Are iPads and tablets bad for young children?

Tablet ownership has more than doubled in the past few years – and as many parents are finding, children are highly proficient at using them. But are these devices harmful to their development? Or do they encourage 'technological intelligence'?

Four small preschool children are sitting in a semi-circle around their teacher, in a large, bright room in a Georgian house in Bath. The nursery belongs to the Snapdragons chain, one of the first in the UK to offer iPads to its children soon after the tablet was launched in April 2010. The shelves are full of books, but the children are not looking at books. They are listening to their teacher, Amy Porter, read aloud an interactive story from an iPad about Zub the monster. The children bend towards the screen as if its glow were pulling them closer. They creep forward, the circle tightens and the iPad disappears from view beneath four heads of supremely shiny hair. Their engagement is absolute. They are kneeling, bobbly undersides of socks poking out from beneath their bottoms, feet as neatly folded and intently composed as adult hands at rest in a lap.

Since their launch, tablets have become increasingly popular in preschool and early-years learning. And, in growing numbers, parents are buying them for home use. John Lewis predicted that it would sell one tablet every 15 seconds in the runup to Christmas. By December, the Tesco Hudl had become so hard to find it was selling on eBay for £180 instead of £119. Then Aldi joined the budget price war with the launch of a rival tablet for £80.

If you are an adult in possession of both a tablet and children, the children are likely to take possession of the tablet. According to Ofcom's latest report on the subject, household ownership of tablet computers has more than doubled from 20% in 2012 to 51%; where there are children in those households, they tend to be users too. When the Common Sense Report on media use by children aged up to eight in the US was published last autumn, it found that as many children (7%) have their own tablets as adults did two years ago (8%). Given the fivefold rise in adult ownership of tablets in the US since 2011, it seems reasonable to expect a similarly large leap in the number of children owning and using tablets by 2015.

But the strength of children's engagement with the devices can sometimes appear sinister, even cultish. There are countless YouTube videos of toddlers sliding thwarted fingers along the pages of magazines, trying to unlock them. One friend claims her child's first word was not "Mum" or "Dad" but "iPad". In March the tabloids reported that a four-year-old girl was receiving treatment as "Britain's youngest iPad addict". The clinical psychologist Linda Blair, who notes an increase in parents asking her about their children's tablet usage, says she would never hand her iPad to a toddler. But many parents happily do just that, while others are so concerned about the impact of technology on their children that they leave the room to use their mobile. Which is right? Do parents who choose to limit or deny access to tablets deprive their children of technological intelligence, or are they keeping them safe from an as yet unknown harm?

It was this question, or one close to it, that led Jordy Kaufman, director of the BabyLab at Swinburne University in Melbourne, to explore the impact of the use of technology on children aged two to five. BabyLab – note the hi-tech intercapital – is Australia's first infant cognitive neuroscience laboratory, and Kaufman got the idea for his research while observing his son, then five, playing with an iPod Touch.

"It was so intuitive to him, I thought: there is something important going on here and we need to learn what effects this is having on learning and attention, memory and social development." His team's research will be published later this year, but Kaufman strongly believes it is wrong to presume the same evils of tablets as televisions. "When scientists and paediatrician advocacy groups have talked about the danger of screen time for kids, they are lumping together all types of screen use. But most of the research is on TV. It seems misguided to assume that iPad apps are going to have the same effect. It all depends what you are using it for."

Kaufman regulates his son's time on the tablet, but disagrees with some of the criticisms of tablet use. "One is that they inhibit creativity, unlike blocks or Lego," says Kaufman. "But if you look through a Lego set, that tells you exactly how to make it. I think the criticism fits a lot of the physical toys more than a tablet." The next generation of the burgeoning app market for children may exceed the teaching potential of more traditional toys, Kaufman says, because they will be able to measure growth and give feedback to parents.

For very young children, there may be benefits in being able to handle the world of the tablet before they have the motor skills to handle their broader environment. Kaufman cites a study in which babies who were too young to pick up objects were given Velcro mittens so that objects would stick to them. "Being able to manipulate their environment gave these very young children a kickstart to learning. It is possible that tablet exposure might be doing something similar."

It is hard to find an expert who thinks that monitored and considered tablet use is harmful. Even Richard Graham, the doctor who was reported to have treated the four-year-old patient for iPad addiction, does not think tablets are bad for children. Graham, lead consultant for technology addiction at the Capio Nightingale hospital in London, says that that "case", so eagerly taken up by the tabloids, comprised a single informal phone call with a parent, in which he gave advice. There was no followup treatment. He doesn't believe that "addiction" is a suitable word to use of such young children.

The difficulty for parents is that the dangers of tablet use for children – if dangers exist – are as yet unidentified. Research is in its infancy. We know little about what is going on in a child's head while they are using a tablet. "Really not very much at all at this point," says Kaufman (his BabyLab plans to publish research in the spring). This is partly because it is hard to measure brain activity in someone who is moving, and partly because metal cannot be taken into an MRI scanner. Until we know more, parents can only follow their own parenting instincts. "There is a school of thought that tablet use is rewiring children's brains, so to speak, to make it difficult for them to attend to slower-paced information," says Kaufman. Then he adds: "But every thought we have rewires the brain in some way."

Tablets are designed to mirror the world we know. They appear to operate intuitively, mimetically, responding to, reflecting and re-presenting the user's touch. Might the way tablets translate our sense of touch create a particularly intense relationship between user and technology?

Rosie Flewitt, of the Institute of Education at the University of London, has published research on how iPads can support literacy in nursery, early primary and special education. She has just submitted a study, looking at tablet use in the light of recent research into mirror neurons, to an Australian journal for peer approval. As part of her research she observed tablet use in a special school, where the children were writing stories and producing book covers on an iPad. "It was a form of mastery for those individuals that hadn't previously been accessible to them without a lot of help from other people," she says. "But beyond that there was something about the activities that captivated all the children intensely and motivated them to carry on. We have been trying to puzzle out why. That sent us on a journey finding out about mirror neurons … It may be that what you see on the screen is partially powerful because of the way mirror neurons work."

Mirror neurons are themselves a young area of neurological research: neuroscientists do not yet agree on the nature, function or behaviour of mirror neurons in humans (see here for an overview). Essentially, mirror neurons mean that when humans see an action, they think for a fraction of a second that they are performing the action themselves. Separate messages from the skin then tell the brain whether this action or touch is really happening to them or not. Flewitt suggests this may help to explain the particularly deep kind of engagement that children appear to display with tablets – although we are a long way from understanding what the consequences may be for cognitive development. "For a nanosecond," she says, "you see something happening on the screen and your brain empathises with what you see. You think: 'Is it me? Is it someone else?' It's a virtual reality to which we relate deeply as human beings because that's the way we're wired up."

Back at Snapdragons in Bath, the children appear to have no difficulty in letting go of their iPads, fingers curious for other things. Moments after swiping the screen in order to administer Zub's medicine, William, four, is poking the same digit into the holes of a decorative radiator cover, and Joe, also four, is picking at the embossed logo on the tablet's rubber case.

Has a parent ever expressed concern about tablet use at the nursery? "Not a single one," says Lyndsey Tanner, the branch manager. She has the word "Believe" tattooed on her left forearm in large, elegant cursive. "I get really cross when people say that iPads are a sedentary activity. Actually, do you know what, come and spend a day with me and I'll prove to you how wrong you are. It is the future, and it enhances their learning massively. It has never replaced any more traditional teaching methods we use. It is just another toy in the box."

To prove her point, four little hands are sliding down the banister on their way to the garden. William, Joe, Isobel and Rosie put on their anoraks. They are teaming up, an iPad beween each pair, to fill in monster pictures with colours they will photograph in the garden. It is raining, the kind of drizzle that doesn't fall so much as hang in the air, and within minutes the surfaces of the tablets pucker and glisten with beads. Intricate hairnets of raindrops appear on the children's heads, as delicate as a sugarwork lattice. None of them mentions the wet. They are happy charging around the garden collecting colours, each one captured with the exaggerated clunky click of the camera. It is the perfect fusion of hi-tech and outdoors, digital and concrete. As if to prove Lyndsey's point, Joe approaches after about five minutes to ask if he can feed the chickens instead.

This seems idyllic tablet use. And yet some parents persist in worrying when they see their children displaying proficiency on an iPad. Kaufman believes the proficiency is part of the problem. "I say that not necessarily based on scientific evidence but on my own experience. As a parent, I sometimes find this unsettling. But I try to be mindful that it is an open question whether it is unsettling because there is something wrong with it, or because it wasn't a feature of my own childhood. Not that long ago parents were bothered by seeing their children reading all the time. They would complain that they would hurt their eyes. My grandma was always telling me that she was harassed for reading."

Flewitt thinks that to deny children access to tablets is to "risk having one section of society that is growing up with skills and one section that is growing up without. You might think that it doesn't matter because they will develop those skills later. But it's not the same. They won't identify with it. It's not part of who they are … Children have been born into a world where these things exist," she says, "like we were born into a world where there were televisions, cars on the streets and packaging on food."

So what should a parent who fears their child's proficiency on a tablet do? You can choose educational apps or propose other activities. You could consider setting a time limit on tablet use – although Flewitt disagrees with this approach, in case you interrupt your child at the point of the app's maximum benefit. She has another idea. "You need to acquire proficiency," she says. "You can acquire it from them. They can teach you."

I decide to take Flewitt's suggestion. I don't own a tablet. Whereas my children, aged six and three, appear to operate them intuitively, this has not been my own experience. When I tried one, it reoriented itself unexpectedly, as if I had turned a steering wheel I didn't know I was holding. It didn't seem to have browsers and I found it hard to open and close things.

I tell all this to my teacher, who turned six in September. "You can call me Moin," he says.

"I'm in your classroom then," I say.

We sit side by side on the sofa in the lounge of his home in Haringey, north London. First, Moin shows me the on/off button. Then he shows me all the squares that are his games and videos. He slides along the full row of squares and we choose Lego Ninjago. "Tap," says Moin, then shows me how to choose my weapons; he advises "silver sword" and "black scythe". We choose our powers. Moin taps the one that says "Pestilence" and in about four seconds our figure appears to have met a sticky end. Next Moin teaches me Stand O'Food. I fear caution limited my investment in sauces and garnishes because after about 10 minutes we have made only $5.24, but I am tapping quite quickly on burgers and buns (when my teacher gives me a turn) and appear to have some happy customers. Last of all, Moin shows me how to use the camera. On our eighth attempt we manage to get both our faces in the frame for a double-selfie, and the hour is up.

Who is best on the iPad in your house, I ask? "I am," says Moin, closing the red leather case and gathering his crayons. He is drawing people whose hair is too big for the world. His mother, Sule, nods. "I have to figure out the logic, but they seem programmed to understand it," she says. Perhaps the tablet was secretly designed with children in mind as much as – or, who knows, more than – adults. Perhaps that would explain why children enjoy, unintimidated, all its potential – and instinctively understand its limits too.

"So you can basically do whatever you want to do on an iPad?" I ask Moin.

"Ye-es," he says, hesitating.

Then he adds, in a consoling voice, as if it's best I learn the bad news now: "But you can't make it come alive. You can't make the iPad come alive."

(Source: The Guardian)