According to a recent study, one in five children own their own cell phone by the age of three or four in the United Kingdom, but these tools would nevertheless have advantages, experts said on Friday.
“If kids are doing homework, watching an educational app, chatting with a grandparent, dancing to a music video, playing a game with a sibling, there’s no evidence that any of that is a problem. , and some evidence that it is rather an advantage,” reacted Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics, according to The Guardian.
Recently, a new study by the British telecommunications regulator Ofcom indicated that nearly one in five children aged three or four already own a mobile phone in the United Kingdom.
These high figures are not so alarming, however, according to experts, who are trying to divert the negative narrative associated with “screen time” to focus instead on the various benefits of this technology, continued the English media.
Everything depends, in their opinion, on the context and the use made of it.
“Too much cell phone time becomes important if it comes at the expense of parent-child interaction – the most important thing of all – as well as getting enough sleep or physical exercise,” continued the professor. .
“If they use apps that help them learn words, it can be beneficial for their development. [À l’inverse]fast-paced, more extreme, action-based entertainment that doesn’t demand much from the child could make it more difficult for children to make sense of what they see,” said added Professor Tim Smith, a cognitive psychologist at Birkbeck University.
According to the report, the majority of young children use these devices to watch videos, which they could do from a common computer or TV for safety, Professor Pete Etchells from the University of Bath Spa said.
“If they have potentially unregulated access to their own devices, that opens up the possibility of covert use of technology, and that’s where the risk of accessing inappropriate content increases,” he said. he declares.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to properly assess the advantages or disadvantages of this technology on the development by means of a database, since many factors must be taken into consideration.
For example, one of the rare longitudinal studies carried out on toddlers showed that 12-month-old babies who used the touch screen intensely would obtain poorer results in concentration and memory from the age of three.
However, another possible interpretation of these results would indicate that toddlers who are more agitated, and perhaps predisposed to lower scores in terms of concentration and memory, would be more likely to receive a device from their parents to calm them down.