Transcript
A (0:00)
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.
B (0:20)
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?
A (2:41)
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.
