Discovering That Your 18-Month-Old Is Using an iPad in Pre-School

On a recent summer day in Nashville, Kara Teising opened her Facebook page for a lunchtime scroll through her timeline when she discovered a photo posted by her son’s daycare: an image of her 18-month-old son surrounded by other toddlers, their chubby faces glued to a brightly colored, animated screen of an iPad. …. After several discussions with the school’s leadership, Teising and her husband decided to pull their son out.

Do parents of today hold some ideology of childhood that doesn’t include electronics?

I shared my theory with Kirkorian –that we parents might idealize a childhood without technology as better. “I often hear ‘grown ups’ talk about the inherent value of ‘real’ objects over technology,” she said, “but frankly I don’t see a difference (and there’s no research to suggest there is one) between a stick and an iPad. Of course kids should have time to explore the natural environment and interact with other people. A more realistic question is whether an hour or two of touch-screens per day is going to devastate permanently cognitive/social development. It’s unlikely, but we just don’t know yet, and any answer will depend heavily on program content and the characteristics of individual children.”

Is there a difference between a stick and an iPad?