tries to understand who he is and where he fits in based on his interactions with others.
How does technology fit in at each stage? Young children (one to three years old) might find it appealing to “do” things independently on a computer or tablet. Certainly there are plenty of apps currently designed for toddlers. Just search “toddler games” in your favorite apps store, and you get more than ten thousand hits. It’s important to note, however, that according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children younger than two shouldn’t spend time in front of a screen, because it can cause problems with their brain development. Yet, some kids still use tablets to learn the ABC’s, count, or color using a finger.
At this age, children are still learning to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Toddlers don’t understand that the images on the tablet screen are not real. Or, the images are real enough to them that there is no distinction from reality in their own minds. This is one of the reasons why it’s important to monitor kids’ television shows, including the commercials. Children who are still learning how the world (meaning the actual world) works can be confused when they also encounter singing polka-dotted dragons or dogs that talk. They may draw illogical conclusions based on this confusion, as evidenced in the early 1990s, when one of my cousins believed that my mother lived in the phone jack in the wall. Why? Because he could talk to my mom on the phone. He knew she wasn’t living in the phone (because that would be ridiculous), but he naturally assumed that because he could trace the phone cable back into the wall, my mother must live there. My cousin also assumed that my father lived in the dishwasher. I’m not totally sure how he came to that conclusion, although it was close to the phone jack.
While toddlers are seeking a sense of independence and autonomy, it’s important for them to gain that level of competency in a wide range of real-world skills, not just in digital formats. Using a tablet to build and create art isn’t the same as actually using a paintbrush or finger painting. The physical activity and tactile stimulation enrich brain development and promote growth in their gross and fine motor skills. Sure, there’s some fine motor skill development taking place as children are using tablets, but it’s not a replacement for things such as lacing cards, sorting trays, or building simple structures out of blocks.
For kids in their preschool years, there are a boatload of available apps, ranging from educational apps that focus on reading, writing, or math skills, to Montessori-inspired apps, to apps designed primarily to entertain through scavenger hunts, or by having kids create monsters with a program that allows them to piece together wacky faces using a mishmash collection of facial parts. Is the child able to take initiative in doing things on his own using a computer or tablet? Probably so, but there are other factors to consider when assessing the value of a given form of play.
Good Play/Not-So-Good Play
How children play matters. The actual act of playing with toys is a key part of emotional development for children. Virginia Axline, one of the original experts on play therapy, believed that “play is the child’s natural medium of self-expression.” Children work through concerns and problems using play. They grow and develop social skills using play. Children learn about consequences and cause and effect through play. The free-form ability to fully engage in imagination, playing out complex scenarios, allows children to learn about the world.
Video games, even those with the most accessible digital worlds, are limited in their ability to match the free play of a group of five-year-olds. This holds true even for those “sandbox games” in which kids are free to interact with the world in whatever way they want, unconstrained by needing to do things in a specific way or order. Every video game starts out with a premise and a defined world in which to play. This is a space game. This is a racing game. This is a soldier game. But for children, the ability to fully create a fantasy world tailored specifically to the individual or the group only occurs in free-form play and cannot be replicated within the boundaries of a video game. Known therapeutically as “child-centered” or “non-directive” play therapy, just such free-form play is one of the best ways to help children process the events of their lives and to grow.
In working with many children over the years, I have seen the power of play firsthand. I have seen children dealing with the trauma of a divorce or extreme anxiety heal and flourish using play therapy. But in recent years, I have also seen that children who spend a significant amount of time plugged into screens have a harder time engaging in play, therapeutic or otherwise. I believe this is because these children have not learned how to play, or at least have not learned how to play outside of the structured or semi-structured worlds inside their Xboxes.
So for some children, an unstructured world can be overwhelming, especially if they mainly experience the structured world of preprogrammed software. Now, I’m not advocating that children run around like it’s a Lord of the Flies world. Structure is important. Children need structure and predictability to feel safe in the world. However, children also need the opportunity to explore freely in the real world and use their imaginations.
When I was growing up, one of the best things in the world was having an oversized cardboard box. That box could be anything. Open side up? It’s a pirate ship! Open side down? A rocket to Mars! Open side on its side? A cave! With a few strategic cuts, I could open up windows and doors to make a house. If kids spend most of their time with screens, there is a real chance that they will miss out on an important stage of development: the ability to think creatively and to demonstrate the initiative to do things on their own, without needing to be guided by a preprogrammed narrative.
God-Given Abilities
By the time children reach school age (Erikson’s six- to eleven-year-olds), there is a normal developmental tendency for a child to base his worth on how he compares himself to others. If he sees himself doing well compared with his peers, he feels a growing sense of competence. But if he only sees himself struggling compared with his peers, he feels he is inferior to others. Obviously, not all children have the same skills and talents. Not every child will be good at using technology, just as not every child will be good at sports or good at art. God gives each of us different gifts.
For example, I am not good at learning foreign languages. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, even though I did make it through grad school pretty well, and I can hold my own in most conversations. But I cannot learn French to save my life. From the time that I was five to the time I was nineteen, I took (or attempted to take) French eight times. Eight! I’ve never made it past beginning French. I kept getting shuffled along in the “French B” track in high school, because: 1) I needed three years of a language to graduate and 2) “God bless him, he’s trying.” “French B” was basically the “stupid but savable” track for foreign languages. We repeated beginning French every year. It was mostly songs and a continued inability to conjugate verbs. I can say two, maybe three sentences in French, one of which is “Je déteste le poisson!” which means “I hate fish!” and that’s not even true. In short, God did not give me the gift of learning French. My youngest brother, on the other hand, is fluent in three languages and conversational in a handful more, although he struggled in school as a child because of dyslexia.
My point is that we don’t all have the same abilities, and neither do our children. But when certain activities and interests become extremely popular (such as video games), children can feel pressure to be good at them. A child can feel a sense of inferiority if he is the only person in his class not to be able to beat Level 27 of whatever game is popular at the time. This struggle for competence can also quickly become entangled with the popularity contests of school age children, in which today the number of social media “friends,” “followers,” or contacts becomes the litmus test for whether one is considered cool. Unfortunately, the modern obsession with Facebook “likes” and similar votes of confidence online has become practically institutionalized in society at large, affecting not only children, but adolescents and adults as well. The
