[gentle music]
- Welcome to University Place Presents.
I'm Norman Gilliland.
For several generations now,
many a parent has been tempted to plop their child down
in front of some kind of video in order to keep them quiet.
But what sort of video?
That may have changed over the years,
and so might the content.
And the question is, one of the questions is,
what are the children getting out of it,
and how young does a child get anything out of video
of one kind or another?
With me is Heather Kirkorian,
professor of family studies and human development
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
and welcome to University Place Presents.
- Thanks, Norman; it's good to be here with you.
- I have to ask a personal question first.
What did you watch as a child, and what did you get out of it?
- Oh, gosh.
I promise this is not because I'm here with you today,
but I watched a lot of PBS when I was growing up.
Mister Rogers, Sesame Street. - Norman: Great.
And you remember what from those programs?
- I remember a lot of very specific moments.
One thing in particular I remember is Fred Rogers
on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood talking to us
as the kid audience very directly
about what it means to be on TV and that he's there with us,
but not really in person,
and I can't reach out and take his popcorn.
I remember that scene very vividly
and use it in teaching a lot.
- So he told you about the illusion right away?
- Right away.
I was four or five years old at the time, yep.
- This would've been television, as we've said,
but of course, now there are all kinds
of other forms of video.
And in your many studies,
what kind of forms of video have you looked at?
- Yeah, so I study kids using different types
of digital media.
Video's the most common thing I study,
but I've also looked at toddlers and touchscreens,
if they use touchscreen apps, e-books, or just simple books
that are presented on a tablet computer.
- What age group did you study?
How far back, how young?
- My youngest research is with infants around one year old,
about 12 months old, and then up to 5 and a half or so.
- How do you determine anything about what a one-year-old
is going to get out of any kind of video?
- It's a great question.
One of my favorite tools for the youngest kids
is eye tracking.
So we use specialized cameras
that can monitor where kids are looking
when they're watching video, and that can tell us quite a bit
about whether they're tracking the action and the story
or just looking at things that are moving around a lot.
- And what do you deduce from those studies
of one-year-olds?
- From one-year-olds,
they look at things that move around a lot.
So they're not typically tracking
what the characters are talking about, for example.
They'll look at whatever
is most salient on the screen, what's moving,
where there's a lot of visual contrast,
like bright against dark,
and they're less likely to follow the action
or anticipate what's coming next.
- Norman: And color?
- Yeah, so color contrast in particular.
So not that they're looking at a particular color
like red versus blue, but if there's contrast,
like one sharp color against another,
that tends to draw their attention.
- And do you have a sense now as to, let's say,
the proportions of the media use
and what the children are listening to?
- Yeah, definitely.
So research from Common Sense Media tells us
that even though kids
are shifting a lot of their screen time to mobile devices,
so they're using tablet computers
and smartphones much more than watching TV
on a household TV set.
Even though those devices have changed,
most of what they're doing is still watching TV
and video content.
So they're watching it on a mobile device
instead of a household TV set to an increasing degree.
But the vast majority,
something like three-fourths of what they're watching,
is still video rather than apps, or games, or other things.
- And in case you need a visual representation
of those proportions,
we have it right here in a pie chart format for you.
Give you some idea
of the amount of time children spend watching
or the proportions of the media that they watch
and the time they invest in each one.
What kind of differences do you see?
I mean, if you're saying the content
is essentially the same, what kind of,
what behavioral differences do you see coming out
of the use of these various media?
- Yeah, so in some ways, video viewing is video viewing,
and it doesn't really matter what device you're using,
but there are some differences.
The content itself has changed a lot over time.
For example, pace is much faster now
than it was several decades ago.
So some things have changed a lot.
The delivery mode has changed a lot,
so the youngest kids are spending much more time
on streaming media.
So streaming video platforms like YouTube,
much more than broadcast TV.
So more on-demand streaming content.
The way advertising comes into play has changed a lot.
So all sorts of things have changed a lot,
even though the act of watching video might be the same.
- Well, you have a couple of threads there
that I'd like to pull.
One is the advertising.
How has that changed over time
when it comes to children in particular?
- Yeah, well, I think one way that it's changed
is when it was just broadcast TV when I was growing up,
it might be ad-free
or it might have very predictable ad blocks
that are targeted to children.
Now we're seeing more ads that interrupt content
or ads that might be directed at older adults,
like advertisements for cars you might,
parents might purchase, for example,
showing up in streaming media channels for young kids.
- So it's kind of a one-room schoolhouse in a way.
Everybody's getting the same thing,
no matter how old or young they may be.
- Mm-hmm, that's right.
- And we have another chart here too
that we can't resist looking at,
and that has this bar graph giving us the idea
of viewing at certain ages.
And is that just because of what you just said, Heather,
that a one-year-old is not going to get a lot out of it
and therefore the programming is gonna be pitched higher?
- Heather: Yeah, so screen time definitely increases with age,
and that's due to a lot of reasons.
Part of it is that as kids get older,
they ask for screen time more, so they're requesting it
or turning it on themselves a lot more.
And some of it is that messaging has got out there.
The American Academy of Pediatrics
has discouraged screen time
for kids under two for many years now,
and parents are increasingly aware of that recommendation,
so they're less likely to have a lot of screen time
for those younger kids.
- And the other question I had has to do with just the speed,
or, let's say, the brevity of the shots,
the pacing of these programs.
If you've ever just kind of accidentally, let's say,
gone by somebody's house
where their screen was very prominent.
You're not hearing the audio,
you're just seeing how fast those shots change.
What kind of measurement do you see in that change,
and is it related, do you think, to attention span or what?
- Yeah, so those shots,
so those shots you're talking about
have gotten shorter over time.
So the average length of a shot in movies
and TV shows has shortened over time since when I was a kid.
We find that that,
we used to think that that had an impact
on things like attention span.
That if kids are watching
really fast-paced TV shows, for example,
it will shorten attention span in the real world.
There's not a lot of evidence to hold that up.
The pace itself doesn't seem to matter very much
in terms of attention span.
What does seem to matter a bit is the content.
So if kids are watching sort of fantastical, goofy content,
then they might have less inhibitory control
after watching that than if it's very calm
and natural content.
- It does seem that a lot of, or I'm hypothesizing here
or maybe basing it on personal experience
as having watched certainly my share of video
of one kind or the other over the years.
It seems that a lot of what you get out
of any kind of a video has a lot to do
with what you bring to it,
what you respond to, what you're interested in.
- Yep, that's exactly right.
So one of the biggest things that research is focusing on now
is thinking about individual child differences.
So what is their knowledge of media?
What experience do they have with media?
What are their cognitive skills like?
What language skills do they bring?
A whole host of things, and that tends to moderate
what impact screen time has on them.
So are they likely to learn from it or not?
Are they likely to have a lot of fussiness
and tantrums when screens are taken away or not?
Those things differ a lot from one child to the next.
- So in a sense, some children do their own winnowing
and sifting when they're watching stuff.
- Yeah. - For better or worse
that stuff may be, they're kind of sorting through it
and responding in a way that reflects their interest,
their curiosity, and their temperament too.
- That's exactly right.
Both in terms of what they want to watch
or what they want to play and what they remember from it.
- And what part,
getting back to kind of the one-room school concept
but bringing it home, what effect does the environment
that a child watches this programming in have to do
in terms of the context, who's around when they watch,
and what is their response?
- That's a great question.
This was understudied for a long time,
but the research is moving in this direction pretty rapidly,
thinking about the context in which that media use happens.
So kids don't use media in a bubble.
They don't watch TV in a bubble.
That's within a family context.
And it turns out, it makes a big difference
if kids are watching videos by themselves
versus with a caregiver, for example.
They'll learn a lot more from it
if they're interacting with someone else while they watch,
and they're less likely to have some
of the potentially more harmful effects,
like being frightened
by something scary they see in TV, for example.
Similarly, the larger context.
So the effects of media on child development
seem to be greater for kids
in lower-income homes, for example,
both the positive and negative effects.
- One of the negative effects
you've already mentioned, Heather,
and that is withdrawal.
And how would a caregiver of any kind,
whether it's a parent or a professional outside the home,
deal with that in terms of knowing
when to make it available,
this video in whatever form it may be,
and knowing how to withdraw it without a riot.
- Right.
One of the most common questions I get from parents is,
"If I use screens,
how do I turn them off without a meltdown?"
That's one of the most common questions I get from parents.
And that's a real concern for parents,
and for some kids more than others.
In terms of when to use screens,
there are different kinds of guidance around when,
in terms of the time of day or at what age.
So the American Academy of Pediatrics
has specific guidelines about ages, and how much, and when.
They discourage screen use for everybody, you and I,
you and me included,
in the hour before we go to bed at night,
so in terms of time of day.
And in terms of when to withdraw,
the American Academy of Pediatrics has guidance
for how much time per day as well.
I tend to focus less on the time per day
as opposed to what kids are doing
and what they might be missing out on if they're on screens.
- We have a representation of that here too.
Give you a little bit of a cheat sheet
for any kind of caregiver
who is considering using video in any form
to interact, let's say, with a child.
And how do we interpret these Cs, these five Cs?
- Heather: Yes, the five Cs.
It's a really useful framework
for thinking about kids and screens at different ages,
and they have tailored advice for kids at different ages,
if folks are interested in looking that up.
But this comes from the American Academy of Pediatrics, again,
the Center of Excellence on Social Media
and Youth Mental Health.
They have guidance for kids,
from infants all the way up through teens.
And the five Cs sort of tell us
what does the research say about screen time and kids?
What should parents really be thinking about
when they decide whether to use media,
what kinds of media to use, when, and how?
So thinking about the child, which we've talked about.
Individual children respond differently to screens,
and parents can adapt their rules around screen time
to those individual needs of children.
For example, whether they can turn it off without a meltdown.
That's a big one.
The content they're watching, we've talked about a bit.
That matters hugely.
The impact of screen time on kids hugely depends
on the content they're watching.
Calm refers to whether media is used as a calming device
and whether kids have other ways
to calm themselves down other than using screens.
Crowding out refers to what kids might be losing out on
if they're using screens.
We wanna make sure
they're getting enough sleep, for example.
And communication.
So families are encouraged to communicate early
and often with kids about screens.
- Well, I remember scenes from childhood in which a parent
or a grandparent just came into a room and said,
"Go outside and play."
And actually, I think by then, we were all ready for it anyway.
- That's right. - So sometimes, it's, I guess,
getting a cue that you're sort of hoping for anyway
would help out. - Yep, that's right.
And I think in terms of turning off screens,
it can be really helpful
to think about what kids are in the middle of,
and letting them finish their thought,
I think, is really helpful in taking it away.
- Well, if you're talking about a video game,
that's probably paramount, isn't it?
- Right, getting to a goal or an endpoint,
a natural endpoint in the game.
Turning it off in the middle of a challenge
that you're trying to get over can be really difficult.
- Well, I've seen that kind of reaction
for technical breakdowns, I think,
causing it among high school students, for that matter.
You know, extreme distress
over getting to a certain level in a video game
and then it suddenly cuts off.
- Yep, that's exactly right.
It's really frustrating.
I feel that way as an adult sometimes.
- Well, we'll talk about your video gaming
maybe a little later,
but in the meantime, interaction,
or the interplay between a child's temperament
and their video dependency, let's say.
- Yeah, absolutely.
So there's some research now really focused
on what the literature calls problematic media use
in young children.
And there's some evidence of this
as early as four years old.
It might emerge even sooner,
but the youngest kids I've seen in the research
are four-year-olds.
And this is characterized by certain behavior traits
that might suggest problematic media use.
So that might be a preoccupation with media,
like asking constantly even after you've been told no
to turn the TV on, for example.
Sneaking media.
So older kids might sneak a device
into the bedroom at night, for example,
so they can watch videos at night.
And having meltdowns when told to turn the TV off
or turn the game off.
- Well, yes, and I, again, not to put any,
too much of a burden on today's generations,
but when I was a kid, we actually, after bedtime,
sneaked down the street to watch a certain show
on a neighbor's TV.
And since I don't remember the repercussions,
we must have gotten away with it.
- [laughing] Right.
- But speaking of bedtime, you mentioned earlier, Heather,
this idea that the experts recommend against any kind
of screen time within an hour of going to bed?
- That's right.
- You wanna apply that to children as well as adults?
- Yeah, I think that guidance applies.
So the American Academy of Pediatrics focuses on kids,
but I've seen similar guidance for adults too,
and I know a lot of adults in my life
who try to follow that rule for themselves for better sleep.
- And what is the, what is the effect?
What is the problem with that?
- Yeah, there's pretty good evidence, at least in adults,
that using screens, especially mobile devices,
which we hold close to our faces late at night before bed,
can disrupt sleep.
There are a lot of ideas for why that might be the case,
and they're probably all a little bit true.
So some folks have studied blue light,
just the nature of light that comes from the screens.
Others have focused on time displacement.
So if you're on your screen late at night,
you might stay up a little bit later
than you otherwise would have and get less sleep.
And then the quality of sleep can also be disrupted
by the content of what we're doing.
So if you're having, reading upsetting news
or thinking about a work problem
or doing those kinds of things late at night,
that's going to disrupt sleep as well.
- Maybe even if you're just reading an e-book.
- Right, so the content will matter a lot, the activity,
so if you're using it to listen to mindfulness meditations
before going to bed, right, to help you fall asleep,
that's going to be really different.
Or reading a book is going to be really different.
Blue light can still be a concern if that's a mechanism.
So turning the screen down or using night mode
or dark mode can be helpful there.
- Let's get into techniques then that might be used.
And I know you have a video for this too
that has techniques for weaning children off of videos
when it's deemed necessary.
- Yeah, exactly.
So because this is one of the most common questions
I get from parents, over time, I've gathered tips
that researchers have suggested
that parents can use to help make that transition easier.
So for some kids who are really dysregulated,
that might need a bit more guidance
if kids just have emotional or behavioral dysregulation.
But for most kids, it's really about habit-forming,
making things predictable, setting clear guidance.
So if there are clear rules
and routines around when screens can be used
and when they need to be turned off,
that's really helpful for kids, as it is for anything,
for bedtime routines or any other routine.
Keeping it consistent and predictable
is really important for young kids,
so they know what's coming and they know what's expected.
Rewarding kids for having good self-regulation
is really helpful too.
So if kids give back the iPad, for example,
when you say screen time's over,
that can be really helpful for kids learning
that that's what they should be doing.
"Yes, I gave it over nicely, I didn't have a meltdown."
So those kinds of things can be helpful.
And then there are ways that we can use the media itself
to help us out.
So choosing media that has natural endpoints,
avoiding things like streaming media
with an endless "up next" playlist,
and having a, kind of time boxing the video
so that it's a constrained playlist
with maybe two episodes of something.
- Or yes, probably not watching a two-and-a-half-hour movie.
- Right, exactly.
So if you wanna keep to 20 or 30 minutes of screen time,
choosing something that's that amount of time is helpful.
Yep. - That could apply also to,
to parent generation if they're getting within an hour
or two of bedtime. - That's exactly right.
It's harder for all of us now.
You know, we can watch an entire season of something
on Netflix or something before we go to bed.
Yeah, I mean, we all have to sort of set those rules
for ourselves.
- And if we're talking about commercials then,
how does that play into really, do we see,
obviously I would think the advertisers would see an effect
when they're advertising to children.
Do we see negative effects from that advertising, though?
- That's a good question.
I think it depends on how you define negative.
So I completely agree with you.
A lot of the research on this
is proprietary corporate research, so we can assume
it wouldn't be a multibillion-dollar industry
if it wasn't effective. - True.
- So they certainly know that it works.
And there's other academic research too
that suggests it works.
Whether you think convincing kids
to want a product they wouldn't have otherwise wanted
is a negative outcome.
I think reasonable people might disagree
about whether that's negative.
I have my own opinions about it I'll keep to myself,
but certainly, it has an effect
that it's sort of kids are more likely
to want certain brands over others
if they see advertising for those brands.
- Oh, boy, yeah, that's the,
certainly the oldest principle in the world
in terms of media of any kind,
whether it was pre-TV in the days of radio.
You hear a lot of broadcasting very brand-oriented
in the commercials and, of course, promising,
in a kind of a figurative way,
superpowers if you have your cereal, you know,
your Sugar Pops or whatever it might be in the morning.
- That's exactly right.
And the industry has some self-regulatory bodies now
that help keep each other in check a little bit
and try to keep things ethical.
So some of the concerns that have been raised in the past
that are less of a concern now are using, for example,
cartoon-like figures to sell products that aren't for kids
like cigarettes, for example, or alcohol.
So that has been an issue in the past,
and it increased kids' interest in having those things
because there's a cool-looking cartoon character
on that package.
And that's regulated a bit more now.
- Makes me ask about animation in general.
Of course, that's a very, very old
and venerable way of entertaining children.
I mean, Fantasia, Walt Disney had that figured out,
you know, most of a century ago now.
However, when you get to something like The Simpsons,
that's also animated.
- That's right.
- And so how are those guidelines developed
to separate, or even should they develop in a way
that would separate a five-year-old,
a seven-year-old from watching The Simpsons,
or are there others
that are even further pushing the limits?
- Yeah, absolutely.
And this is a cue that kids use very early on
when they detect, "Hey, is this for me or not?"
Animation is one of the quickest cues they learn.
Animated is for me.
At least that's been the case for decades.
And that might change over time as we get more
and more animated content for teens and adults.
But they use that cue early on to decide if it's for them,
and that can lead them down a path
of choosing something they think might be intended for them
that very much is not.
I think parent monitoring is obviously a good way
to try to minimize that a bit.
And then also, there's stuff that the industry can do
to make sure they're not either intentionally
or unintentionally marketing that information to young kids.
- Is there a way to,
like if you hand a young child some kind of video device,
I'll say something handheld, for example,
a way to have content control over that?
- There is; you mean in the device itself?
- Yes. - Like to sort of force it?
It depends on the--
It's really about the apps that one is using.
So, for example,
YouTube has some pretty easy features,
like using YouTube Kids
as opposed to the parent YouTube.
The main YouTube, I should say, that parents are likely to use.
But that is just one step.
What I prefer to recommend to parents
is having an opt-in content solution.
So rather than saying, "It's on YouTube Kids,
it's gonna be fine."
If parents have the time and energy to do it,
curate their own playlist of things their kid can watch
and set up what I call a walled garden
so kids can watch the videos that I, as the parent,
have selected to put into this playlist.
That's all they have access to
because there's stuff that can get through the filters
in moderation on YouTube Kids, for example.
- Speaking of content guidelines,
are these PBS guidelines that we're seeing here?
- Heather: They're from the organization Zero to Three.
They worked with researcher Dr. Rachel Barr
to make these what they call screen sense.
These are the E-AIMS,
so you can see on the screen what that stands for.
And these are based on research by a number
of developmental psychologists focusing on what works
for young kids in general for learning,
how do they learn well in the real world,
and what does it take to apply that to the digital realm?
So this is basically their attempt
at translating that research
on how kids learn well in the real world
to make it work on screens as well.
- We haven't really gotten into what kids
of various age groups, other than the one-year-olds,
actually get out of video in one form or another.
So let's take it all the way up to two-year-olds for starters.
What do they see, what do they think,
and what do they feel when they're watching a video?
- Yeah, so even the youngest kids will look at screens,
but we can tell a lot from different ways
of studying kids' attention to screens,
what are they actually getting out of it?
And the research for a long time suggested
it wasn't 'til about two and a half years old or so
that kids made sense
of what we would think of as television,
like an edited program that has different scenes
and tells a story over time.
So it's not until about two-and-a-half years old
that kids start to show some evidence
of understanding that kind of information
and being able to turn that
into something meaningful in the real world.
But it takes a long time
for kids to become as good as an adult at doing that.
- If we take something
that you wouldn't want your child to see,
but for whatever reason sees it anyway,
let's say a two-year-old, three-year-old,
how would they react to violence on TV?
- Yeah, that's a great question.
So there are lots of studies on this,
and we all have personal anecdotes of something
that scared us on TV too.
And some kids are more sensitive to that than others.
This is one of those.
The first of the five Cs is child.
This is one of the ways parents know their child best.
Is their child someone who's really sensitive
to that kind of image and will likely be really scared
and have trouble sleeping at night
or be disturbed during the day by that content.
Parents know best how their child's likely to respond.
Some kids are more sensitive to that than others,
but we all have anecdotes of being scared
by something we saw on video.
There are things parents can do to help minimize that.
And the best strategies differ by the child age.
So for really young kids,
it's mostly useful to have physical comfort.
So, you know, physical contact with a caregiver
that they know and love,
or a stuffed animal, or a blanket,
or something they know and love, that kind of physical comfort.
The other good strategy for young kids is just avoidance.
Not avoidance of the conversation,
but avoidance of the content.
So trying to prevent kids from seeing content
that's likely to scare them.
Older kids might be better able to talk about it
and understand that's just fake, it's on TV,
or that happened really far away,
it's not going to happen here.
Those kinds of conversations can be more effective
for older kids than younger ones.
- How about TV as just purely a distraction factor?
Children are in the room,
you have people having a conversation,
maybe even somebody making music, and you have a TV on.
- Yeah, this is really common in that early image we had
of how much time kids spend with screens
is a very much an underestimate
if we consider secondhand TV exposure,
background TV exposure.
- Sounds like you're talking about smoking now.
- Exactly. - It's analogous, isn't it?
- It's a good analogy, exactly.
So you're exposed to it, but you're not doing it.
So most studies about kids' screen time
is asking about when kids watch TV,
but they're exposed to a lot more
than what they are personally watching.
So that's really common, and there's good research now
on what impact that has on their attention and play
and those kinds of things.
So trying to minimize
that background distraction can be helpful for young kids.
- And a challenge when you have several kids,
for whatever reason, all in the same close quarters.
- That's exactly right.
There's a good reason, a good explanation
for why younger siblings watch a lot more TV
than older siblings do.
- I mean, it's interesting to be in a room with, like,
say, a one-year-old, a four-year-old,
and a seven-year-old,
and you bring the one-year-old into the room
and gravitates toward whatever's on that screen,
whatever they're getting out of it.
And you say, Heather, it's not all that much,
but it's something that's light, and colorful, and active,
and they might just kind of gaze at it,
but it does seem to just draw their attention like a magnet.
- Yep, that's exactly right.
I mean, it's movement, it's sound,
it's lots of change happening very quickly.
All of those things just tap into the brainstem
and make us look, even if we don't want to.
And that's true for everybody,
but it's especially true for young kids
who have less control over their attention, yeah.
- Is this a representation of a way of using
or the ways that media regulate themselves?
Is that what we're seeing in this graph?
- Heather: Yeah, this graph is showing
what we call regulatory media use.
So that's a long-winded way of saying using media
to calm a child down, regulate their emotions and behavior.
So this comes down to one of those Cs called calm.
So that's using media to calm children down
when children are upset, or stressed, or hyper.
And so we find that that kind of regulatory media use peaks
during the preschool years.
So you can see on the screen, like, two to five years old,
we see that is the most common age
when this kind of thing happens, which is no surprise
because that's when behavioral dysregulation
is at its highest, emotion dysregulation is at its highest,
and kids are still figuring out how to use their words
to explain what they need.
- I'm tempted to use that phrase
that we would apply to other things
that people become dependent upon.
You find children with an addictive personality
who fall afoul of video media?
- Yeah, this is the phrase I used earlier,
problematic media use is the more common phrase
in the literature.
A lot of people who study this don't like the addiction word.
With young kids,
they don't think it's the right word to use,
but I think it's a similar class of behavior.
So letting it crowd out other activities
that kids need, right?
That's the same kind of behavior we might see
with addiction in adulthood.
Does it prevent you from getting the things you need
to be healthy and happy?
So is it crowding out other things?
Do children have emotion dysregulation
so they get really upset
and have meltdowns around screen time,
those kinds of things.
Some might consider those precursors
to problematic media use.
Whether it's truly an addiction,
smarter people than me on that topic even debate it still,
so it's hard to know where we'll end up.
- Do you go so far, Heather,
as to recommend guidelines for how much video
of various kinds a child should have in a day?
- Yeah, the pediatrician experts
have concrete guidance around, like,
no more than an hour per day for preschoolers,
none for kids under two.
I think a lot more about what kids are doing in the day
and is screen time crowding out the other things they do?
So I use charts like the one you see
about thinking about your child's day
as a zero-sum amount of time.
What kinds of things do you want your child to have in that day?
We definitely want them to get enough sleep.
We definitely-- - Norman: Sleep is a good one.
- Heather: That's a huge one.
And for the youngest kids, that's, you know,
half their hours of the day might be in sleep.
Are they losing out on high-quality sleep
because of screen time?
If so, we might need to address the screen time.
The same goes for high-quality parent-child interaction,
physical activity, outdoor time, time to think and be creative.
I wanna make sure kids get good amounts of time in the day
to do all of those things.
And if they're doing that,
screen time is probably not a huge concern for that child
as long as the content isn't harmful, like scary or violent.
- Well, as a researcher, how do you feel
about the family sitting down to dinner together
and watching TV instead of doing it the old-fashioned way
and sitting around the dining room table?
- Yeah, meal times
is one of the number-one recommended screen-free zones
for pediatricians. - Is it?
- Right, so they recommend identifying screen-free zones,
and they think meal times
is one of those we should try to make screen-free.
And the reason for that
is because it's one of those times where kids
and parents come together and talk about their day
and open up about things,
so it can be one of those protected spaces.
So I think for me, it's,
the other reasons for meal times is that we,
research also shows we eat a lot more
when we're watching TV while eating than not watching TV.
- You're not even aware of it, are you?
- Exactly, you're sort of mindless eating, if you will.
So there are several reasons
to not have screens around you while you're having meals.
That said, if parents find other times in the day
to have distraction-free, screen-free interactions,
to me, that's a good goal to have,
even if it's not during mealtime.
- And then there's physical activity.
You know, back in the day,
for a lot of even suburban neighborhoods,
you could get out, you could, you know,
ride your bike around the street,
you could play games that nobody's ever heard of anymore,
and all that would take place outside.
But if you're in a really,
an urban environment or some other situation
where those outside activities are not readily available
except maybe, you know, at school for a period of time,
what's the solution to that, do you think?
- Yeah, I think both outdoor time and physical activity,
the two tend to go hand in hand, although they don't have to.
I think this is a good example of wanting to be aware
of screen time potentially crowding out those things.
The context matters a lot, as you said.
So the environment kids are in
might be more conducive to outdoor play, physical play,
and physical activity,
more so for some kids than others.
I think this is a place where we can think of technology
being a potential solution too.
So especially during peak pandemic,
there were a lot of families
who used different kinds of videos
and games to get physical activity
when they couldn't go to the gym, for example.
So there are some popular examples of games
and videos that get kids to dance along
with someone on the screen, for instance.
So that's one of my favorite forms
of physical activity, actually,
playing video games where you dance along with a character.
- Otherwise, it's your thumbs
that are getting all the physical activity.
- Right, exactly.
That's exactly right.
- Do you play video games, Heather?
- I do; some, a few.
I have a select set that I play, yeah.
- And do you have criteria for those?
- I do.
I have a pretty narrow interest set
when it comes to video games, yeah.
Yep, I like adventure and puzzle-solving games
quite a bit. - Well, okay.
And the puzzle solving,
well, those would be physical too,
or they also can be text-oriented.
- They tend to be visual and spatial,
but using my thumbs and not my body, yeah.
- As far as the various alternatives to video
and all that that we've talked about,
you have one more element here that I'd like to talk about
in terms of maybe a two-edged sword,
and that is the role of creativity
interacting with video.
Is it a damper, or is it a stimulant?
- Yeah, that's a good question.
There's not a huge amount of research on this
compared to some other areas, to be honest.
I think if we look at just minutes per day,
screen time minutes per day
tends to be associated with lower creativity.
But this is where content comes into play quite a bit too.
So there are some shows, apps,
and games that are designed to allow kids to be creative
or encourage creative thinking, and they can be effective.
So content that's explicitly designed
to help kids be creative or create space for creativity,
like finger painting apps and those kinds of things.
Those can encourage creativity
and inspire kids to think more creatively,
but they have to be designed very intentionally to do that.
- Well, and some efforts to do that on TV do go way back.
There used to be a show when I was a small child.
I won't name names because it would date me,
but there was a show that invited the children
to complete a drawing,
and in order to do this, they would put,
they would have to send off for this
for 25 cents or something,
a plastic screen on top of the TV screen,
and they would draw, you know,
to complete whatever animal or robot
or whatever it might be on the screen.
The only problem being children being impatient
didn't always wait to get the screen,
and they would just go up
and draw right on top of the TV screen. [laughs]
So I guess again, parental guidance is necessary,
but it's interesting how far back
that attempt to stimulate creativity goes in video media.
- That's exactly right.
And some of the shows I loved the most as a kid,
both PBS shows were art shows, right?
We can all think of famous examples of artists on TV
that we might watch do art.
And there was an artist on TV when I was a kid
who was doing drawing lessons for kids.
And I loved it.
I sat there with my paper and followed along,
and was really interested in illustration as a kid
because of that.
- And as we get into having all these various kinds
of media available to us,
do you have any kind of a breakdown,
and we've talked about overall video time in a day,
but when you have TV, and you have streaming on TV,
and you have a iPad, and you have a cell phone,
all of which are pretty manipulative
or can be manipulated by the user,
it's not like you're just watching
or not watching a program or a channel.
Do you have any way of, like, breaking that down
or do you just say overall video use in the course of a day
that you would recommend?
- Yeah, so the most common recommendations
are total minutes of screen time.
I would say the biggest breakdown we see
in recommendations
is video chat being pulled out into its own animal.
So video chat is seen as something really different
and probably mostly positive for young kids
if they're using video chat to connect with relatives,
or family and friends, or things like that.
So that's usually pulled out
and not included in screen time recommendations.
But otherwise, e-books, digital games, apps, TV, video,
they're all tend to be lumped together
into screen time guidance.
For me, it depends on the activity itself.
I think video chat's different, of course,
but an app or a game is really different
from watching video.
I care a lot more about the content
than the activity or device itself.
- Give us some idea about video chats
since not everybody will be familiar with it.
- Yeah, so folks use different kinds of tools for this now,
but the most common ones are using Zoom
or FaceTime on iDevices, so using some kind of app
that allows you to connect with someone in real time
the way you and I are talking right now,
but through our screens.
- What age would you recommend, and this gets a little bit more
into the sociological aspect maybe,
but what age would you recommend a child have access
to video chat
where they can talk under the blanket or whatever
with the person next door
or down the street or in some other country now, I suppose.
- Yeah, for me, if it's for things
like connecting with family, for example.
Folks that are in the child's life
who might not be physically present.
I don't have a minimum age for that.
And this is assuming they're doing it with supervision
and someone who can help them understand what's happening
and engage.
So really young babies
aren't going to get a whole lot out of that.
But we do know that they can learn
to recognize people, for example.
So when they see that person in real life,
in 3D for the first time,
they might be quicker to recognize that person
and be more comfortable with them
if they've had that video chat experience.
- And the facility with these devices
is almost startling at times
when you talk about small children.
I mean, I did see a two-year-old one time
basing his track on an icon, on the basis of just that icon,
actually called his father on a cell phone.
- Mm-hmm.
- And are we seeing more of that?
- Yep.
Yeah, kids are great learners, right?
They learn to use devices quickly,
and that's true for screens
and for a whole bunch of devices.
Kids are just really great at figuring out how things go.
So even really young kids, toddlers,
are going to be really quick
at learning how to make a screen device go,
how to make it do something interesting
that might not be a desired outcome
for the parents in the room.
So it's important that we help supervise that
and help them know what's appropriate and what's not,
and take away access to things we don't want them to do,
like buying things on the parents' credit card.
- I've heard stories of that too.
Yes, racking up some serious bills
because you're just pushing the icon.
- Indeed, yep.
- In this research that you're doing,
what are you thinking is the frontier?
- Like the next big thing?
Yeah, so a couple of things, I think.
We have a lot more to learn
about individual differences in kids.
How are individual kids affected,
and what are some warning signs for kids
that might be at greater risk of harm
versus kids who would really benefit
from certain types of learning games, for example.
We know far too little, I think,
about individual differences in this world.
That's something
that's getting a lot more attention right now.
Another big frontier I think that's just starting to happen
is thinking about differences
that happen within individual kids or families over time.
So we tend to think of screen time
as if it's fixed and static,
like two hours a day, and that's what we do.
But in fact, some days we use more screens than others.
Some days we watch some kinds of content than others.
We might use video chat one day, watch movies another day.
We don't really know a lot
about what it looks like from day to day
and how one day might be more positive than another
for an individual family or person.
- And we have seen, speaking of differences,
of course, in older minors, teenagers, let's say,
and even, I suppose, people in their twenties
who get a false concept of body image
or desirable body image from Facebook
or any number of other media.
- Yep, that's exactly right.
And a big part of that is content.
So being exposed to certain types of content
that encourage thinness
or radical eating or things like this.
So the kinds of content folks are exposed to
can be really harmful.
And we know those things can fluctuate day to day,
and they might feel more positive some days than others.
Knowing what predicts positive days and bad days,
days that make us feel better about ourselves
versus worse about ourselves,
we know far too little about that at this point.
- In terms of planning what your child should watch,
you also have a plan that you provide here,
and let's have a look at that
and see how that might be implemented.
- Heather: Yeah, I think one of the easiest things
parents can do is have a plan
about what the rules are going to be in their house
and working with kids to figure out what that might be,
especially for older kids
who are old enough to think it through.
Because some of the more disruptive media use
in our lives is when it's reactive as opposed to planned.
Like someone's having a meltdown,
quick, stop the meltdown,
and rather than thinking through,
"How can I help this child soothe themselves
and learn how to self-regulate?"
So having a plan in advance
for how to tackle both emotion disruptions in the day
as well as when and how to use media
is helpful for everybody.
It helps parents make decisions,
it helps kids know what to expect
so they don't have meltdowns about things.
So having a plan is helpful.
And there are different strategies for doing that
and different tools for doing that.
There are some good online tools for helping families make a plan
based on the age of their kids.
So I think some of that is about helping kids learn
how to manage their own screen time.
So what we may call scaffolding their own self-regulation
around screen time.
How do we help teach kids to learn when they've had enough,
when they need a break?
Some of that is being a good role model, saying,
"Oh, I've had too much screen time today,
I'm gonna take a break."
So we can model that.
- Oh, yes, that's true that some children,
some individuals going through life
have more self-discipline than others.
- Yep, that's exactly right.
I think you're right.
That's true for adults too, right?
Some of us are better at self-regulation.
Having a plan, even if we don't always follow that plan,
always helps.
We don't have to always follow it.
- Yes, moderation in all things,
including moderation. - Heather: Right?
Let's circle back to where we began,
and we risk giving a plug to public television, PBS,
in doing this, and yet,
it is part of your experience as an individual
and as a researcher too.
What were some of the milestones, do you think,
in developing programming
that clearly has a beneficial effect on children?
- Yeah, oh, I think one of the biggest milestones
is including researchers and educators in the process.
So there are some great examples
of content creators who've worked with educators
and researchers to understand, study how kids learn
and try to design media that really works for them.
The earliest and most famous example is Sesame Street.
So Sesame Workshop has a team of advisors.
They work with academic advisors and researchers.
They do testing and have researchers on staff
who study the impact of the screen time on kids
and test whether kids are learning the messages
they're trying to teach them.
- Norman: This would've been what, in the '60s?
- Heather: Yeah, late '60s.
- Norman: Is that still being done for children's programs?
There's so much children's programming out there
in one medium or another.
How could there be time for all of these producers
to run it through, you know,
child psychologists or whoever it might be?
- Yeah, and most can't.
It's costly, right, having folks on staff
who can test shows, every single episode, with kids.
- Well, yeah, it holds things up.
- That's exactly right.
So I think there are some general principles
that are out there.
I think we can do a lot more
to make those publicly available.
Like, what has the last 50 years of research taught us
about how kids learn well from video?
Principles that content creators can follow, for example.
So I think we can all do a better job
of trying to get that information out there,
but I think we've got enough research now
that we can make those principles widely available.
- Which one came first?
Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers,
or for that matter, The Muppet Show?
And what approach did each one of them take?
- That's a good question.
Oh, goodness, I don't know the answer to that.
I know Mr. Rogers was airing locally
before I had access to it where I lived,
so it might have actually existed before Sesame Street,
but I didn't get access to it until later.
And I watched The Muppet Show too.
Gosh, I'm dating myself now too.
But yeah, I did grow up with all three of these.
I think all of these groups, Jim Henson Company,
which had earlier made The Muppet Show,
Sesame Workshop, and Fred Rogers Company,
they've all worked with educators in some way
or advisors in some way.
How they use that and implement it
and what the priority is placed on educational goals
versus entertainment goals, that balance is different
for each of these content creators.
And entertainment isn't necessarily
a bad outcome either, but I think that different folks
are going to prioritize those things differently.
- I'm just trying to think of, you know, specific scenes.
And of course there's so many,
and I was not, let's say, in the right demographic
to get those programs on the first wave.
And even the second wave was only in passing.
But I'm thinking, for example, of Kermit the Frog,
and he sings the song "It's Not Easy Being Green,"
which any number of children
for any number of reasons could empathize with.
- Heather: Yep, that's right.
- And so there must be myriad examples,
but let's go back over to Fred Rogers
and what was the format of that show,
and why was it so effective?
- Heather: Yeah, one of the things
the show's really famous for,
at least in my world, is breaking the fourth wall, right?
So he spoke directly to me
as a young child in my living room.
That was not common for a grown man
to make eye-to-eye contact with a young child
and tell them that they're important
and their feelings matter.
I mean, it was really quite profound in a couple of ways.
But just the act of breaking the fourth wall
and talking directly to the audience is really unique.
And more shows do that now,
and there's a growing body of research on that
and how that might help kids learn better or engage better.
So talking directly to the child,
but also, Fred Rogers was really innovative
and really focusing on the social-emotional world
of young children,
and really holding that up and making that really important.
- I've heard some criticism
that Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
may have gone too far
in kind of exalting, putting the child on a pedestal
and giving them the sense or giving them the implication
that they were the center of the world
and it should move around them.
Have you run into any of that?
- I'm aware of this concern. [both laugh]
I've heard it in lots of different ways,
not just about Fred Rogers.
Yeah, this is another case
where I think reasonable people will disagree about,
and I understand both sides of this.
But it's hard for me to imagine there is a whole generation
of kids running around with enormous egos
because Fred Rogers said, "You are special."
It's hard to imagine TV has that great of an impact on kids
and the rest of the world didn't put us back in our place.
But it's possible there's a good balance to strike there
and that more research can be done
to find out what the right balance is.
- And as far as...
Oh, well, I have to go back in time now,
and I don't know if you've ever run across this or not,
but it's gonna play right into our neighborhood here
at PBS Wisconsin.
There was a show many, many years ago
called The Friendly Giant.
Have you ever run across that? - Heather: I've heard of it.
I don't think I've seen it, yeah.
- Norman: I think you could probably still get
the occasional, you know, YouTube clip out of it.
But that first word there in the title,
The Friendly Giant.
And, of course, traditionally,
children would be afraid of a giant,
you know, Jack and the Beanstalk and fee-fi-fo-fum,
and all that kind of thing.
But this was a friendly giant, and he had all kinds of friends.
Jerome the Giraffe that he would interview
from time to time.
It was, I believe it was live television,
then recorded.
But in any event, if there was a glitch in there,
they would work with it, incorporate it into the show,
which made it even funnier.
And so, you know, credit goes to PBS Wisconsin for it,
and we're talking about now, late '50s, early '60s, I think,
for that show.
And so it has been with us in one form or another,
but I think, what would you say then
would be the principles behind that?
I mean, the concept of friendliness,
concept of neighborhood,
and we haven't really talked about Sesame Street either.
- Yeah, I mean, Sesame Street
is sort of an entity unto its own
because of its longevity, right?
The longest-running show for young kids.
The amount of resources
that go into testing every episode with kids,
so it's having their own research team.
It's unlike any other content creation process
that I know of.
It's been the recipient of both the greatest praise
and harshest criticism. - Has it?
- Because it's been the longest running.
- Oh, okay.
What have the criticisms been?
- Well, I think decades ago,
when the field of research around kids
and screens was really emerging,
there was a lot of criticism around the pacing of television
and concerns about...
And these are concerns that have been raised
for every new technology, novels, and radio programs,
and comic books and all the things,
and video games after it.
But the same concerns
and hopes have emerged for all of these things.
So worried that it's going to make kids worse in school
because they're spending less time reading
or worries about it shortening attention spans.
All kinds of things. - May be too good in a way.
- Mm-hmm, right.
If you prefer Sesame Street over first grade,
that's a problem. - That would be a problem.
Sesame Street, though,
certainly was devoted to inclusiveness though.
- Heather: That's right.
They always have been, and they continue to be,
and they continue to have concrete curriculum goals
around inclusion.
- Norman: And also a lot of bilingual learning.
- Yep, yep.
So having bilingual characters,
characters who are fully bilingual
to an increasing degree,
representing different racial and ethnic subgroups,
representing diversity across multiple dimensions.
- And even with Big Bird,
dealing in one notable episode with death.
- That's right, yep.
They've never shied away from difficult topics,
and I think they've considered themselves champions
in this world, that they think TV can be a powerful tool
for tackling difficult concepts.
After the attacks on September 11 in 2001,
they had a series of episodes
that were tackling hate and bias.
They had episodes tackling death and dying,
all kinds of things, yep.
- We haven't, with the time left, we could get, I think,
briefly into the whole concept of G-rated movies.
We haven't really talked about going to the theater.
Do people still do that?
Last I heard they did, but tomorrow may be another day.
But G-rated films, do you have an approach to those?
Do you have some that stand out?
- Yeah, I think the way that those are gone about,
the way that they're created
tends to be really different from TV,
at least certain shows that are really targeting young kids.
The focus is much more on the story
and entertainment as opposed to educational value.
But there are certainly ones that have positive themes.
- This concept of the fourth wall
has come up from time to time in our conversation.
And can the fourth wall,
intimate and direct as it may be in video,
ever be as effective a learning device
as just a real-life 3D conversation?
- There's actually a lot of research on this.
It's really interesting.
So there's what we call the video deficit effect.
So young kids learn less from screens
than real-life demonstrations,
even if that video is someone looking at them
and talking to them like you are talking to me right now.
So young kids will learn less from the video version of that
than a real-life version
of sitting right in front of the person,
even if everything else is exactly the same.
And early research suggests it's around two and a half
or three years old that kids start to learn as well
from the video version as the real-life version.
So if I'm looking through a window at something
versus the TV screen at something,
I'll learn equally well.
That's around two and a half or three years old.
When the task is more difficult, that age creeps up and up.
So there might be a video deficit
throughout the whole lifespan
if we have difficult enough concepts.
- What would you like to see next in a children's video
or a show that you haven't seen?
What would be just the thing for you?
- The thing I would love, oh, goodness.
Oh, that's a tough one; I haven't thought about this.
Something I'd love to see in kids' TV.
I would love to see a comeback to shows
that break the fourth wall with the right timing
for young kids to engage.
I think a lot of shows break the fourth wall
and talk to kids, but there are some earlier shows in that world
that had the right pause
so that young kids could take time, reflect,
and really engage and respond, and now we've got the technology
to make it responsive back to the kids and adaptive to them.
I'm really curious to see what happens there.
- I'm trying to remember if Captain Kangaroo
broke the fourth wall back in his day or not.
- I don't remember.
Yeah, he talked to his audience a lot, I guess,
his live audience. - Yes, well, and, of course,
the fourth wall is a great technique too.
I mean, it worked for The Office, and it was like,
oh, suddenly it was seemed like something very new.
And yet, of course,
it goes all the way back to Shakespeare and before.
- Right, that's right. - Very effective with the--
- It's a good device, yeah. - Yeah, the person on stage
or on screen talking directly to you, the audience member.
- That's right.
- Well, thank you for talking directly to us
and the audience, Heather Kirkorian.
- Thank you, Norman.
- We'll look forward to hearing more about your research
as the world of video continues to expand and diversify.
- Great.
- I'm Norman Gilliland,
and I hope you can join me next time around
for University Place Presents.
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