Families may want to relax some of their usual rules for digital media use due to social distancing. But keeping bedtime screen-free still makes sense.
Using tech together with their parents is better for children.
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Children see adults on smartphones, looking up information they need to know, and being continuously connected. They want to copy this behaviour in their play and practise being an adult.
Apps can be digital toys used by children to design, create, build, investigate and imagine.
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We need to shift the focus away from parenting that relies on threats and rewards, to one that nurtures meaningful parent-child and child-technology relationships.
Should children under the age of 13 be given access to smartphones?
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Teaching fear and avoidance of technology may protect people from negative consequences. But it also prevents them from finding, and benefiting from, productive uses of new innovations.
Technology can be a powerful tool for learning.
Reuters/Sait Serkan Gurbuz
Footage of children throwing tantrums when their tablet is taken away can be unsettling. But the fact is technology can be good for their development, if they engage with it positively.
Children growing up in a world of social media are developing a very different conception of privacy to that of their parents.
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Many people are shocked by what children are willing to share about themselves online. Is it that they don’t understand privacy, or just have a different conception of it compared to adults?
Children are accessing technology at an earlier age than ever.
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Taiwan recently made the unprecedented move of banning children two years and younger from using any form of digital technology. Older children and teenagers will also be severely restricted, with new…
It’s likely children will come across child-unfriendly content online, regardless of parental control.
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You might have seen reports that Google could offer children under the age of 13 years a simple and safe way to access their internet services, including Gmail and YouTube. But will this new strategy really…
I’m sure I use mine more that you do.
Boys and smartphone via Twin Design/Shutterstock
Leslie Haddon, London School of Economics and Political Science
The bond between a child and their smartphone is like an umbilical cord. Now, a new survey has uncovered just how dependent the “smartphone generation” of British children are on the devices compared to…