Expert’s Note: Pooja Srivastava Diwan

Pooja Srivastava Diwan is an experienced Child Psychologist and Parenting Expert and has been conducting various workshops on child health and development.

“Children can only learn what is available to them, traditionally parents, friends, school, and the wider community would have been the only gateways to learning. Now the digital world gives them a vast library of material to allow them to discover new things.

Knowing they can ask the computer anything they want to know drives a child’s desire to do research, many children will use voice to enter their search queries into search engines, and then need to read and evaluate the results that are presented. Over time their language will improve and they will become faster and more adept at finding the information they want.

Interactive websites and games help children learn to solve problems as they work their way through the challenges presented to get to the next level. Educational games that require children to follow objects and interact with them can help their hand-eye coordination, also their understanding of how to interact with systems, for example knowing that pressing the right button will invoke the desired action.

Research shows that the benefits of technology are much greater when the screen time is interactive rather than passive, and benefits are most great when it is supervised, and other interaction accompanies the activity, such as discussion.

The ability to control what is happening and a challenge to solve will stimulate their brains enabling them to learn, as opposed to passive content where they will just consume what is shown to them, and they do not have to do anything.

Exposure to the right sort of content can be achieved through a number of mechanisms from parental controls to ensure that you are in control of the apps and games your child can download, and child-friendly versions of full-blown apps such as Hello English for Kids.

As with anything, too much can be detrimental, and research shows this is the same for children and computers.

The AAP recommends that for children 2 to 5 years of age, screen time should be limited to one hour per day. The AAP identifies screen time as time spent using digital media for entertainment purposes. Other uses of media, such as online homework, don’t count as screen time.”