ABSTRACT

The possibilities and challenges of digital technologies for young children are widely documented. However, parental guidelines place greater emphasis upon potential harms, advocating that parents limit their children’s screen time, or advise that parents simply read digital texts as they would a printed text. Our study investigated 22 Australian parents’ perspectives of their 2–3-year-old child’s experiences with digital devices and their views of reading digital storybooks to understand whether parents were cognisant of or engaged in practices that appeared to limit their child’s screen time, and whether parents noted any differences when shared reading printed and digital texts with their child. Results showed that many parents (1) limit screen time and therefore do not engage in shared digital text reading, consigning children’s screen time to unsupervised use; and (2) were aware that the reading of digital texts often is, and at times should differ to the reading of printed texts. These findings suggest that advising parents to limit screen time may result in parents avoiding the use of digital texts when shared reading with their child. Furthermore, recommending that parents read digital texts as they would printed texts may encourage parents to have unrealistic and/or frustrating expectations.

摘要

数字技术为幼儿带来的可能性和挑战已被广泛记录。然而，家长指南更加强调潜在的危害，提倡家长限制孩子的屏幕时间，或者建议家长像阅读印刷文本一样简单地阅读数字文本。我们的研究调查了 22 位澳大利亚父母对其 2-3 岁孩子使用数字设备的经历的看法，以及他们对阅读数字故事书的看法，以了解父母是否意识到或参与了似乎限制孩子使用电子设备时间的做法，以及父母在与孩子分享阅读印刷文本和数字文本时是否注意到任何差异。结果表明，许多家长 (1) 限制看屏幕时间，因此不参与共享数字文本阅读，将儿童的屏幕时间委托给无人监督的使用；(2) 意识到数字文本的阅读通常，有时应该不同于印刷文本的阅读。这些发现表明，建议父母限制屏幕时间可能会导致父母在与孩子共享阅读时避免使用数字文本。此外，建议父母像阅读印刷文本一样阅读数字文本可能会鼓励父母产生不切实际和/或令人沮丧的期望。