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Healthy Screen Habits Podcast
Screen Aware Childhood//Pat Cantor, Ed.D., Mindy Holohan, MA, CFLE, Jean Rogers, M.S.Ed, CPE
00:33:36
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- [00:00]
A
The child's brain is growing to 80% of what it will be as an adult brain by the time they're three years old. It's an incredible period of exploration and really understanding the world around them. And screens are not meeting that need.
- [00:20]
B
Welcome to the Healthy Screen Habits Podcast. I'm Hilary Wilkinson. Whether you're starting your parenting journey with a newborn or looking to connect with your teen on technology, let's learn some new healthy screen habits together. I'd like to wish everyone a big happy week of the Young Child. The Week of the Young Child is an annual week long celebration sponsored by the national association for the Education of Young Children, also known as naaci. And the purpose of this week is to focus public attention on the needs of young children and their families and to recognize the early childhood programs and services that meet those needs. And when I think of all the programs, books, services that have come out this year to advocate for our youngest ones, there is one book that is standing head and shoulders above the rest. And this book is Screen Aware Early Childhood, a Realistic approach to helping young children thrive in a Digitally complex world. The authors are with us today. And Pat Cantor, it's there's three of them. Pat Canter is Professor Amerita of Early Childhood Studies and a former Associate Provost at Plymouth State University, New Hampshire. Mindy Holahan serves as Faculty Specialist in Family Science, Science and Human Development at Western Michigan University. And Gene Rogers is the director of the Screen Time Action Network at Fairplay, a global collaborative of practitioners, educators, advocates, and parents. I'm going to jump right into it. Gene, I'm going to start with you. So we know that digital media use is ubiquitous today. Can you explain why is it so important to focus on early childhood when understanding the impacts?
- [02:41]
A
Thanks for that question, Hilary, and thanks for having us. You know, we rightly see a focus today in the news and in a lot of our online platforms that teens and preteens are exposed to a lot of harm online. And, and that is a good focus and fine when young children had virtually no exposure to screens. And it started later in childhood. But we wrote this book to call attention to the fact that companies now target infants and parents of infants and parents are also online themselves. They are not trusting their parental instincts, putting all their faith in influences that are telling them how to parent. So it's a big kind of confusing online world and as you said, ubiquitous. But what we really want parents to know is that the child's brain is growing to 80% of what it will be as an adult brain by the time they're three years old, it's an incredible period of exploration and really understanding the world around them. And screens are not meeting that need. If we think about the pediatric icons like Barry Brazelton, they taught us that infants have emotions and that they need loving adults to meet and reflect those emotions. And screens are just not meeting that need. And that's why it's so important to start young.
- [04:09]
B
Even in hearing you talk about that, it feels so validating. As a mom, just knowing my babies and my, you know, knowing inherently, these are real emotions that I'm seeing. This is real connection. And so I'm glad you gave voice to that. Mindy, what can you tell about the approach and the tools Screen Aware Early Childhood provides for parents?
- [04:36]
C
I echo Jean's sentiments and gratitude to you for having us and happy week of the young child to you and listeners and also just again like deep appreciation for all that you and the Healthy Screen Habits team do for children and families. So when it comes to our book, right. We know that, as Jane kind of touched on it, that screen based digital technologies and media that are delivered via those technologies are impacting all domains of child development. We know they are also impacting many, if not all domains of early childhood practice. They are impacting many, if not all domains of adult child relationships. So we know also those impacts are complex and involve many variables and that there's no one answer or formula or like identifying that need kind of for screen awareness in those spaces and aiming to like respond to and address those needs has been what brought Jean and Pat and I together over time. Titling the book Screen Aware early childhood is very intentional and is a concept that we've developed that has shown to be of use for parents and practitioners. We define screen awareness as both the knowledge and the practices that uphold the developmental well being and rights of young children in a screen based and media centric society. The book really is anchored in that definition. A major goal of the book has been, you know, to really bring research into practice and we do that so through sharing like really consequential research findings addressing some of the biggest questions that early childhood practitioners and parents with young children have and families have, the impacts of screen time and use and content, including like Jean touched on a little bit the like problematic industry practices and things. And then also one of my favorite components is also identifying defining protective factors.
- [06:56]
B
Yeah, I love that protective portion. It just speaks to this very intentional approach that you three came at early childhood with the screen awareness component and really, I feel like the reason the power behind this book is it serves as such a great translational piece between the research and the practice of everyday use. And I really commend you for doing that because that can be so tricky. Pat, one of the things that you warn about in this book is that screens can replace essential human cues in those first critical years of life. And can you talk about this displacement? What does a child stand to lose when a device takes the place of human interaction?
- [07:52]
D
Sure. And Hilary, I want to share my colleagues, thanks to you for hosting us. And it's especially exciting to be here during the week of a young child. So our screen aware early childhood approach that Mindy was just talking about is grounded in four kind of guiding principles, four key areas, child development. So it's development focused, it's informed by research, it's based on relationships and the importance of relationships. Because we know that young children learn best in the context of their relationships with caring adults. And it's also strengths based, kind of referring to those protective factors that you were just discussing. And we know, as I said, early childhood learning happens in the context of relationships. We know the importance of what the Harvard center on the Developing Child called serve and return interactions. Those are the interactions that very young children have with caring adults where they kind of throw out a cue. It might be a cry or a facial expression or some body language, and the adult responds to that individual particular cue. That is a very human interaction that's really impossible for digital media to duplicate. So we know that those serve and return interactions are really crucial for children's learning. Those interactions are how children learn about self regulation. It takes a really long time. Some developmentalists say it takes well into young adulthood for people to learn self regulation. And in those early years, children learn about self regulation through CO regulation. Again, an adult helps them understand what will soothe them, what they can do when they're upset, take deep breaths, whatever. We also know that those interactions are the foundations for children's understanding of language and hearing language and engaging in responsive language interactions. Starting when an infant can't even really form words yet, but is communicating in other ways and then building as they form approximations of words and build vocabulary. That's how children learn language. They're not going to learn that through screen encounters. So one of the examples that we use in the book is how a child or baby starts to understand a concept like hot. Say a parent has a cup of coffee and the baby reaches for it and the parent says, oh, that's hot. And sometimes the parent will say, you can touch one finger to the cup. So they get an understanding of what hot feels like and how it's different from not hot. They may see the steam rising from the mug, they may put their hand over the steam. And repeated interactions like that will help the baby understand what hot means. It might be, it's hot outside, it's hot on the radiator. Lots of different ways of understanding hot. Compare that to looking at a screen and seeing a picture of a mug of coffee and saying hot, hot. There's no contextual understanding for that word. There's not repeated use of it in different contexts. There's not the multisensory aspect of feeling the heat, smelling the aroma of whatever it is that's hot, experiencing different levels of hot. You don't get the same kind of deep learning or understanding from the screen encounter that you do from the kind of real world interaction that's mediated by an adult. And that's kind of an example of what we mean by children learning in the context of relationships. Their learning is much deeper, much more multisensory and much more likely to stick than encounters with a screen. And that can be lost if children's primary encounters are with digital media rather than with other humans.
- [12:06]
B
For sure, for sure. That immersive experience of learning in real time, multi dimensional, I mean, we know that just like what Gene referenced, the, the rate of growth of the young brain is something that we as adults can't even imagine living in. Right. And so the importance of the input is, I don't know that we can quite understand it yet. And when you, when you blanket everything to that flat single dimensional circ surface, it's, it's no wonder there's no transfer of learning from flat screen to real life. Thank you, you guys. I, it's, I'm so glad you put together this book because you guys are masters at crafting this, this journey. We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to talk more about a screen aware early childhood.
- [13:09]
E
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- [14:41]
B
I'm speaking with the co authors of Screen Aware Early Childhood, a new book that focuses on the importance of being intentional around babies and young children when on our devices that are everywhere. So I'm going to aim this one at you Mindy Families. You're a family specialist. Families and educators feel really pressured to introduce screens early and how can teachers, caregivers, you know, grandparents, parents push back with confidence and still feel supported.
- [15:20]
C
This has been kind of the premise for our work is is recognizing that every parent, you know, grandparents, you know, wants the best for their children, you know, grandchildren and as do early childhood practitioners. Early childhood practitioners are also, you know, navigating so much already and responsible for so much already as our families, you know, and that's kind of gotten more complicated. And that's probably like the understatement, you know, of the century in terms of the onslaught of these technologies and the noise around them. So lots of claims of their effectiveness or I frankly like empathize so much with families that are just wanting to do the right things, wanting to do what's best for their kids and then having to navigate all kinds of conflicting claims, especially from profit based fronts. And increasingly educators too are navigating and facing those in terms of technology in the classroom. And we hold very steadfast. It's something that Jean has said since I met her and something that I've taken up the refrain and believe that the book also addresses, which is that, you know, technologies are going to change but child Developmental needs do not change.
- [16:39]
B
I love that I quote Gene Rogers on that all the time.
- [16:46]
C
Same and always coming back to child development, we've called it like our the North Star. It is one of those key principles in our framework and it is knowledge and expertise that practitioners have and families have. They know their children the best. And we also know that parents are increasingly stressed. They have, you know, a lot of shame around like screen use and getting it right. There's a lot of judgment. Our approach is we don't want to add to any of that. And practitioners too feel like it's hard to keep up. We don't know the best things. You know, what we do is we really emphasize the fact that families and educators and practitioners are vital. They play vital roles in both, you know, nurturing and also safeguarding child development. We include research from big national polls that show that early childhood practitioners are some of the voices that families trust the most. And so that gives a really unique opportunity for force promoting practicing screen awareness. And many are already. This work grew out of years of our, both individual practices with children and families, our collaborative work. And I think it's better for it, you know, because it's, it's really integrates the perspectives of practitioners on the ground, the, the pressures that they're facing, and then gives very concrete strategies, information, resources to promote that core objective of child well being. These, you know, family well being, you know, child rights in this, like we say in our title, like digitally complex world.
- [18:38]
D
Right?
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B
Yeah, yeah. So I feel like if, if those teachers, caregivers, parents need that pushback and they have, with, you know, with confidence to know that they're feeling right. I, I feel like you guys really have boiled down some of those science backed, research backed nuggets for, for which they can stand on, you know, that they can feel confident with their messaging moving forward.
- [19:07]
C
So yeah, and I mean in the book too, it's, it's even the way that we organized it, you know, so we've got two parts. Part one is cultivating screen awareness and then the second part is advancing it, advancing screen awareness. So what we can do and strategies and practices for doing that.
- [19:26]
B
Pat, within the book you describe ways that screens can influence children's development before parents even realize what's happening. What do you find is the biggest misunderstanding caregivers have about early screen use?
- [19:45]
D
Well, kind of building on what we've talked about before, I think a big misunderstanding is that young children can learn from screens, including very young children. You used the word before Hillary. Transfer of learning and there's actually a phenomenon called video deficit or transfer deficit that has been researched for decades, starting with television that actually shows that very young children under the age of about two and a half or three can't actually learn from a two dimensional screen. They can't learn from it till it's transferred, until they have an understanding of three dimensional. So they can't transfer what they see on a two dimensional screen to their three dimensional reality. So my example before of learning about a concept like hot just doesn't transfer from that seeing it on a screen to a 3D world. They need real world experiences. But parents and grandparents are so bombarded by advertising messages that, you know, early encounters with screens make children smarter. This app is educational. This program will support their understanding of academic concepts and they'll do better in school. There's no basis for those claims. We know that. I think a lot of families assume that when an app is labeled as educational, some board or other has held it up to a set of standards and said, okay, this is educational. Anybody can say their app is educational. There's no set of regulations governing that. Researchers have described apps as the digital wild west. There's just no clear agreed upon set of guidelines about what makes an app educational. And so many parents are motivated, as Mindy said, by the desire to do what's best for their children. So many parents, so many teachers, we make the assumption that everybody is motivated by that. So of course they're vulnerable to that kind of advertising that says this is the best thing for your child, this will help your child learn. And I feel that that's a misunderstanding that's so shaped by advertising that it's really exploiting families goals and desires for their children. And I'm thinking about again how apropos it is that we're doing this during the week of the Young child, because when I was a preschool teacher and a director of a child care center, the week of the Young Child was such a great week for, you know, one day is devoted to music and one to art and one to cooking and one to math, early math experiences and one to discovery. Those are the ways that children learn. And screens are not part of that whole rollout of the week. It's such a great week for trying multidimensional, multi sensory ways to promote children's deep learning and understanding. So that would be my number one misunderstanding. And again, I feel like it's just so shaped by advertising associated with screens.
- [23:05]
B
It's predatory practices aimed at children. I com I completely agree with you and I know Gene does too. Gene, in your opinion, how can society, how can we all collectively support children's rights in our digital age?
- [23:28]
A
That's a good question, Hilary. When Pat was talking about marketers are promoting that these apps and digital devices are educational, I was thinking about when my kids were little. It was the Mozart effect. Parents always want their kids to be smarter. And you're always like we were buying DVDs of Mozart and I would put them on while the kids were doing homework. And so it's so easy to get duped by these marketers. And I think parents and educators make hundreds of little decisions about children's digital lives every day. And the first thing I'm going to say is don't blame parents. Let's put the blame where it belongs on these profit hungry companies. That's a whole other topic. We'd be happy to come back and speak about that sometime. But realize that educators, who we really speak to in this book, we want you to know that you're in a unique position of trust. They realize that children have rights to begin with as human beings that we've evolved to understand that they are helpless to stick up for those rights. But they are people and you know, educators play a significant role. You are trusted. You have the children so much of their little lives. So to have the courage to really dive into a book like this and use it as a tool for those daily decisions and then share that information with parents in a nonjudgmental way, I think is a great way. And then, you know, we are here representing the Screen Time Action Network and, and join the network. We would love you to come join us where we empower you with tools and scripts and support resources and to be able to go to your administrations and your legislators and change this currently screen saturated landscape to one that will serve children and help them to grow naturally with all of their developmental needs methods. So I think you know, that combination of trusting yourself as an educator and taking that power and then also joining us with other like minded individuals. If you're listening to Healthy Screen Habits, we know that you care about this topic. We know you care about how children's lives are being shaped by the digital environment and and we would love to have you join us.
- [26:07]
B
When we come back. I'm going to ask our experts for their healthy screen habits. From brand new parents to parents of teens who already have their own smartphones, Healthy Screen Habits presentations can help you navigate parenting in this digital age. We cover topics like creating your own family tech Plan with a template that helps you guide your conversations and how to improve our kids mental health through healthy screen habits. If you have a book club, bunco group, or even a group of neighborhood moms that you'd like to gather together for, creating a plan on how your kids are going to play together, grow together, and what apps to look out for. Let's have a mom's night in person or virtual presentations are available. Reach out to us@healthyscreenhabits.org Click the book a speaker button and let's get the fun started. I'm speaking with the authors of the great new book Screen Aware Early Childhood A Realistic approach to helping Young children thrive in a Digitally Complex world. As you know, on every episode of the Healthy Screen Habits podcast, I ask for a healthy screen habit. And this is a tip or takeaway that listeners can put into practice in their home, hopefully nearly immediately. Let's start with Jean. What is yours?
- [27:41]
A
My favorite healthy screen habit, Hillary, is watch, play and listen together. One thing we don't have as much in this world is that shared digital reality because we're not watching things together. The isolation is dangerous and it also prevents children from feeling that they can talk about their digital lives, that they can share it with their family and that it's something positive. It can feel like it's something that they can, they might be scared about alone. And so what we want to do is bring it into our families, our friendships, and when we use it, use it together.
- [28:23]
B
Excellent. Great way to foster those conversations. Pat, can you share your healthy screen habit?
- [28:31]
D
So something that really struck me when we were doing the research for this book is the impact of screens on sleep. It's had a massive impact on sleep from the youngest infants, right through people my age. My recommendation, and it is a recommendation I've given to all my children for their children, is remove all digital devices, all screens from children's rooms and from your habits before bed. No screens before bedtime and no screens in bedrooms because of the negative impact on sleep. It's a habit I've had to learn and I think it's a really important one.
- [29:15]
B
Yeah, it's one of our top five core habits. So thank you for bringing it up to the forefront. Mindy, do you have a healthy screen habit for us?
- [29:27]
C
Yeah. So one of my favorite kind of terms coming out of the research and that we examine in the book that really resonates with readers so far and with families and practitioners we've been working with over the years is the term techno ference and that is in a nutshell, kind of utilized to describe the ways that screen based technology, digital technology, disrupts interpersonal relationships, you know, disrupts interrupts and maybe even, you know, displaces. So the way it interferes with these really important fronts. You know, one habit related to technoference is, you know, totally understanding that screens aren't going anywhere. So much of our lives are organized around them. But something that can make such a huge difference. And again, I think this is an adult practice when children are younger, but then hopefully through that modeling, children learn to consider it themselves over time is just communicating what we're doing when we're on our phones. You know, I think it can clear up so much potentially like problematic interpersonal confusion. So just the simple thing of like, oh shoot, you know, this email came through. I have to answer this. I'm so sorry. I'll come back to what we're doing in however many minutes or I'm on my phone. Children don't know the difference, especially young children. If we're using it for a recipe, if we're using it to carry on an important text message conversation with other family members, or if we are doing something, using it for entertainment, all they see is the adult not responding or, you know, prioritizing this device. You know, so just taking that step to say what we're doing, why we're doing it, and it's, it's a little thing, but it can make a huge difference in terms of clarity.
- [31:32]
B
I think communication is critical at every aspect, every stage, every age and every stage.
- [31:41]
C
That's right.
- [31:42]
B
I could not agree with you more in communicating what we're doing and why we're doing it also sets that intention for ourself as a reminder. So I think you get the benefit of really, you know, kind of doing a little self check also of like, what am I doing on this? Why am I, why am I here right now?
- [32:03]
C
We've all had that moment.
- [32:05]
B
Exactly. As always, you can find a complete transcript of this show as well as a link on how to purchase this amazing book we've been talking about by visiting the show notes for this episode. You do this by going to healthy Screen habits dot org, click the podcast button and scroll to find this episode. Gene, Mindy, Pat, thank you so much for being here today and all that you're doing not only for this week of the young child, but for all weeks, for all families everywhere.
- [32:40]
D
Thank you, Hillary.
- [32:41]
A
Thank you, Hillary.
- [32:45]
B
For more information, you can find us on Instagram and Facebook at Healthy Screen Habits. Make sure to Visit our website healthyscreenhabits.org where you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or via RSS so you'll never miss an episode. It's free, it's fun, and you get a healthy new screen habit each week while you're at it. If you found value in this show, we'd appreciate you giving us a quick rating. It really does help other people find us and spread the word of healthy screen habits. Or if you'd simply like to tell a friend, we'd love that too. I so appreciate you spending your time with me this week, and I look forward to learning more healthy habits together.