D is from Digital – A Report from the Sandbox

The Sandbox Summit, held yesterday in Las Vegas, which I discussed here was more about boxes than about sand – digital boxes. Held in connection with The Consumer Electronics Show, it featured a dozen or so manufacturers of digital devices aimed at kids as well as children’s advocacy groups and academics.

They all met to figure out how children play in the technological age and, in the manufacturers’ case anyway, how to capitalize on the increasingly digitalization of childhood...in other words how to create more electronic games, toys and devices for kids.

Whatever the underlying purpose, (it WAS held at CES, the trade show for electronic gadget makers after all) at least they had a summit. And at least we did hear about some of the effects of technology on children.

"We see how play and technology are merging," says Parent’s Choice Foundation’s ( the summit’s sponser) Claire Green. "There's no putting the genie back in the bottle." Now, Green adds, it's a matter of getting toy manufacturers to keep enhancing their product lines.

And you know…that’s really the point. It is a new day and we CAN keep our children shielded from technology to some extent but not all and not forever. Parents need to understand the impact of technology and the industry needs to develop products that meet parents’ needs.

Unfortunately, with little regulation of product claims, that doesn’t happen now too often. “Educational toys”, too often turn out to be...not really.

A report presented at the conference by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, D is for Digital, analyzed the children’s interactive media environment with a focus on mass marketed, informal
learning products for children ages 3 to 11.

They found that while both parents and experts believe that the new interactive media represents an opportunity to expand children’s skills and knowledge, major concerns with quality, developmental appropriateness, and educational value persist.

Ah, yea....

Some of the trends they uncovered were startling and somewhat scary to those of us interested in holding off on plugging our kids in as long as possible.

Children are using digital media more often and at an earlier age, beginning to use electronic gadgets at age 6.7, as opposed to age 8.1 in 2005 (NPD, 2007).

Media convergence has never been more prominent, providing children with continuous round-the-clock access to content.

Educational toys, referred to in the industry as Electronic Learning Aids (ELAs),represent a significant category within the $22 billion toy industry.

And they made some recommendations:

Create evidentiary standards to help make sense of products marketed as “educational.” No voluntary or regulatory standards currently exist around marketing products as educational. Without firm and independently verified standards of educational value, how is a parent or educator able to discern if
products live up to their claims?

Break the traditional model of one child per screen in children’s educational digital media. The bulk of educational digital media products now on the market assume one child sitting alone in front of a screen; however, better learning takes place when an adult is present to scaffold the child’s learning experience… this is an opportune timeto develop educational digital media products that encourage intergenerational interaction.

Protect children from digital age commercialism. The emergence of immersive
digital media products for children, such as virtual worlds, creates an unprecedented
opportunity for commercial marketing. For children under the age of 12 who are highly impressionable, it is especially important to advance policies that safeguard them from commercial targeting in the digital age.

All good recommendations. And, implicitly, because the report focuses on children 3 and up, this report supports the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation of no screen time for children under two.

Granted, Jane Ganz Cooney, is a televisions producer created with developing Sesame Street and the foundation has a vested interest in working with electronic media. Their goal:

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center will focus new attention on the challenges children face today, asking the 21st century equivalent of her original question, "How can emerging media help children learn?"

But, I’m OK with that. I’ve always been an advocate of working from the inside to institute change. The digital age is here to stay. Let’s limit children’s’ exposure to electronic toys and games but let’s also make sure that the ones that they have are providing the educational value that blocks, dolls and tree houses do…at least on some level.

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