Ideas on how to use screentime and digital content to aid a child’s development

I am not sure how controversial a parenting take this is in 2023, but we don’t regulate screentime in our house. There are a number of reasons for this, not least because it has become a way for my eldest to manage physical tiredness, as well as the bright backlit of tablet seems to relax their eyes (which is an odd quirk with nystagmus). If they didn’t have these different needs, we still wouldn’t limit it because, sometimes, I need a minute to get something done, take a break etc. and screentime allows me to do those things.

The reason we have always been so pro screentime is because our little ones will grow up amongst technology, social media, screens, AI and keeping them from that doesn’t seem beneficial to their development. We don’t let them watch things an hour before bed though, and I encourage breaks, often taking the lead from what we’ve just watched, pick a book with a similar theme or create an activity around something that interested them. At the moment, everything we do in our house is flag and map based, for example.

There is so much about screentime that we’ve found to be so beneficial to our little ones’ development - from a SEN consideration as well as a more typical path of development.

Visually

The backlit screen means our little one who is visually impaired can adjust the brightness; it is often turned all the way up so the contrast is higher. When watching on a tablet they can get as close to the screen as they need to be able to be see details, which is helpful for all of us because of all the adjustments we’ve made in our house for their vision, watching through the back of their head isn’t one of them!
We also found that the size of the TV is too large of an area for them to see the whole picture all at once, especially considering how close they have to get to see sometimes, so a tablet solves a lot of issues for them.

Hand-eye coordination

I’ve written about the issues we’ve had with my eldest and handwriting; hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills more broadly.

For handwriting there are a great many apps which support early mark making, with varying tolerances for accuracy and pressure needed. The apps from Pinkfong I particularly like, as their tolerance for a ‘correct’ answer is quite broad and avoids the frustration of not progressing.

Another thing I discovered that was different between my eldest and my youngest (who is typical in their development) was that for my eldest simply using the tablet or computer helped them develop coordination with their fingers; learning where to tap, how to drag and pressure required to keep their finger in contact with the screen, where all things it took them awhile to develop.

Even learning the visual cues we need to learn to function in 2023, like the play button, the ‘x’ to close, or the back arrow were things that took them awhile to recognise, remember and interact with properly.

We had to spend months sat with our eldest teaching them these things, things that our littlest one picked up seemingly immediately. Whether this is because these things you learn by watching or because they’re the second child, I am not sure. But there was a chasm of difference between how the pair of them interacted with the digital space.

Learning information

This is by far my favourite part of living in 2023, that the information you need is in the palm of your hand if you know where to look for it. It’s really wonderful and I try and incorporate that into our daily life. For instance, if they ask me a question and I don’t know the answer, I say, ‘Shall we look up the answer together?’ Then we’re all learning, and I hope that they can see that it’s OK not to know something - which is something historically not been very good at admitting I don’t know things.

And, if you find the right channels or TV shows, they can learn so much. A special shout-out to Kids Learning Tube from which my eldest has learnt about maps, countries, flag, space, human body functions… And endlessly creates absolutely insane scenarios in our house, like Halloween morning for dress-up at school, 20 minutes before we were due to leave, while being dressed as Spider-Man, my eldest decided he wanted to dress as the Bernardnelli-Bernstein comet from the Oort Cloud. This isn’t a costume I had to hand unfortunately, because I didn’t know until the existence of that comet until that very moment.

Subtitles

Arguably leaving the best until last here! I’ve seen this as part of a parenting joke in some corners of the internet. Turning subtitles on the TV while they are watching their favourite shows is a great way to subtly and slowly introduce them to the written word versus the word they are hearing on the audio.

Many streaming services offer subtitles for most shows in varying font sizes, and some even have a variety of colour options (black text on a white background or yellow text on a black background, etc.) so there are options for low vision too.

Anyone who has been on TikTok will know how prevalent subtitles have become on nearly every video on that platform. Which is wonderful in terms of the accessibility, but also Gen Z and Gen Alpha more frequently use subtitles when they are watching TV in comparison to Millennials and Gen X, for example, and that subtitles are becoming a more daily part of how digital content is consumed.