Early Learning and Healthy Development in a Digital Age Jason C. Yip, Michael H. Levine, Alexis Lauricella, and Ellen Wartella 1 Author Biographies Jason C. Yip is an assistant professor of Digital Youth at the Information School at the University of Washington – Seattle. Dr. Yip examines how new technologies support children’s engagement in participatory cultures. He is the co-principal investigator on a four-year National Science Foundation grant (2014-2018) exploring how the design of social media technologies for science can support participatory learning for children across domains. He has also worked with a number of organizations and companies, such as Nickelodeon, the National Parks Service, Google, and National Geographic to partner together with children to develop new technologies for children. Dr. Yip earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Maryland – College Park and completed his post-doctoral research at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Michael H. Levine is the executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. The Center conducts research and convenes leaders to promote investments in high quality media experiences for children. Michael previously oversaw Carnegie Corporation of New York’s groundbreaking work in early childhood development and was a senior advisor to the New York City Schools Chancellor, where he directed dropout prevention, afterschool, and early childhood initiatives. Dr. Levine serves on New York City’s Universal Pre-Kindergarten Scientific Advisory Council, and is a Pahara-Aspen Education Reform Fellow. Michael received his Ph.D. in Social Policy from Brandeis University’s Florence Heller School and his B.S. from Cornell University. 2 Alexis R. Lauricella is the Associate Director of the Center on Media and Human Development at Northwestern University and a Lecturer in the department of Communication Studies. Dr. Lauricella earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology and her Master’s degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University. Her research focuses on children’s learning from media and parents’ and teachers’ attitudes toward and use of media with young children. Dr. Lauricella is also the founder of www.PlayLearnParent.com, a website that translates child-development research for parents. Ellen Wartella is the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-thani Professor of Communication and professor of psychology, human development and social policy, and medical social sciences at Northwestern University. She is Director of the Center on Media and Human Development and chair of the Department of Communication Studies. She is a leading scholar of the role of media in children’s development and serves on a variety of national and international boards and committees on children’s issues. She is co-principal investigator on two National Science Foundation grants: a three year multi-site grant entitled “Media Characters: the Unhidden Persuaders in Food Marketing to Children (2013-2016)” and a five year multi-site grant entitled “Collaborative Research: Using Educational DVDs to Enhance Young Children’s STEM Education (2013-2018).” Dr. Wartella earned her Ph.D in Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota in 1977 and completed post-doctoral research in developmental psychology at the University of Kansas. 3 Introduction Children, especially in early childhood, are rapidly developing and highly influenced by their context. The study of early childhood learning and healthy development cannot take place today without considering the influence of pervasive digital media and technologies. In comparison to older children and adults, young children are often perceived as the most vulnerable and susceptible to the power of digital technology (Lemish, 2014). Over the past 50 years, new and repeated concerns have been noted from parents, policy makers, educators, and other stakeholders regarding the impact that digital media may have on children’s learning and development (see Wartella and Robb, 2008). For instance, in 1961 Commissioner Newton Minow of the USA Federal Communications Commission referred to the vast wasteland of quality content (e.g., sexual content, violence, and immoral characters) available on broadcast television (Minow, 1961). Yet there is also great potential with each new technology to help children learn and develop. In the mid-1960s, Joan Ganz Cooney and her colleagues at the Children’s Television Workshop focused on the potential of television as a tool to engage and educate preschool children (Cooney, 1966). Together, Cooney and her colleagues created Sesame Street, a unique television program designed to educate preschool children while encouraging family co-viewing. The Sesame Street approach catalyzed an entire industry of educational media production that has consistently demonstrated that modern media can positively shape learning and development for millions of children in multiple international contexts (Fisch and Truglio, 2001; Mares and Pan, 2013). 4 Today, television is ubiquitous in the majority of homes across most countries and access to new mobile technologies (e.g., tablets, smartphones) are rapidly growing for children internationally (Gigli, 2004; Rideout, 2013). Furthermore, digital media now includes a plethora of interactive apps and games created for very young children (Guernsey, Levine, Chiong, and Severns, 2012; Shuler, Levine, and Ree, 2012; Shuler, 2009a, 2009b, 2010). Unlike traditional television programming which was one-directional, these new mobile and interactive technologies include content that can be created by anyone and can now be personalized to meet the needs of each particular user, creating a two-way interaction in which the child directly impacts the content and the experience. Given the dramatic change in available media technologies and the fact that young children all around the world are now spending around 2 or more hours a day with digital media (Gigli, 2004), it is essential to examine the impact of these technologies on young children’s healthy development. While there is a large body of literature regarding the impact of television on child viewers, this chapter will focus primarily on the newer digital and mobile technologies (e.g., smartphones, tablets) and the role they may play in young children’s learning and development. Section I of this chapter addresses three key questions that define the contemporary technology and early learning landscape. First, we ask which factors shape young children’s use of digital media (especially computers, smartphones, and tablet computers)? Second, caregivers and early childhood educators may be skeptical of new technologies for children. As such, we examine the question what do we know about the 5 negative influences of using digital media on young children’s development? Third, to allay some of the concerns about digital media and early childhood, we investigate the question, what are the positive influences of young children’s digital media use on healthy development and learning? Section II utilizes a digital adaptation to Bronfenbrenner’s (1977; 1977) ecological development theory (Takeuchi and Levine, 2014) to draw implications from the research for the broader field of early childhood practice, program design, and public policy. Section I: Review of the literature Which factors shape young children’s media usage? Today’s young children are born into a world very different from the one in which their parents grew up. For instance, nearly all homes in the USA with children age 8 and under have a TV set (96%), 76% have a laptop or desktop computer, 63% have a smartphone, and 40% have a tablet device (Rideout, 2013). While mobile device ownership has increased for families at all SES levels worldwide (Pew Global, 2014), a gap still exists as a function of family income. In the USA, only 20% of lower-income children have a tablet at home, whereas 63% of higher-income children do (Rideout, 2013). Rates of smartphone ownership are closer across income groups with 51% of lower-income families owning a smartphone compared to 65% of higher-income families (Rideout, 2013). Mobile devices (i.e., smartphones, cellular phones, mobile Internet) are more dominant in lower income families in Asia (Qiu, 2014), Latin America (World Bank, 2012), North America (Smith, 2010), and Africa (Tortora and Rheault, 2011). However, mobile devices are restricted in their functions (e.g., limited applications) and mobile data 6 caps can prevent downloads of large amounts of information (e.g., high-definition video streaming). A digital divide in access to technology still persists in the developing world, such as the lack of strong broadband Internet access in homes and schools in rural China (e.g., Y. Li and Ranieri, 2013; Yang et al., 2013), India (e.g., Ale and Chib, 2011), Latin America (e.g., Carrasco and Torrecilla, 2012), and South Asia (e.g., Zhou, Singh, and Kaushik, 2011). Evidence also indicates that preschool children in the USA (Rideout, 2013) and other wealthy countries in Europe (e.g., Holloway, Green, and Livingstone, 2013; Mascheroni and Ólafsson, 2014) and Asia (e.g., Hong Kong Department of Health, 2009; Jie, 2012) are avid media users, spending about 2 hours per day with screen media. The use of newer mobile technologies is accelerating: 72% percent of children age 8 and under in the USA had used a mobile device in 2013, compared to only 38% in 2011 (Rideout, 2013). In Europe, the average age of first Internet usage begins at age 8 (Mascheroni and Ólafsson, 2014), and in South Korea (the country with the most high-speed Internet users), 93% of children ages 3 - 9 go online for an average of 8 to 9 hours a week (Jie, 2012). Research has explored which factors are predictive of young children’s media use. Studies have determined that in the USA, demographic factors like child age (Rideout, 2011), race (Rideout, Lauricella, and Wartella, 2011), and socioeconomic status (SES) or parent education (Bittman, Rutherford, Brown, and Unsworth, 2011) are predictive of child screen time, particularly for television. Beyond demographics, a child’s desires and 7 how family culture shape media use (Stephen, Stevenson, and Adey, 2013).