One Parent’s Thoughts on

Early Touchscreen

PlayWhy I think it’s okay to let your child

under two use touchscreens. Plus some tips and suggested apps to try.

If you’re a parent of a pre-toddler child, you’ve probably heard the mantra:“No Screen Time Before Two”

“Television and other entertainment media should be avoided for infants and children under age 2. A child's brain develops

rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens.”

American Academy of Pediatrics

This rule was declared by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1999 and is

still largely passed around the internet as a gospel truth of good parenting*.

*Though most parents I know admit that they don’t always hold this line, and some feel pretty guilty about it... but should they?

Let’s Get Some PerspectiveIn 1999, when this recommendation was published, it was eight years before the first iphone was released.

Touchscreens were not a common interface.

Digital media for children was largely non-interactive.

Much of the most accessible media was television and came packaged with commercial breaks that targeted even young children.

Today there are many, many more options for children’s digital media- families with touchscreen devices like smartphones and tablets can easily access high quality interactive digital media without ads- if you just know where to look.

And Also

“young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens”

This statement unfortunately creates a false dichotomy. It implies that if a child is engaged with a screen, they are somehow cut off from people.

If the AAP had made a recommendation that there be “no book time before two,” parents would have scratched their heads or laughed. And yet, a picture book is essentially a series of static screens.

The difference is that we already culturally understand how children and parents co-play while reading books.

A Different PerspectiveOf course, we also have no problem letting children under 2 play by themselves with books.

I love books, and we have many children’s books in our home.

But particularly for young children, interactive digital media has, I think, more to offer than thumbing through a paper book. As a parent, I have seen that “screen time” with engaging, high quality interactive digital media can be rich learning time for my child.

If you’re curious about the potential role of digital play with your little one, read on to get the perspective from one family that’s been there.

BUYING INTO SCREEN TIME

We, like most parents, had heard the “no screen time” rule. But, working professionally in digital games, we had for years been closely following the increasing quality of touchscreen experiences for very young children and were skeptical about the AAP’s rule.

We started screen time, sort of experimentally, at about 8 months. At that time it almost exclusively co-play based, in much the same way we read books together.

Now, at 2 years, we also allow solo digital play, especially at moments when normally a young child would have very little autonomy, like when they are strapped into a car seat or must stay seated at a table in a restaurant.

SO, ANY REGRETS?

Based on our experiences, I believe interactive digital media is a positive addition to a young child’s playtime and learning time.

I believe my child learned concepts like names of letters, counting, shape matching, etc from the apps we use. Many apps make co-play time more fun for me as a parent. Digital apps also give my child a depth of autonomy that they can’t always get in the real world. For example, we have apps that mimic power tool use, cooking on a hot stove, driving a car, and swimming underwater.

Bottom line- digital play gets a thumbs up from me! That said, I do have a few tips for wary parents considering introducing screen time before 2...

PARENT TIPS

Your little one is developing their basic motor skills and understanding of the world.

You will be surprised at the complexity of interfaces your child can master before age 2- but here are a few tips on how to support

their play.

Don’t rely on an app’s built in instructional cues. MODEL for

your child with co-play.

Tip #1:MODEL & CO-PLAY!

The first few weeks using digital apps, especially if your child is under 1, think of the touchscreen more like an animated book. You wouldn’t expect your child to read or flip through a new book on their own- you’d do it with them. In fact, you’d probably lead the way- narrating the book out loud, turning the pages for them, and pointing out various details- and that’s exactly what you should do with digital media:

1. Demonstrate how to interact with the app

2. Narrate what is happening3. Prompt your child to try

themselves4. Ask questions and suggest

interactions just as you would with a children’s book○ “Do you see something red?”○ “Can you tap the bear?”○ “Let’s find all the flowers. 1...2...”

Tip #2: Touch is a Skill(and your child can develop it even under 1)

Touchscreens are way more intuitive than keyboards and mice for young children, but there are still some elements of skill that must be developed.

At first, your child will do a lot of accidental multitouch and unfortunately many apps, even apps designed for very young children, do not handle multitouch that well. For example, if your child holds down the tablet with one hand, suddenly nothing else on the screen will seem to respond to their other hand’s touch. Or if your child tries to use multiple fingers to drag something, objects might pop around under their fingers or fail to respond at all.

That’s okay! Keep modeling clear one finger dragging and prompting your child to keep extra fingers off the screen. For most children close to 1 year old, it’s time & exposure, more than specific age, that gates these skills.

That said, some apps for kids just have interfaces that are too unforgiving for little kids. Be picky- if an app seems to have poor tolerance for toddler dexterity, ditch it. There’s probably a similar app with better touch sensibility.

Tip #3: Repeat Exposure over TimePlay evolves with any toy. When we started out with duplo blocks, it was a lot of us building and child watching. Then it progressed to child knocking down what we build. Finally, our child started building themselves. We didn’t toss out the blocks right away just because building didn’t happen right away. Repeated exposure and time to experiment will help your child grow into digital toys the same as physical toys.

Your young child has little experience with abstract cues- so at first they won’t be able to understand even basic digital interfaces that do things like flashing objects, or point arrows at things. They also probably won’t listen well to voiced instruction coming from the device.

This does not necessarily mean that they are too young to play with a particular app. Just like toys and books, think of digital media as something that children grow into through with repetition and by observing others.

Particularly early on, introduce a new app with a lot of modeling and narration. If your child doesn’t engage right away or seem to understand how to interact, that’s okay. Try again a few days or a week or so later. There are some apps we had for months before our child really seemed to truly grasp the core interaction.

Tip #4: Guided Access on iOSIf you have an iOS device*, you should enable Guided Access and learn to use it. This tool built into iOS allows you to quickly restrict your child to the current app, preventing them from using the home button to exit back to the home screen (a skill they learn super fast, trust me!) Once enabled, it’s simple to turn on- just quickly push the home button 3 times in a row.

Many apps for kids gate menus, ads, and shop interfaces behind an “adult human” test like entering a sequence of numbers. But even some great young kid apps include buttons that are distractingly easy to hit. You can also use Guided Access to lock out these buttons by drawing circles around areas of the screen you want to disable.

Apple’s Instructions for Guided Access

*I have no experience with similar tools on Android devices but I know some do exist.

Tip #5: What to look for

Here’s what we look for in our apps:

➜ Rich Responsiveness- our child’s actions should be acknowledged in some way, providing them with feedback to allow them to learn and infer as they get comfortable with an app

➜ Fill Play & Learning Niche- we don’t want 20 letter tracing apps or 5 kitchen apps any more than we want 20 dolls or 5 balls. We limit overlap of play space between apps and look for apps the introduce new concepts or themes.

➜ Reflect Our Values- we want positive imagination play with diverse characters and minimal gender bias. We also look for apps that support exploration and experimentation because we believe these are forerunners to life skills like grit & self-regulation.

Tip #6: Don’t Be Afraid to Uninstall

We’re pretty selective up front but we’ve certainly rejected apps after download because they just didn’t seem to engage our child.

We’ve only ever deleted one app our child really liked and that was the PBS Kids app. This app lets kids watch clips from pbs shows. We love PBS and really like some of their shows for young kids (like Daniel Tiger!). But we felt we saw our child too often appearing to be completely “zoned out” while using this app.

As it turns out, we haven’t felt the need to do much limiting of app play yet, as mostly we see our child engaged, learning, and not obsessing over the device. But tv... tv is something that we have felt the need to limit as it seems like unfettered access to the tv consumes all of our child’s attention. The PBS Kids app was effectively functioning as a small tv, and we didn’t like the feel of that.

Bottom line, you’re in control of access at this age- if it makes you uncomfortable, delete it.

APPS TO TRY

These are apps we recommend from our family’s play*. There are many other great

apps out there and more arriving every day.

Don’t feel like you have to get everything. Just like with toys, less can be more with

digital apps.*These apps are all available on iOS, some also on Android

We found these apps great for introducing touchscreen play,

even for a child under 1

(Our favs at ~8 mo+)

STARTER APPS

Bubl

BUBL TAPhttp://bublbubl.com/bubl-tap$2.99

● A variety of dynamic abstract activities with simple shapes and some face motifs. Visuals respond simply to each tap- perfect for young newbie touchscreen learners

● High contrast black/white visuals attractive to very young eyes

● This is a great app for your child to start to understand that they can touch the screen to interact and touch specific things on the screen to get specific responses

● Although every touch generates a response and the app does cycle through activities on its own, touching specific elements does progress the app in specific ways, so there is the tiniest bit of depth and mastery that young kids can unlock. Chances are, though, that your child will outgrow this app before they really understand all the nuances of each possible interaction

Bubl

BUBL Drawhttp://bublbubl.com/bubl-draw$2.99

● This is a music sequencer app disguised as a drawing app

● This app is great for you as a parent. The interface is probably going to seem pretty confusing to you at first- a great lesson in how your young child is feeling about the world all around them. Let go of needing to understand how it works upfront, and just experiment & play!

○ Hint: Draw both closed paths, which make blobs, and open paths which make lines. Tap both to create music with dynamic visuals and color

● If your child really engages with music, this may be a great app to play with them even when they are too young to touch. Create musical sequences for them and do some bopping and swaying together.

Apple

PhotosBuilt into iOS

● In my opinion, it’s never too early to explore your phone’s photo app with your child

● Photo apps like Photos on iOS are perfect for teaching swipe- one of the easiest gestures for your child to learn!

● Swipe through photos together and talk about past events. Long before your child can speak, they will be capable of understanding fairly complex statements. Ask them to point to particular people or items in the photo. Once your child starts talking, ask questions about the photo to get them speaking sentences and practicing reflection of past events.

● This is also perfect for strengthening your child’s memory of distant family members- “Remember when Grandma came for Christmas?” or “This is your cousin Robin, whom you’ve never met.”

● Little kids LOVE watching video of themselves- and will quickly learn to push the play button to start the video themselves- just model it for them!

If you have family members on iOS- make shared streams! Make one for your child and encourage other family members to have one so that your child can get updated photos of them even when you are apart.

Shared Albums on iOS

Sago Mini

Fairy Taleshttp://www.sagosago.com/$2.99

● Sago Mini has a number of apps that are perfect for very young touchscreen users. Fairy Tales was our favorite for under 1 year - the interface is simple, There is a cat-fairy character on the screen that flies towards the position of your finger touch. So your child just needs to touch a point on the screen to have the character move.

● Sprinkled throughout the looping game scene are special interaction points where the character acts out adorable little animated interactions with the environment or other characters. Beginner players will stumble upon these accidently. Through repeat play, you’ll slowly see your child seek out some of these interactions intentionally. You could look at this app a little like a toy to practice early map navigation for infants & toddlers.

● We also really liked Sago Mini Ocean Swimmer which is the same gameplay but set underwater The knocking on the cat-fairy’s door to start off the app is just adorable

once your child starts doing it.

Originator

Endless Alphabethttp://www.originatorkids.com/?p=564$6.99

● The “Endless” apps series is made by Originator and they are all, I think, pretty fantastic. They are really designed for older kids, but if you start with them early, even your 1 year old will start learning from them.

● Prior to one year, you might find yourself mostly modeling behavior with this app, that’s okay!

● This is a great app to show off dragging. Its core interaction is dragging letters to the correct location. The whole time you drag, the letters do funny little animations and say their pronunciation over and over again in funny ways.

● This app will introduce letter sounds and the concepts of spelling words to your child. When you start out playing it, model repeating the sounds of the letters and repeating the word that is spelled when you place all the letters. Even before they can do it themselves, your child is absorbing the play pattern of this game by watching you

Once your child is comfortable with dragging and single finger touches, try out these slightly

more involved apps

(Our favs at ~12 mo+)

Level Up

Seven Academy

Busy Shapeshttps://www.sevenacademy.com/$2.99

● This simple looking app from Seven Academy is an impressively designed window into your child’s developing sense of logic. Think of it like a digital shape sorter toy- one that gets gently more and more complicated, prompting your child to make new leaps of logic & helping them practice perseverance through experimentation.

● It’s listed for 2-5 yrs but I recommend it for younger- although your child will definitely need to have basic dragging skills to engage with this app because the feedback for dragging is not juicy enough to keep them persevering with it if they aren’t good at dragging already. We first introduced this app around 8 months- it was pretty much a total fail at that time. We tried it out off and on over months and by 18 mos, the first set of levels were accessible. At two years, we can progress probably about 2/3rds through the levels and it’s been fascinating to see the logic concepts turn on over time, as made evident by this app.

● It also has really robust parental controls so that you can reset the level progression or limit it to your child’s comfort level, if you prefer.

Originator

Endless Readerhttp://www.originatorkids.com/Free to try

● Once your child has gotten the interaction of Endless Alphabet down, you can mix in Endless Reader, which is very similar but adds a sentence building activity. Again, this interaction is all around single finger drag. And again, it helps to illustrate a basic concept about letters- that they form words that you arrange into sentences.

● Though your child may not be able to learn to recognize specific words yet, you might be surprised to see how young they can start to match general patterns- demonstrating the ability to recognize that a short word belongs in the short spot and a longer word belongs in a longer spot.

(I also recommend you check out Endless Spanish and Endless Numbers)

Sago Mini

Road Triphttp://www.sagosago.com/$2.99

● A great next step Sago Mini game, this app starts to layer goals into gameplay- you pick a destination, decide what to pack, pick a vehicle, then drive that vehicle up and down a long, hilly road to the destination. Sound complicated for a 1 year old? Trust me, it’s totally doable.

● Start by modeling everything with narration. Prompt your child to tell you what choice to pick, then let them do all the picking themselves. Do this over a few sessions & soon your child will easily be able to get to the driving part of the game on their own.

● The driving is a bit more difficult to master. Instead of touch anywhere like in the Fairy Tales game, your child needs to learn to touch the part of the road in front of the car. Tap and hold is much more important in this app than in Fairy Tales. You will likely get a decent amount of “help please!” signs or words from your child at first but keep encouraging them to try on their own and reduce the amount of modeling/assisting you do. They will get it!

Once they master the driving part, show your child how they can tap on the car wash and gas station they pass during the trip for a couple

additional amusing interactions.

Toca Boca

Kitchen http://tocaboca.com/Free (Kitchen Monsters) & $2.99 (Kitchen 2)

● Your 1-2 year old is probably eating a number of solid foods and may be kitchen-curious- wanting to watch while you cook or starting to roleplay cooking with toys. The Toca Boca Kitchen Monsters and Kitchen 2 apps are great for tapping into this kind of imaginary play interest.

● Toca Kitchen apps can introduce the idea of a hidden menu- a common concept in adult digital experiences but a new idea for your little one. In Toca Kitchen, these hidden menus are a fridge that you can open to pick out food, and a shelf of appliances that can be used to prep food.

● The core interaction of the game is to pick a food, then use an appliance to prep it in some way, then feed it to the character and see if they like it.

● When your child starts to talk about emotions and responding to other people with your child, Kitchen Monsters provides a perfect activity to practice these kinds of conversations “Oh, she didn’t like it.” or “Does it look like he likes it?”

Toca is one of the most respected app developers for young children, but most of their apps are really for pre-school age and up. Toca Kitchen is

one of the most accessible and digestible apps for younger players.

Colto

Shape Gurushttp://gurus.colto.com/$1.99

● This game that advances through a series of pictures for your child to complete using different shapes of various colors. The experience has the feel of digital tangrams but the gameplay element is more about shape and color matching than puzzle solving.

● You could probably play this game with children younger than 1.5 years, but it doesn’t have nearly as much feedback as other apps like Endless Alphabet, so younger players may not stick with it. Also some of the dragging interactions are a little unforgiving, which may frustrate some younger, more inexperienced players.

Once your child is able to do story-based imagination play, and

simple problem solving* then you’re ready to try most apps for

young kids

*you know, move the chair to reach that thing on the

counter they aren’t supposed to have

(Our favs at ~18 mo+)

Keep Growing

Originator

BeBop Blox http://www.originatorkids.com/$2.99

● This app is from developer Originator, of the Endless apps we’ve already talked about. But it’s totally different.

● In BeBop Blox, you assemble animals and objects out of digital “wooden” blocks, only the blocks then have animated singing characters on them that do beatbox sounds... oh, just watch this video.

● This is a game that your child probably won’t grasp initially. Over time, they will realize how to play, so give this one a few tries over several weeks.

● This app emphasizes waiting in several ways- You have to wait for your piece to appear, you have to wait to use pieces at the right time. This is why I really like this app in our digital app library.

● Additionally, as the puzzle is completed, the background music grows more complete, providing layer of background feedback that will have you and your child tapping along.

Sago Mini

Babieshttp://www.sagosago.com/$2.99

● Babies just came out recently and is, I think, Sago Mini’s ‘biggest’ game experience so far. It also manages to keep all the freeform exploration play that Fairy Tales has while adding a lot for space for complex interactions with characters through a suite of minigame experiences interwoven throughout the app.

● At this age, your child might be moving beyond bottles, diapers, and baby food- basically leaving babyhood behind. This app is one way for them to indulge their “mastery” of these activities by allowing them to take on the role of the baby caretaker similar to the roleplaying they do with baby dolls.

Music Player

● If your child loves music and is in their “No, I do it!” phase, try letting them DJ their own music with an easy to use music app.

● Our app of choice is Amazon Music. We put this app on an old iphone and downloaded kid friendly songs so that the phone could play music even when not on the network. We often use this to allow for DJing in the car. Young children dearly love autonomy, and allowing them to set the music for the car is a special way to give them some while strapped into a car seat.

● Hook your phone up to some bluetooth speakers in your house and give your child your phone to have them DJ a dance party for the whole family!

Wandering Dolphins

LetterRoutehttps://itunes.apple.com/Free

● At this point, your little learner may be capable of understanding the idea of tracing a line, though they may not be good at it. There are many letter tracing apps out there but one of my favorites is a charming one made by a literal “mom & pop” developer team from japan. The LetterRoute app has letters, numbers, and japanese characters.

● So what sets this tracing app apart? It’s that letter strokes don’t reset if the child strays too far from the line, which many letter tracing games do. This makes it perfect for younger players. The theming of bikes, cars, & trains was also appealing for us.

● It has parental controls where you can turn on/off the various letter sets. Personally, I like it when apps for young kids support multiple languages. I don’t expect my child to learn a new language from an app, but I think early exposure to the idea of different languages is a positive step in both language learning and cultural awareness.

And BeyondThese are apps we are currently playing with, and a few that we are actively growing into.

If you want a great source of reviews on new apps for young children, I recommend the Children’s Technology Review. You can also check out the Smart Apps for Kids. YouTube channel which provides video footage of many children’s apps.

For 2 years

➜ Toca Band➜ Sago Mini Toolbox➜ Roxie’s Doors➜ Monkimun

Language Games

For 2.5 years

➜ Dr. Panda’s Mailman➜ Numbers➜ Crazy Gears

So What About the AAP?The AAP reaffirmed their rule multiple times since 1999. You can read one essay on their reasoning here.

But in September of 2015, they released an update to their guidelines that walks back from their “no screen time” stance to a much more nuanced approach that calls out the importance of co-play and content curation by caretakers.

Touchscreens in homes are still very new, and the actual research is consequently limited. But some early studies are promising, and there are more in progress.

Want to participate in one? Check out this ongoing study and become a survey participant.

So relax, download a quality app or two,

and enjoy some digital play time with your child.

just my .02 - thanks for reading!comments to @saeru or sabrina@listenquickly.com

BTW- This presentation is not intended to pressure you into using apps with your pre-2 year old, but just to let you know that, if you did, you wouldn’t be alone, it’ll probably be okay, and there’s some pretty cool stuff out there.

Special thanks SlidesCarnival for this awesome free slide template!