Digital Content Tag

07 Apr

Posted at 17:31h in Children, Content, Kids, Media, Research, Technology

A wise and dear professor once told me, “The medium is not the message. The message is the message.” And when television was the medium, that was certainly true. But is that still the case with the proliferation of interactive media for children taking hold? Does the interactivity of the medium outweigh the content being delivered on it?

In the podcast series, Chasing Life, Dr. Sanjay Gupta delves into the science behind the impact of technology on our brains. This particular episode, Inside a Lab Studying Toddlers and Touchscreens,” explores the impact of interactive touchscreen technologies on very young children. Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and director of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, explains how his research is finding that children between the ages of 18 and 24 months struggle to disengage from an app in comparison to a traditional toy. This knowledge triggers questions for both parents of young children as well as the technology companies that create these apps. What can parents and tech companies do to prevent adverse effects on children’s young brains from this relatively new technology?

As a parent myself, I see in my teenagers how the interactivity and stimulation of technology keeps them fully engaged and immersed. And in my role as Director of Content Research and Evaluation at Fluent Research, I help technology and media companies understand how children and parents experience apps, games, and other products so designers and producers who create digital content for kids do so with their wellbeing in mind. This is more important than ever as technology continues to evolve and draw in the attention of a generation. As Dr. Christakis says, “Every program is educational. The question is, ‘What is it teaching?’” We need to do better for our children.

By Allison Caplovitz, PhD

21 Jul

Posted at 23:49h in Children, Kids, Media, Methodology, Qualitative Research, Research

Digital contexts are becoming more prevalent in children’s lives than ever before, fueled in part by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to move various aspects of children’s lives online*. Since human development is a holistic and dynamic process between the developing person and his or her context* and children develop in positive and healthy ways when their strengths are combined with the strengths of their contexts, we have an opportunity as researchers to bring this framework to the changing landscape of children’s lives.

What has become apparent in our company’s recent requests for proposals, is that there is a lack of fit between the knowledge and experience of many designers and the developmental needs and abilities of children. This lack of fit signals a fundamental problem, and an opportunity, given the growing presence of digital technology as a context for children’s development. The virtual world is a new frontier and there has been a land rush of companies looking to stake their claim flag.  This rapid growth has seemed to create holes in the capabilities of these frontier companies. More precisely, the talent needed to design for adults does not adequately translate to designing for kids. In the absence of comprehensive knowledge about child development, current designers may err in using themselves or those close to them as the markers of success and/or “normality”.

“We all have a blind spot and it’s shaped exactly like us.” – Junto Diaz, Author

Short of extensive training in child development, designers can utilize a few central rules of thumb when designing for kids. Keeping these in mind will go a long way to minimizing, or at least acknowledging, our biases:

1) All humans are whole. Sometimes by necessity, we need to zoom in and focus on a specific part of children’s development, such as their literacy level or their ability to swipe on a tablet. But it is important to understand those parts within the context of the whole developing person. We then need to further adjust our lens to view that person as situated within a dynamic relationship with his or her context.

2) There is no ‘typical’ child. Much of what we know and have studied about children is approximations that are gathered from information that has been averaged over large groups from mostly Westernized societies. Expectations about children should be considered approximations that can get you close to understanding.

3) All households are different. A common mistake is to view children’s development as unfolding in a vacuum. Rules and expectations differ greatly by household and are driven by cultural, situational, and practical factors. Just because a child is developmentally capable of something does not mean that they will do it.

4) Child development is less linear than it appears. Because development is an iterative process, there are often regressions that ebb and flow with progressions. Development of a skill or competency may occur steadily over time or rapidly in spurts. While many abilities get better over time, it is not always the case.  Some abilities, like attention span increase gradually over time during childhood while other capacities, like learning a new language, decrease over time. Other aspects of development, like identity development, are latent during younger years and then rapidly develop.

If there is one mantra that we could recommend to all designers and those thinking about how to best support kids, we would strongly offer this:

“Every [child] is like all other [children], some other [children], and no other [child].” – Kluckhohn & Murray, Anthropologist & Psychologist

By Dan and Amy Warren.

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1*Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children. UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, Florence, 2022.

*Lerner, R. M., Lerner, J. V., Almerigi, J., Theokas, C., Phelps, E., Gestsdóttir, S. Naudeau, S., Jelicic, H., Alberts, A. E., Ma, L., Smith, L. M., Bobek, D. L., Richman-Raphael, D., Simpson, I., Christiansen, E. D., & von Eye, A. (2005). Positive youth development, participation in community youth development programs, and community contributions of fifth-grade adolescents: Findings from the first wave of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development. Journal of Early Adolescence, 25(1), 17-71.

 

10 May

Posted at 22:51h in Children, Content, Kids, Media, Methodology, Research

Today, the most cutting-edge thinking about human development is holistic, dynamic, and emphasizes the relationship between the developing person and his or her context.  This thinking is an important evolution; a stark contrast to outmoded ideas that see people as something to be molded by the context like a piece of clay or “filled” like an empty receptacle.

The Positive Youth Development (PYD) perspective is one such holistic and dynamic view, based on the ideas that:1

   1. All young people have strengths (because of the potential for developmental change across the lifespan), and

   2. All contexts have strengths as well. These strengths are resources that can be used to promote positive youth development.

   3. If the strengths of young people are combined with the strengths of the context, then positive, healthy development occurs.

PYD emerges out of this dynamic relationship and is evidenced by the presence in young people of “Five C’s”:  Competence, Confidence, Connection, Caring, and Character.

Digital contexts are becoming more prevalent in children’s lives than ever before, fueled in part by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to move various aspects of children’s lives online.2  The growing presence of digital technology as a context for children’s development requires that we think deeply about its impact, identify its strengths, and consider how best to combine those strengths with the strengths of young people to promote their positive development.

Nutrient-rich digital contexts have many of the same features as those found in the physical world.  Both are guided by a deep understanding of children’s development, behavior, and natural play patterns.3  Both also recognize social interactions as the core of what it means to be human, seeking to enhance and extend (not obstruct) human connection.4  In turn, both types of contexts empower children to be agents in their own development, to make choices and course-corrections, to be generative and creative.5

We know digital contexts support positive development when children exhibit these six positive behaviors:3

    1. Communication (sharing ideas, caring about and interpreting the work of others)

    2. Collaboration (turning shared ideas into shared action)

    3. Community Building (contributing to the good of the community)

    4. Content Creation (using tools to create new artifacts)

    5. Creativity (being flexible and imaginative)

    6. Choices of Conduct (making decisions based on one’s personal sense of morality)

Taken together, these behaviors can be used to guide the design of developmentally-mindful digital contexts and, as well, to evaluate and revamp existing digital contexts.

When we take a positive developmental approach to digital contexts, we recognize that the quality and potential benefits of those contexts are contingent upon children’s developmental milestones.  Just as a child’s height determines the relevance of monkey bars, so too does their attention span, memory, symbolic representational skills and so on, determine the relevance and nutrient richness of digital contexts.  Certain developments, particularly in early childhood, happen best in the physical, multidimensional world.  Children must reach these key milestones to unlock and benefit from the strengths of digital contexts.  When unlocked, the strengths of young people can combine with the strengths of digital contexts to support positive development.

    1. Lerner, R. M., Lerner, J. V., Almerigi, J., Theokas, C., Phelps, E., Gestsdóttir, S. Naudeau, S., Jelicic, H., Alberts, A. E., Ma, L., Smith, L. M., Bobek, D. L., Richman-Raphael, D., Simpson, I., Christiansen, E. D., & von Eye, A. (2005). Positive youth development, participation in community youth development programs, and community contributions of fifth-grade adolescents: Findings from the first wave of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development. Journal of Early Adolescence, 25(1), 17-71.
    2. Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children. UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, Florence, 2022.
    3. Bers, M. U. (2012). Designing Digital Experiences for Positive Youth Development: From Playpen to Playground. Oxford, Cary, NC.
    4. Hirsh-Pasek, K., Zosh, J. M., Golinkoff, R. M., Gray, J. H., Robb, M. B., & Kaufman, J. (2015). Putting education in “educational” apps: Lessons from the science of learning. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 16(1), 3-34.
    5. Lerner, R. M., Theokas, C., & Jelicic, H. (2005). Youth as active agents in their own positive development: A developmental systems perspective. In W. Greve, K. Rothermund, & D. Wentura (Eds.). The adaptive self: Personal continuity and intentional self-development (pp. 31-47). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe & Huber Publishers.

Amy Warren, Ph.D. is a Senior Child Development Researcher at Fluent Research. Amy holds a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Clark University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in child development from Tufts University. Dan Warren, Ph.D. is Director, Youth Development and Education at Fluent Research. Dan holds a doctorate in Human Development and Child Study from Tufts University and taught elementary school in Massachusetts for nearly a decade. Together, they co-founded Home Base Learning Center, a nature-based elementary school guided by the core values of Positive Youth Development, Social Justice, and Earth Stewardship.