Use of Digital media by children: The big, blue shiny elephant in the room

-Vagish K Jha

“No, I don’t want to see this programme. Give me my mone (phone) back”, Anay, a 4-year-old boy, said in a tone that was resolute and pleading at the same time. His mother wanted him to watch the Independence Day programme where the Prime Minister was unfurling the vision of building India for the last quarter of the centenary of independence. “I want to watch the story of big Bue (blue) shiny elephant, the humongous and beautiful elephant. He is my best friend for forever”, Anay made his wish clearer as he searched for the mobile phone snatched away and hidden from him by his mother.

Humongous? I was utterly surprised at his use of this word. “What is humungous? I asked in disbelief. “O, humungous is very big. Like a giant”, he gestured with his hands to make it clear and looked at me as if how come I do not know this word! He can just identify the alphabet. While counting numbers he will go directly to 31 after 13. But he has developed an amazing array of vocabulary. He speaks almost impeccably correct sentences in English. His mother is perpetually worried that he is not interested in speaking Hindi, though. All of these he has picked up just by watching videos on mobile.  This is hardly surprising. A report as far back as 2055 had found that 1 in 3 of babies are learning how to use smartphones before they can walk or talk.  A profusion of terminology has been coined to link children and youths to digital and information technologies, including net generation, screenagers, and digital natives, to name but a few. Millennial Generation, people born approximately between 1981 and 2001, and which encapsulates two other groups: (1) Generation Y (1981–1991) and (2) Generation Z (1991–2001).

We are often told that the attention span of students is getting shorter. They can’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds. Not really! When it comes to their media consumption behaviour, the situation is very different. According to a recent report by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit focused on helping children, parents and educators navigate the world of media and technology, between 2019 and 2021, the total amount of screen media used each day went from 4:44 to 5:33 among tweens, and from 7:22 to 8:39 among teens. This is a much faster increase in just two years than was seen in the previous four years.

The term ‘Entertainment screen use’ here, includes time spent watching television and online videos, playing video games, using social media, browsing websites, creating content, e-reading, and other digital activities.

Another study from Indonesia is much more revealing to understand the trend. It found that the digital media used most by respondents and their children were mobile phones (91.6%), followed by televisions (86.1%) and computers (61%). The first time most children used television, they were 1 year old (31.3%) or infants (27.7%). The first time most used gadgets (mobile phones and tablets) they were still infants (24.2%), then at age two (23.2%). Most of the preschool children used digital media for less than 3hours on weekdays, and they used it for learning purposes (35.6%), entertainment (26.7%), open application including social media (39.2%), and communication (40.5%). During weekends or public holidays, they used the media for learning purposes (35.2%), entertainment (21.2%), social media (36%), and communication (35.5%). Our own study in India also confirms the same. 85 % of respondents said that digitally led teaching is more effective.

In the last two year of the pandemic, remote learning required many students to spend hours a day taking classes online. But many also turned to screen media to stay in touch with friends and family, to pursue hobbies and creative interests, and to keep themselves entertained. Children’s media habit and use pattern is the elephant, ‘big blue shiny one’, in the room that we can ignore only at the peril of us being irrelevant.

My main concern here, as a teacher of these digital natives, is that in the last quarter of India’s independence centenary what do I need to learn and make changes in my teaching and pedagogy for the children who will grow to see the hundredth Independence Day of India in this month in 2047?  After all, kids of today will shape the India in the next two decades or so.

This leads us to ponder over many crucial questions- What makes cartoons and animation so engrossing for a child, who cries no ends even hearing the word school? Can a teacher give that space, excitement, and sense of animated pleasure as these funny videos do?

Ma’am can’t be funny. Education is a serious business. This emanates from an age-old educational philosophy assumed, Neil Postman points out in his classic book ‘Amusing ourselves to Death’, that ‘becoming accultured is difficult because it necessarily involves the imposition of restraints and perseverance along with a certain degree of perspiration are indispensable elements of instructional learning…learning to be critical and to think conceptually rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard fought victories.” Educators and teachers today continue to follow these tenets without questioning them.

We, however, royally ignore another fact pointed out by thinkers like Plato and John Dewey that ‘the reason is best cultivated when it is rooted in robust emotional ground’. This is high time we realized that there are many potential misalignments between what you as an educator think your learners do and what they actually do. As educators we must seek a better understanding of your learners and their needs.

Teaching is meaningful when it is a ‘creative conversation’ rather than a terse exposition. A good teaching learning ecosystem provides opportunity for students to be curious; develops Inquiry attitudes and logical and critical thinking abilities. It gives them opportunity to try and celebrate failure and encourage observing, hypothesising, experimentation and trying again without the fear of failure, and doesn’t stigmatise being wrong and encourages skill to self-assess and evaluate.  Ability to introspect and question their own premise or thinking, having positive self-doubt is a blissful virtue. To take criticism with grace is an academic fundamental. 

So, fellow teachers, as we enter in the last quarter of the centenary of our Independence, let us reconsider our premises and pedagogic methods. Let a dialogue begin spontaneously in the class, without expecting or asking them to show if they got them right. Let children have the freedom to faulter, do experiments. It may appear silly to us, but let our standards not judge her. Let her have her own yardsticks and motivation to achieve something better, nicer.

The moment we have ascribed a purpose to an activity and made it compulsory, learning will certainly not happen, even if someone is able to show some progress on universal parameters as determined by the experts. Let us give preference to discover the joy of learning over the covering the syllabus. Learning is not a joyful experience, if things didn’t come from the heart; a smile doesn’t erupt suddenly, eyes didn’t get moist; and stars didn’t twinkle in the eyes surreptitiously.

We will discover them only if we believe in our students. To do effectively, there is a strong need for flexible, culturally adaptive designs of open learning, taking a balanced approach by combining different types of learning resources and activities (so not just more text and videos) with some innovative pedagogic practices. Let’s remember the words of John Dewey that he wrote in his book ‘Experience and Education’, “Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only what he is studying at that time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes…may be and often is more important than the spelling lessons or lesson in geography or history…for these attitudes are fundamentally what counts in future”