employers.

If he were alive today, Piaget would probably advise parents that for a young child, everything — whether it has batteries or not — is a discovery waiting to happen. But toys work best when they are matched to a child’s level of development.