Children and computers

On a slow day last week, a colleague brought his five year old to the office. Within fifteen minutes he had found his way to a computer. I paid him no mind until I heard the unmistakable sounds of a game coming from his direction, I glanced over at him only to see a look of pure joy, ecstasy even, on the face of this young child. Well of course I had to walk over to see what was the reason for this rapturous delight . Sure enough, he was engrossed in some car crash game ,expertly manipulating the directional keys to get desired effects. "How did you do that?" I asked , "I figured it out." he answered nonchalantly. I was impressed.

I sauntered back to my desk after a while . What is it about children and computers? how are they able to master these skills so easily? do they acquire these through osmosis? what are the benefits of such early computer behaviours? The latter intrigued me enough to seek out what the literature was saying about it.

There they were, many studies about the the advantages and disadvantages of computer use and young children. Here is one , www.newman.ac.uk/students_websites/~s.e.howells/advs.htm. I also found quite a lot at EBSCOHOST but I would like to highlight a few quotes from an article written by W. A. Shilling (1997).

• Through their play children develop a knowledge about the forms and functions of written language at an early age and learn about the rules of written language. (Neuman and Roskos 1998).

• They serve to stimulate a variety of beneficial cognitive encounters for young children through graphics, touch screen, mouse manipulation, sound and immediacy of response among others. (Hoot 1986, Watson, Neda and Shade 1986).

• Through exploration with written language in a playful setting, children were observed to discover relationships between graphemes and phonemes and began to formulate their own rules. They also gained insights into how to control and use a variety of functions.(Piazza &Riggs 1984 and Piazza & Tomlinson 1986).

There are , as I hinted earlier, many arguments against young childrens' use of computers at home and school but from what I have seen so far, it appears that the positives far outweigh the negatives . I will conclude therefore,that computer usage by minors requires guidance and monitoring from responsible adults as they master the functions that they will use in the future. That done - Let the children play .

Reference : Shilling , A .W.(1997). Young children using computers to make discoveries about written language. Early Childhood Education Journal , 24 , 4, 253-259.


Mary Grant