Dr. Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe, a pediatrician who is a member of the academy’s council of communications and media, said the group is continually reassessing its guidelines to address new forms of “screen time.”
“We always try to throw in the latest technology, but the cellphone industry is becoming so complex that we always come back to the table and wonder should we have a specific guideline for cellphones,” she said. But, she added, “At the moment, we seem to feel it’s the same as TV.”
Jill Mikols Etesse, a mother of two daughters, aged 3 and 8, outside of Washington, believes her younger daughter is further along in vocabulary, reading and spelling than her older daughter was at the same age, and she attributes this progress to the iPhone and iPad. The 3-year-old has learned to spell compound words like “starlight and fireworks” through an app called Montessori Crossword, her mother said. “She uses words that I don’t use, so I know it isn’t coming from me,” Ms. Etesse said. “She says ‘That’s peculiar.’ I don’t use the term peculiar.”
But Jane M. Healy, an educational psychologist in Vail, Colo. said: “Any parent who thinks a spelling program is educational for that age is missing the whole idea of how the preschool brain grows. What children need at that age is whole body movement, the manipulation of lots of objects and not some opaque technology. You’re not learning to read by lining up the letters in the word ‘cat.’ You’re learning to read by understanding language, by listening. Here’s the parent busily doing something and the kid is playing with the electronic device. Where is the language? There is none.”
Despite Ms. Etesse’s generally positive experience, she and her husband decided to set limits when their two daughters spent six hours straight staring at the iPhone during a car trip. Now they allow each child no more than one hour a day of screen time. (That means the iPhone and the iPad; neither girl is interested in TV, she said.)
Tovah P. Klein, the director of Columbia University’s Barnard College Center for Toddler Development (where signs forbid the use of cellphones and other wireless devices) worries that fixation on the iPhone screen every time a child is out and about with parents will limit the child’s ability to experience the wider world. “Children at this age are so curious and they’re observing everything,” she said. “If you’re engrossed in this screen you’re not seeing or observing or taking it in.” (Though some, like Renee Giroux-Nix of Cedar Park, Tex., a suburb of Austin, applaud the iPhone’s photo function. She said her 3-year-old, Bella, took a series of photos during a shoe-shopping trip, focusing on her mother’s feet and legs. )
As with TV in earlier generations, the world is increasingly divided into those parents who do allow iPhone use and those who don’t. A recent post on UrbanBaby.com , a popular and often contentious parents’ Web site, asked if anyone had found that their child was more interested in playing with their iPhone than with “real toys.” The Don’t mothers pounced:
“We don’t let our toddler touch our iPhones … it takes away from creative play.”
“Please … just say no. It is not too hard to distract a toddler with, say … a book.”
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a psychology professor at Temple University who specializes in early language development, sides with the Don’ts. Research shows that children learn best through active engagement that helps them adapt, she said, and interacting with a screen doesn’t qualify.
Still, Dr. Hirsh-Pasek, struck on a recent visit to New York City by how many parents were handing over their iPhones to their little children in the subway, said she understands the impulse. “This is a magical phone,” she said. “I must admit I’m addicted to this phone.”
