Touch screen technology isn’t much older than most of the children using it and there is still little research showing how that use affects brain development, reports Hanna Rosin in her recent article for The Atlantic, “The Touch-Screen Generation.”
Children as young as 18 months, Rosin writes, are learning to use touch screens through intuition alone. Her son Gideon is among them. “I must admit, it was eerie to see a child still in diapers so competent and intent, as if he were forecasting his own adulthood,” Rosin writes.
With that image spurring her on, Rosin delved into the research that does exist about how children interact with and learn from iPads and other touch-screen devices. The article balances an exploration of parents’ fears of the impact of the devices on young children with scientific understanding of the young brain.
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