Health & Fitness
Are Apps Bad for Babies?
As tablets become more and more common in American households, we have begun to hear a lot of debate in the media over the effectiveness of educational apps for babies and toddlers. App developers claim that educational apps teach pre-readers basic literacy skills like letters, numbers, and colors. However, groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood maintain that these marketing claims have no basis in scientific evidence and that media use for children younger than two should be discouraged.
With the jury still out on the issue, what’s a parent to do? Your early literacy specialists at the Hennepin County Library have a few tips:
Use Screen Time as Together Time
Find out what's happening in Golden Valleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Though research still needs to be done on the effectiveness of apps with pre-readers, what we do know is that human interaction beats out any other educational tool. Just as you’ll hear us say in any of our storytimes, early literacy skills are learned best through reading, writing, singing, playing, and talking together, and the same goes for computer use. Here are Hennepin County Library’s tips on using technology together:
- Talk Together: Talk to your child about computer games and apps before, during, and after the technology experience.
- Sing Together: Connect what's happening on the screen with off-screen activities. Sing along to online fingerplays, rhymes & songs and continue singing long after the computer is turned off
- Read Together: Enjoy eBooks together just like traditional print books and let your child take the lead and talk about what's happening in the story.
- Write Together: Using touch screen devices that require point, swipe, and pincer grip motions to navigate can help children develop the fine motor skills necessary to write.
- Play Together: The best technology experiences for your child involve interactive activities rather than passive viewing. Encourage interaction by playing computer games or apps together with your child.
Find out what's happening in Golden Valleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Don’t Forget the Value of “Unplugged” Play
While spending some screen time with you can be fun and educational for your baby, it’s important developmentally to also provide plenty of unstructured, unplugged play time. In playing with objects of diverse shape and texture, your baby is a young scientist exploring the world with his or her five senses. And as your child gets a little older and starts to make believe, he or she exercises creativity and narrative skills and develops social and problem-solving skills with playmates and participating adults. This imaginative play stimulates young brains in ways that sitting mesmerized by a television or tablet screen cannot.More resources on technology use with young children can be found on our website. We are also offering weekly storytimes this fall where caregivers can learn more tips about developing early literacy skills. Register online or call 612-543-6375 to register.
