Three-Year-Olds with Iphones?

January 19th, 2010

Exposing very young children to high technology is:

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Via: TheAppleBlog:

My three year old daughter now has her own iPhone, though without service so it is effectively an iPod touch. And how did I create a monster, you might ask? Easy. Her first words upon waking from sleep are “Where’s my iPhone?” Her reaction to her parents call to come to the dinner table, head upstairs for a bath or get ready for bed is to clutch her iPhone and cry. Even though I loaded her iPhone with some of her favorite apps from her mom’s phone (by re-downloading to our black Macbook, as I couldn’t get iTunes Home Sharing to work with my wife’s Macbook Air), she only really uses it to watch a small handful of videos that I ripped or downloaded. And she uses it constantly: sitting in a chair, laying on the floor, walking from room-to-room… head down, focused on the iPhone screen, it can be a challenge to get her to disengage with the device and engage with us.

So how can this be a good thing, or at least not bad? For one, I long ago read “Everything Bad is Good for You” by Steven Berlin Johnson, and take solace that her use of the iPhone at this early stage is at least teaching her some valuable skills, including human-computer interaction (for example, she is still mastering the art of touching a video then touching again on the appropriate icon to pause or play it). The videos I loaded are generally good quality educational content, so there are learning moments in them. And her ability to use the iPhone or not has quickly become the “carrot” and “stick” motivation we’ve long needed: she responds to our threats to take it away or promise to let her use it as with nothing that came before it.

As the novelty of watching videos begins to wear off, I expect our daughter to explore all of the possibilities that her iPhone offers. We’re already using the built-in clock to learn to tell time, Camera to take pictures, and Weather to see if it will snow today. I can imagine using apps like Best Camera to learn more about art and photography, or Vocabulearn Tagalog to learn her mom’s families native language (which I need to do before we go to the Philippines in a year or two). In the meantime, she’s already started to use some of the toddler apps I installed, like Kid Art, Voice Toddler Cards, and the Curious George Coloring Book.

The real challenge will be to help our daughter use her iPhone as an educational device, and avoid the trap of becoming too immersed to the detriment of social, motor, and other skills development. The real question is whether I’m a bad dad for giving a three year old an iPhone. What do you think?

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6 Responses to “Three-Year-Olds with Iphones?”

  1. JWSmythe says:

    Being that I have a daughter just about that age, I can ask, “What the hell does a 3 year old need with a phone?”

    I understand the need to want to advance a child’s knowledge, and giving him or her access to a computer is one thing. A phone is … a phone. I don’t care what warm fuzzy wrappings go with it.

    My daughter is completely entertained that she has her own cell phone too. It was broken, and I took out the battery. She still chatters away on it, because it’s her toy. She’s had entire conversations with me when I wasn’t there, because she, much unlike what we’re teaching kids to do, has a vivid imagination. Sometimes we talk on the phone in the same room, because she tries to emulate what the adults do. I’ve had cell phone conversations with her in the same room, and she’s completely entertained by it, even though we’re just pretending to be on the phone.

    You don’t have to give your kid an expensive toy to teach the kid things. Let them explore the world. I hope mine will be programming by the time she’s 5, and it’s very possible she will be. I was on my first computer when I was 6, and that was back when having a computer was unusual. Mine belonged to the school, and they let me check it out on weekends, because they didn’t know what to do with it. 🙂

  2. tochigi says:

    i didn’t click through to read any more of the blog because, well, i think i’ve already seen enough. this is child abuse, imo. but i should qualify that statement by saying that people who use TV, video games and DVDs as their main babysitter for hours and hours day in, day out with very young children are much worse.

    anyway, almost everything the guy writes is crap:
    her use of the iPhone at this early stage is at least teaching her some valuable skills, including human-computer interaction
    a three-year-old doesn’t need that skill, so it is not valuable.
    she responds to our threats
    controlling a three-year-old through threats/rewards is not something to be proud of, at all.
    using the built-in clock to learn to tell time
    a three-year-old doesn’t need to tell the time. they can look at the sky to see if it is dark or light.
    Camera to take pictures
    a three-year-old doesn’t need to take pictures. they can see with their own eyes.
    Weather to see if it will snow today
    a three-year-old doesn’t need to know if it will snow today. they can look at the sky.
    I can imagine using apps like Best Camera to learn more about art and photography, or Vocabulearn Tagalog to learn her mom’s families native language
    this stuff is just so stupid there is no need to comment.and on it goes. the endless drivel.

    and to cap it all off, he shows he is a complete twit with his final statement:
    avoid the trap of becoming too immersed to the detriment of social, motor, and other skills development
    doh! look at what you just wrote buddy!
    And she uses it constantly: sitting in a chair, laying on the floor, walking from room-to-room… head down, focused on the iPhone screen, it can be a challenge to get her to disengage with the device and engage with us.

    ffs, what a prat. (and i don’t mean the three-year old!)

  3. uranian says:

    Sounds like there’s no SIM, so I’m guessing at least that it’s not irradiating her constantly. As a parent of a 3 year old too, I can understand where tech can be made educational and useful, but this is going to extremes. If the parent is having trouble interacting with his child because she’s so locked into the Iphone at 3, gods help him when she’s older. Our daughter is a big fan of Lazy Town, and I can see some useful stuff in there (we squeeze a few more vegetables down her when we remind her that they are sports candy!), but a couple of hours a day is definitely more than enough. When technology becomes a babysitter, it’s become a problem.

  4. Shikar says:

    tochigi is spot on. It´s not juts the babysitting deal, but the whole foundation of beliefs underpinning technoogy as a whole.

    I think technology can be a wonderful thing, but like just about eveything spewed out from the Market maw it’s become an escape and a mind-drug in a Western world that offer very little in the way of real meaning and spiritual nourishment. A cliche, maybe, but very true imo.

    Technology as a channel for endless pap and BS is a great way to contour young minds away from a healthy emotional foundation and thus the potential for critical thinking.

    We have generations coming up with blancmange for brains due to this endless one-way system of information and andrenalin-based “motor skills” and becoming accustomed to instant gratification and quick fix solutions to everything. And when that doesn’t happen – they freak and short-circuit.

    The close connection to nature can potentially offset that neurological deformation to some degree, and if your child is lucky enough to live in the countryside, but how many urban kids have that chance?

    My niece would just roll my eyes at me no doubt. And I know I would have been the same at her age. I’d have been addicted to i-phones and game-boys along with the rest.

  5. Zuma says:

    What used to be basic knowledge is now high knowledge.

    For example, there’s so many more illustrators now than ever before, but it seems to me there’s such a much lower percentage of them that have a working knowledge of basic perspective drafting, or the trigonometry helpful in implementing it. It’s not even as easy to find decent texts on these things as it once was.

    Likewise, there’s so many more writers now than ever before, but much fewer competently written works than ever.

    -Emphasis on simple critical thinking is now passe’. -Penmanship is now nigh onto an art. -What modern mathematician is now not lost without high technolgy? And so on.

    There is no better ‘computer’ than a pencil. A humble pencil can do word-processing, calculations, graphics, and communications. A pencil costs only a nickel, and has only one moving part, and has it’s Undo feature on it’s opposite end. Let one master simple pencils first and foremost.

    For me, all this lies behind the topic of children and technology and is the larger context that goes unmentioned -as if it goes without saying? I wonder.

  6. JWSmythe says:

    tochigi, I liked what you said, “a three-year-old doesn’t need to tell the time. they can look at the sky to see if it is dark or light.”. My daughter wakes me up because it’s daytime. Unfortunately, it’s at the crack of dawn. If I pretend to go to sleep while it’s daytime, she’ll wake me up. “Daddy! Daddy! Wake up! Daytime!”. It’s a game though, so she knows we’re both playing. 🙂

    She now has an interest in clocks, and will point them out wherever we go. 🙂 She’s still learning her numbers and letters, so numbers on the clock are a game. Just about anything can be a counting, colors, numbers, or letters game. It’s funny, we do the “What’s that” game backwards. I ask her, and she tells me. If she’s wrong, I tell her, and she repeats it.

    Zuma, you are so right about the pencil. My little girl prefers crayons and pens, because she likes the colors, and loves saying what they are. She’s even gotten bored with coloring books sometimes, and draws her own pictures in the front cover and whitespace, and it’s getting good enough where I can tell what it is most of the time. 🙂 She likes car showers (car washes)though, so she frequently draws a car and the water falling on it. Despite the fact that she’s otherwise fearless, she’s afraid to actually go into a carwash, even though she asks to do it all the time. 🙂

    I guess we’ll always have some parents out there, that would prefer to give their kid an expensive game to play with, rather than interacting with them. Unfortunately, those parents are missing out on the best part of having a kid. A little bundle of joy that comes up and says “I love you daddy” for no reason other than they really do. Our interactions with our children shape what they become. I’d rather have a brilliant child, than a child who’s learned the scripting of utilities on an electronic device.

    My daughter turns 3 next month. She drew a rocket. While I’ve tried to expand her horizons with various topics, that’s one I never taught her. I asked her where it’s going, and she told me “to other planets”. I asked her where those planets are, and she told me “by stars”. I asked her mom and grandmother if they taught her those concepts, and neither of them had. She does go to daycare while I work, and the teachers are very good with the kids. They’re obviously teaching, rather than just babysitting.

    Sorry for my rambling commentary. I know every parent’s child is the most brilliant in the world. 🙂

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