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My worry with toddlers and touch interfaces is precisely because at that age they should be exploring the world, touching, tasting, smelling, feeling... By expo

My worry with toddlers and touch interfaces is precisely because at that age they should be exploring the world, touching, tasting, smelling, feeling... By exposing them to something that doesn't react to the laws of physics, I fear they get a wrong first impression of the world, that at an early age they are not able to distinguish the difference between a book and a representation of one. I'm not against tablets, just that they shouldn't be given to toddlers at all, and to older kids once they are able to use the basics of a keyboard and mouse interface. Like walking before running so to speak. Regarding looking things up in a book, it's a great skill to have, even from a purely enjoyment aspect, and I would certainly encourage kids to learn it. It doesn't mean not having access to the internet or voice search. Same way one can teach growing food or making fire with a bow, while still buying groceries every week and cooking on a convection range. It's important in my view for kids to know where we've come from, to better understand the world as it is today.

2bitencryption 8y ago
this is once of those things where I'm 90% confident it isn't actually harmful to a young child... ...and yet if I had a child, I wouldn't expose them to tablets at a young age, just because that 10% is scary.
- Double_a_92 8y ago
  But I guess it's more because of the content, not because it will learn that certain surfaces are swipeable. E.g. it's probably quite bad to just let your kids watch random youtube playlists all the time.
kqr 8y ago
> By exposing them to something that doesn't react to the laws of physics, I fear they get a wrong first impression of the world, that at an early age they are not able to distinguish the difference between a book and a representation of one. I'm not friends with how you casually throw the word "wrong" in there, as if it was an unquestionable universal agreement. Transport yourself (by vessel of imagination) to a future where this toddler is 30 years old, and both you and this toddler-no-more are bidding for a project: a customer is going to write a neat piece of software dealing with technical spec sheets, but they need someone to do the interaction design for it. Of course, it's going to run on the next-next-next-next-next gen touch surfaces which is what is available at the time. You both present your solutions to the customer, and after a few weeks they call you up to say, "Please don't get us wrong. Your interface was really good. We decided to go with the ex-toddler anyway. They had similar ideas to yours, it's just that yours felt a bit tied to the Newtonian laws of physics. The toddler seemed to think more freely about the medium and used that for good. "We fear that, given your age, you have gotten a wrong first impression of digital interfaces. You seem to have problems distinguishing the difference between what we call a book these days, and one of those old objects made from dead trees." I'm not saying it's good either, I'm saying it's different. And while the toddler perspective may look wrong with your 20th century eyes, it could very well be that your perspective looks wrong with the toddlers 21st century eyes.
- nickserv 8y ago
  I work with a designer that has something like 20+ years of print experience. We make web sites. It's true that some habits are hard to break, like wanting pixel perfect shapes and alignments, which of course doesn't work too well with today's needs of responsive design, or mobile first interfaces. But, after a basic introduction to the fundamentals of modern web design, the guy has come up with some great ideas, elegant and easy to navigate... And can still do posters flyers etc. He is now even getting into 3d stuff for animations. Point is, learning is incremental, and it's always possible to extend what one knows in new directions, if one is of curious mind and willing to change. Now, concerning toddlers and tablets... the thing is, we are governed by the physical world in which we live. It's very important on a mental but also motor level to have a good understanding of that. I mean things that adults take for granted like balance, dexterity, hand eye coordination, a subconscious understanding of gravity, etc. These are actually learned by trial and error, if you've ever seen a toddler stack blocks or learn to throw you'll have seen this in action. During this period of learning about the world, having regular interactions with objects that do not follow the same rules is confusing to very young children. This is not just my opinion but something which many child psychologists agree on. Again I'm not against tablets, but better not to introduce them earlier than 3 or 4 years old at the earliest. I think that still gives them plenty of time to assimilate 21st century technology and think of the next big thing in 20 years. Which I probably won't understand ;-)
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    It really doesn't matter whether a child learns to stack blocks at ten months or at three years. Childhood comes before the rat race. I was phenomenally uncoordinated at least through the age of ten, and it didn't have anything to do with electronic devices because we didn't have those. I'm now perfectly capable of numerous complex and precise physical tasks.
21 8y ago
> By exposing them to something that doesn't react to the laws of physics, I fear they get a wrong first impression of the world By this logic, "cartoon physics" are also a big no-no, because they teach kids that gravity only acts if you look down and notice that you have no support. Next thing you know you'll have kids running off ledges and expecting to float. And I don't see how a mouse is more "physical" and "logical" than a touchscreen. On a touch screen, the pointer is right under your finger where you touch. The mouse is this strange thing which does action at a distance, through the intermediation of this "cursor" which has no correspondent in the physical world. Which is why I presume it's easy for a toddler to understand a touch-screen unlike a mouse which requires some pretty advanced hand-eye coordination and mental models. > Nguyen, who is 10, said she has used one before - once - but the clunky desktop computer/monitor/keyboard/mouse setup was too much for her. "It was slow," she recalled, "and there were too many pieces." > "Human hands and voice, if you use them in the digital world in the same way as the physical world, are incredibly expressive," https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/the-mouse-faces-extinction-as-children-rely-on-more-sophisticated-computer-interaction-technology-8201857.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/th... > Why the explosion now? For decades, attractive, interactive graphic interfaces have been available on home computers. But young children’s access to these was limited by both their cost [with the cost of hardware, software, and home internet contributing to the “digital divide” (Norris, 2001)] and by the fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination required to manipulate a keyboard and mouse. With the advent of touch screens on less expensive devices – smartphones and tablets – these financial and developmental barriers have been reduced: By their first birthdays, most children can become adept at touching, swiping and pinching on the screen. As a result, children’s access to touch screens has outpaced what we know about its effects – for better or worse – on early development. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01078/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.0107... I'm not saying we should be giving tablets to toddlers. I don't know about that. But not doing this because of concerns about being able to distinguish between physical and virtual seems pure speculation at this moment, especially when we have as precedent fantastical stories that parents typically say to kids, which are also full of physics defying stories.

2bitencryption 8y ago

this is once of those things where I'm 90% confident it isn't actually harmful to a young child... ...and yet if I had a child, I wouldn't expose them to tablets at a young age, just because that 10% is scary.

Double_a_92 8y ago
But I guess it's more because of the content, not because it will learn that certain surfaces are swipeable. E.g. it's probably quite bad to just let your kids watch random youtube playlists all the time.

kqr 8y ago

> By exposing them to something that doesn't react to the laws of physics, I fear they get a wrong first impression of the world, that at an early age they are not able to distinguish the difference between a book and a representation of one. I'm not friends with how you casually throw the word "wrong" in there, as if it was an unquestionable universal agreement. Transport yourself (by vessel of imagination) to a future where this toddler is 30 years old, and both you and this toddler-no-more are bidding for a project: a customer is going to write a neat piece of software dealing with technical spec sheets, but they need someone to do the interaction design for it. Of course, it's going to run on the next-next-next-next-next gen touch surfaces which is what is available at the time. You both present your solutions to the customer, and after a few weeks they call you up to say, "Please don't get us wrong. Your interface was really good. We decided to go with the ex-toddler anyway. They had similar ideas to yours, it's just that yours felt a bit tied to the Newtonian laws of physics. The toddler seemed to think more freely about the medium and used that for good. "We fear that, given your age, you have gotten a wrong first impression of digital interfaces. You seem to have problems distinguishing the difference between what we call a book these days, and one of those old objects made from dead trees." I'm not saying it's good either, I'm saying it's different. And while the toddler perspective may look wrong with your 20th century eyes, it could very well be that your perspective looks wrong with the toddlers 21st century eyes.

nickserv 8y ago
I work with a designer that has something like 20+ years of print experience. We make web sites. It's true that some habits are hard to break, like wanting pixel perfect shapes and alignments, which of course doesn't work too well with today's needs of responsive design, or mobile first interfaces. But, after a basic introduction to the fundamentals of modern web design, the guy has come up with some great ideas, elegant and easy to navigate... And can still do posters flyers etc. He is now even getting into 3d stuff for animations. Point is, learning is incremental, and it's always possible to extend what one knows in new directions, if one is of curious mind and willing to change. Now, concerning toddlers and tablets... the thing is, we are governed by the physical world in which we live. It's very important on a mental but also motor level to have a good understanding of that. I mean things that adults take for granted like balance, dexterity, hand eye coordination, a subconscious understanding of gravity, etc. These are actually learned by trial and error, if you've ever seen a toddler stack blocks or learn to throw you'll have seen this in action. During this period of learning about the world, having regular interactions with objects that do not follow the same rules is confusing to very young children. This is not just my opinion but something which many child psychologists agree on. Again I'm not against tablets, but better not to introduce them earlier than 3 or 4 years old at the earliest. I think that still gives them plenty of time to assimilate 21st century technology and think of the next big thing in 20 years. Which I probably won't understand ;-)
- jessaustin 8y ago
  It really doesn't matter whether a child learns to stack blocks at ten months or at three years. Childhood comes before the rat race. I was phenomenally uncoordinated at least through the age of ten, and it didn't have anything to do with electronic devices because we didn't have those. I'm now perfectly capable of numerous complex and precise physical tasks.

21 8y ago

> By exposing them to something that doesn't react to the laws of physics, I fear they get a wrong first impression of the world By this logic, "cartoon physics" are also a big no-no, because they teach kids that gravity only acts if you look down and notice that you have no support. Next thing you know you'll have kids running off ledges and expecting to float. And I don't see how a mouse is more "physical" and "logical" than a touchscreen. On a touch screen, the pointer is right under your finger where you touch. The mouse is this strange thing which does action at a distance, through the intermediation of this "cursor" which has no correspondent in the physical world. Which is why I presume it's easy for a toddler to understand a touch-screen unlike a mouse which requires some pretty advanced hand-eye coordination and mental models. > Nguyen, who is 10, said she has used one before - once - but the clunky desktop computer/monitor/keyboard/mouse setup was too much for her. "It was slow," she recalled, "and there were too many pieces." > "Human hands and voice, if you use them in the digital world in the same way as the physical world, are incredibly expressive," https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/the-mouse-faces-extinction-as-children-rely-on-more-sophisticated-computer-interaction-technology-8201857.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/th... > Why the explosion now? For decades, attractive, interactive graphic interfaces have been available on home computers. But young children’s access to these was limited by both their cost [with the cost of hardware, software, and home internet contributing to the “digital divide” (Norris, 2001)] and by the fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination required to manipulate a keyboard and mouse. With the advent of touch screens on less expensive devices – smartphones and tablets – these financial and developmental barriers have been reduced: By their first birthdays, most children can become adept at touching, swiping and pinching on the screen. As a result, children’s access to touch screens has outpaced what we know about its effects – for better or worse – on early development. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01078/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.0107... I'm not saying we should be giving tablets to toddlers. I don't know about that. But not doing this because of concerns about being able to distinguish between physical and virtual seems pure speculation at this moment, especially when we have as precedent fantastical stories that parents typically say to kids, which are also full of physics defying stories.