In 2004, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that all screen-based viewing for children ages two or under should be avoided completely. At the same time dozens of “brain boosting” DVDs, videos, and interactive products hit the marketplace with claims of being beneficial to child’s cognitive development. Many parents are torn. What is the right thing to do for their child?

In Lisa Guernsey’s book, Into the Minds of Babes – How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five, she explores many of the media claims about screen time and young children. She digs deep into the world of child research and not only investigates which research is credible and which is not, but she also makes the material accessible for the everyday parent along the way.

After reading her book I’ve had the opportunity to see Lisa speak a couple of times at conferences that focus on children. At a recent conference I spoke with Lisa about her book.

Scott Traylor: Lisa, let me start by asking you a little bit about yourself – who you are and how you came to writing your book.

Lisa Guernsey: I’m an education technology reporter. I was writing for the New York Times Circuits section about online media and other technologies, then I had kids. The story I tell in the book is that I had a colicky baby and I couldn’t get her to stop crying or fussing. I was completely lost. My eyes were opened to the trying routine of having and caring for a baby. Friends suggested trying the Baby Mozart videos to calm her. They referred to these videos as baby crack. I wasn’t fully considering what I was doing; I was still a bit overwhelmed by being a new parent. I was trying to figure it all out. It wasn’t until later, when I had my second child who was not colicky, that I was able to start seeing how babies respond to different types of stimuli, screen-based or not. I started to ask myself: Which videos do my children understand and which ones do they not understand? Are they able to remember what they see? Do some parts make sense to them because it’s part of their world? I had so many questions about how they respond to media that it led me to search for related research on the subject.

It was in April of 2004 when the American Academy of Pediatrics released a report in its journal by Dimitri Christakis and other researchers that had linked attention deficit problems (not ADHD) to television viewing at early ages. I remember being struck by this article, asking myself, What do we know about the brain and how it’s wired? As a parent, I should really know this information.

A few months after the release of this report, I wrote a piece for The Washington Post which took a deeper look into this issue through the eyes of a parent. Screen media is all around us, and to be told your babys brain is going to be rewired as a result of watching something on-screen is a very scary thing to a lot of parents.

After my article was published I received a lot of response from parents who wanted to know more about the papers findings. I also heard from a publisher who was interested in having me write a longer treatment on the topic. I started contacting more researchers who have been part of studies about children and their ability to learn from watching videos. It was a real eye opener because theres so much information that parents arent being told about media and kids. What they hear tends to be two polar opposite messages: The first message says screen time is really bad for your child and parents should do everything they can to eliminate it. The second message says cognitive stimulation is good for your baby and that these baby videos can help in achieving that stimulation. Parents arent hearing any answers to basic questions like What is good for a 2 year old? Is it possible my child really did learn the word backpack at 16 months from watching Dora the Explorer? While what I saw as a parent led to me think that it is possible that learning can occur through watching screen media, some researchers were saying it’s just not possible to get anything from screen media.

ST: So after writing The Washington Post article, you found a publisher interested in having you write your book.

LG: Yes, a publisher contacted me. I went through the process of writing a proposal and doing all the research. But ultimately they decided not to run with my proposal. It was disappointing. Even though this publisher wasn’t interested in my idea, I was finding so much interesting information I thought someone would find it compelling. My husband encouraged me to continue shopping it around. Some time later I found an agent who was interested in taking on my project and my agent found the right publisher interested in the idea.

ST: How did you prepare for writing your book? Theres a lot of research out there, especially related to television viewing and children. I imagine it was hard to know just where to begin.

LG: I wanted to make sure that I hit all the big journals and looked at what was peer reviewed research. I wanted the information I was reading to be based in the scientific method. I didnt want to focus only on surveys of how children spend their time. The material I was looking for had to be peer-reviewed research on how children are learning and when theyre learning. I also wanted this research to include randomized controls when possible. First I looked at the medical establishment journals like Pediatrics and JAMA. The American Behavioral Scientist (ABS) journal led me to a lot of great information. Also, Dan Anderson of the University of Massachusetts had assembled a lot of interesting research from psychologists looking into how children learn and how they remember things at very young ages. The ABS released a special journal in January 2005 on the topic. I read through the journals looking for articles from the educational research community that dealt with developmental psychology. I also looked for related information in the neuropsychology field and ADHD research, but didnt find much. I went from footnote to footnote to footnote. Then I would call the researchers who wrote the papers.

ST: To check out the researchers methodologies and conclusions?

LG: To get their story. There are so many great research experiments going on out there and so many smart people doing them. The researchers I spoke with have fascinating insights and I would ask them about their “aha” moment. They shared insights into what occurred early on in their experiments and discussed how experiments would change to explore new questions they encountered during their research. By hearing the stories of psychologists I was able to get a good handle on how to write the narrative of how these researchers began to understand these things.

ST: One of the things that really struck me about your book was the volume of interviews you conducted. It seemed with every page I turned there were an additional three or four new interviews. Then I thought each interview must have been a two-hour conversation, not including the prep time needed to read multiple studies before your call. You must have had hundreds, if not more, interviews.

LG: Well certainly hundreds. What made it possible was the openness of a lot of these researchers. They usually dont get calls from folks interested in their research. They were very happy to share what theyve found. Many researchers know one another within their community of developmental psychologists and educational researchers and communicate this research in short hand with one another. It’s not common to have someone call to ask for the laymans point of view of it all. Everyone I spoke with was just so responsive and incredibly helpful.

ST: While I read a lot of research, I’m not a researcher myself. I find it can be challenging sometimes to read some studies and fully understand the nuances.

LG: Me too. I still feel like I need to take a class in statistics. Theres so much more I could learn by reading these journal articles again. Speaking with the researchers over the phone was a great way to come to a deeper understanding of the research. Id say Im looking at this chart in your study, am I interpreting your findings correctly? Does this finding correlate to that finding? It was a great help.

ST: While you were writing your book, what surprised you the most?

LG: There were so many things. The biggest surprise for me was with the studies of background television noise and the fact that were not talking enough about foreground and background noise with television, with computers, with media devices. Were also not talking enough about screen content that is created specifically for children under the age of five, and yet media is all around them.

ST: You mean like with a television being left on all day in the home with the news playing?

LG: Exactly. Many homes have the news on straight through the morning hours. There are 53% of families out there with children under the age of six who report that they have the TV on almost half the time, most of the time, or all of the time. The majority of kids are growing up in houses where the television is on more than half the time. And yet, we keep hearing about studies that say TV is bad. I think it would be fascinating to look at the context of TV time.

So I started finding reports on background noise and children, particularly infants, and the impact background noise can have on learning language. I was blown away by the findings and thought, “How come were not hearing about this?” After reading this body of research, Im surprised that more attention isnt paid to it. I was interested in giving this topic a lot more attention in my book.

ST: Tell me about the three C’s you describe in your book.

LG: The concept of the three C’s didnt come to me right away. I was going through journal article after journal article looking for a way to give an umbrella name to all of this. At first I was looking at studies on time and screen use and thought, “Should I be telling parents that one hour of screen time a day is okay? Or an hour and a half? Or less than an hour for certain ages?” But all of the research wasn’t pointing me to length of time being the most important item. What studies were pointing me to was the content and the context of the media being viewed along with consideration of the uniqueness of the individual child.

I interviewed many families and each would describe how their child would respond to using media. I was hearing how different each child would respond. One child loves it and another child doesn’t. One is captivated by a program and another is not. One gets energized, and another is hyperactive watching TV, while another falls asleep after watching. So it was a happy day when I discovered it’s all about the three C’s Content, context, and the individual child. After I had this concept in my head I started seeing it everywhere. Every research report I came across would point to the three C’s in one way or another.

ST: So while the three C’s werent specifically called out in the research you were reading, it was a reoccurring theme in every report.

LG: Exactly.

ST: Did you come across any research that you wanted to include in your book but didnt?

LG: Theres some research out there about how media can have an impact on childrens sleep patterns. I didnt include much of that in my book. It’s worth looking at because there may be something connected to having a television in the bedroom or watching particular types of content before falling asleep that may make it hard to fall asleep. It’s an area that we should be looking at more.

Theres also a lot more to write about when it comes to the topic of a “social partner.” There are some great questions to address — like how important is it in screen media that toddlers at 24 months have a social partner to introduce them to language? How important is that social partner on screen helping a toddler understand language? Theres a lot of fascinating research on social partners that doesnt have anything to do with media that could be really helpful to parents.

ST: At the time when Mr. Roger’s passed away, I remember there being a lot of conversation about the possible benefits of having a social partner on TV that was a person as opposed to a cartoon character. Since hearing those discussions, I’ve been very aware of number of shows available to children that do not have a person speaking to the child, but see many more animated characters as social partners. When it comes to young children and social partners, what research are you coming across? Can you expand a little more on social partners in childrens media?

LG: I think it’s a great area for more research. Theres a lot of research that came out of Vanderbilt University related to the topic. In those studies, there was always a human being on screen communicating with children as if they were standing next to them, and the children who talked back to those on-screen faces were the same ones who demonstrated that they learned something from what they saw. Along the same vein, I think characters like Dora the Explorer and Elmo are completely captivating to young children in a way thats very surprising. Children display an affinity for those characters and sometimes see them as their peers. So these characters are not real people, but they are friends in a kind of imaginary, fantasy world. Sandra Calvert at Georgetown University is researching how important these relationships can be to kids. I dont think we should discount non-human characters if children really relate to these characters. If characters help with modeling, help solve a problem, assist in good eating choices, whatever the topic, there can be an incredibly powerful connection for the child.

ST: What research are you watching that wasn’t published at the time you were writing your book?

LG: The University of Massachusetts is on top of some wonderful stuff in many ways. Theyre currently underway with eye tracking studies with babies. This research should be really interesting in terms of the great baby video debate. At the University of Washington where Dimitri Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman are working, theyre still doing a lot of correlation work to slice data from pre-existing studies in more fine-grained ways. For example, in a recent issue of Pediatrics, they came out with a report that looks at certain kinds of television content as either educational, noneducational, or violent. Once they sliced media up in this way, they discovered that attention deficit problems actually dropped out of the picture with children who were watching educational TV. But, they did find a continued association between attention deficit problems and violent content. In a related study, they also discovered anti-social behavior exhibited with younger children after viewing violent content. I think it’s very promising that researchers are starting to look at content in this way. I think looking at content brings up much harder questions, as do issues of context, like how television is being used in the home, how is a computer being used, who is there with the child, what are those people saying, how is time valued, are kids modeling how parents use media. These questions are all missing from research.

ST: Your book provides a great overview of some important studies parents should be aware of. Were you finding any holes in the research world which need to be filled?

LG: There are holes, particularly with scary media. I have a chapter titled “Whats too scary for my child?” and that was a much harder chapter to write. It was hard to find any solid answers in this area. Parents would ask me really detailed questions related to nightmares their children would have. They would want to know, was it something they watched on TV yesterday? Was it a movie we watched? What is the research saying? What upsets young children and are there any long-term effects from these upsetting experiences?

ST: What did you discover in terms of research related to interactive technologies?

LG: There’s a huge difference between interactive technologies for babies versus that for preschoolers. Only recently have we started to see interactive screen-based technologies that are targeting babies. Theres very little research using the scientific method that looks at the messages babies are receiving from interactive media. It’s also unclear just how many families are using interactive products with babies or with toddlers. In many cases, there are too many hurdles to get over with just setting up the interactive media products themselves. Do parents have the time to deal with this?

Then theres a huge question of fine motor control and the ability to manipulate things happening on the screen with a remote control or a joystick or a mouse. There is research out that has led me to believe that joysticks are incredibly difficult for children under the age of six. Theres also the question of when children are even ready to start using a mouse. How can digital information be presented to young children on-screen who are non-readers in a way that would allow them to feel that they are in control? I think it’s important if children are going to use interactive technologies that its done in an empowering way for them. I’ve seen a range of different experiences with my own children and those of the families I’ve interviewed, but again, all of this is based on observations and very little of it is based on scientific research.

The research I’ve found is pretty sparse. Most of what I’ve found is looking at the question of control over their experience and how frustrated theyre being directed by a family member watching over their shoulder and how frustrated they can get when they have to wait for something onscreen. Warren Buckleitner has done some research in this area.

Theres also the question of story — the difference between stories that are played in a linear format on video as opposed to those that can be manipulated in an interactive format. Theres a study out of Georgetown that looks at different types of Dora the Explorer content, comparing both linear and interactive media, and found that the interactive experience can lead children to recall just as much as, but no more than, the linear experience.

These are all important issues for designers of interactive media to keep in mind and understand as they create new content for young children. All of that said, theres still a lot of opportunity with interactive content for preschoolers, with the right features in place to give them an experience where they are in control and can create something unique that they can share with others. Something like Scratch or Kerpoof. Creating a feeling of mastery for the child, that they can see their own progress. To achieve this it’s all about interface.

ST: Whats your next project?

LG: Theres a couple of avenues I’d like to take. Im interested in a similar approach to reviewing research and talking to researchers while also watching families to see how it relates to children at home. I’m interested in exploring how children learn to read and the science of reading. Partly because I’m following my own kids but also because I’m really interested in the learning that takes place. My oldest child is learning to read and it’s fascinating to see when it clicks for her and when it doesn’t, when it’s easy and when it’s frustrating. I’m interested in seeing how the science of reading is being applied to real world household settings.

ST: As it relates to media?

LG: As it relates to media. How can media be harnessed to help children who are learning how to read.

Im also interested in the creativity question How can we help children be more open in their thinking and not feel boxed in. These are two areas that I’m going to focus on in the next year and see if anything comes out of them.

ST: I’m excited to hear that. Your book is a great road map to important issues with screened media for parents and caregivers. Youve made the content really accessible to them without having to be a clinical psychologist.

LG: I certainly was aware the whole time while writing this book that I don’t have a masters or doctorate in child developmental but theres nothing out there for parents. I really resisted ending each chapter with a “to do” list or a bullet point list of items that were important to remember. I thought that if I could just tell these stories parents could figure it out based on their own experiences with their kids at home. Let’s hope that the narrative comes out.

ST: It does indeed. Lisa, thank you for writing this great book. It’s an important piece of work on many different levels. I wish you continued success with all your future projects.

Video links:
To see video of Lisa Guernsey presenting at a special event sponsored by the American Center for Children and Media click below for video segment 1 of 2:

Click here for video 2 of 2.

Just after I wrote an article called A Survey of Kids’ Social Networking Sites, a noteworthy report was released by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) and the research firm Grunwald Associates which takes a look at how students use and experience social networking sites. In the report called Creating & Connecting // Research and Guidelines on Online Social — and Educational — Networking some 1,277 students ages nine to 17 were surveyed online about their online social networking habits. In addition to the student survey, 1,039 parents and 250 school district leaders were also interviewed by telephone about their thoughts regarding students using social networking sites. This 12 page brief offers up some surprising statistics and contains just a very small fraction of the much larger in-depth report which can be purchased through Grunwald Associates.

Here I’ve separated out just the student responses found in this smaller report. This first set of statistics reveal how students are active participants and creative contributors in online social networking and community-based destinations:

• 96% of all students who have access to the Internet report that they have used social networking technologies (including chat, text messaging, blogging and visiting online communities)
• 81% say they have visited a social networking site within the past three months
• 71% say they use social networking sites at least weekly
• 41% say they post comments on message boards every week
• 21% say they post comments on message boards every day
• 12% upload music or podcasts of their own creation at least weekly
• 9% say they upload video of their own creation at least weekly
• 25% update their personal Web site or online profiles at least weekly
• 12% update their personal Web site or online profiles every day
• 30% report having there own blogs

This next set of data calls out how students encounter problems online with inappropriate content, cyberbullying, privacy and strangers:

• 20% of all students say they have seen inappropriate pictures on social networking sites
• 16% say they have seen inappropriate language on social networking sites
• 7% say they have experienced self-defined cyberbullying
• 7% say someone has asked them for information about their personal identity on a social networking site
• 4% say they have had conversations on social networking sites that made them feel uncomfortable
• 3% say they’ve given out their email addresses, instant messaging screen names, or other personal identification to strangers
• 3% say unwelcome strangers have tried repeatedly to communicate with them online
• 2% say a stranger they met online tried to meet them in person
• 0.08% of all students say they’ve actually met someone in person from an online encounter without their parent’s permission

Harris Interactive, a marketing firm that researches issues affecting today’s youth, recently released findings from a new survey examining when parents introduce their young children to the Internet.

Findings for children six or younger:

• 41% of adults ages 18 and older introduced at least one child to the Internet at the age of six or younger
• 53% of females ages 18 – 34 introduced at least one child to the Internet at the age of six or younger

Findings for children three or younger:

• 20% of adults ages 18 and older introduced at least one child to the Internet at the age of three or younger
• 25% of females ages 18 and older introduced at least one child to the Internet at the age of three or younger
• 15% of males ages 18 and older introduced at least one child to the Internet at the age of three or younger
• 28% of females ages 18 – 34 and older introduced at least one child to the Internet at the age of three or younger

This survey was conducted in June 2007. 2,246 adults aged 18 and older were surveyed online. From that number, 549 adults responded that they had children under the age of 18 living in their household. It was from these 549 respondents that these survey results were compiled.

Whether you agree with this survey�s findings or not, you can�t ignore the fact that children are indeed being introduced to computers and the Internet at a very young age. The number of young computer users is growing. However, be aware that even content that claims to be specifically developed for any young audience may not be what�s right for your child. Here are a few tips for parents:

• Be an informed media consumer for your child. Find reviews about the sites your child wishes to visit. Spend time checking out these sites on your own. Get familiar with the content you�re putting in front of your child.
• Set some time limits for your child. Computer use in moderation for young users is the best approach.
• Visiting sites that use internal links tend to be better than those that don�t. What does this mean? Sometimes children�s websites include links to other websites, usually through ads. When clicked, these ads can take your child away from the site you wish them to stay on. In a research report conducted in 2002, it was discovered that young children can�t tell the difference between a site�s content areas and an ad, so be mindful of sites that include advertisements.
• Spend time with your child while they explore online. Many teachable moments will present themselves and it provides a much more rewarding experience for both parent and child together!

To most adults, knowing which technologies kids prefer and why, is at best, a guessing game. Which is more important: cell phones? iPods? MySpace? In the past year, some very insightful leisure time and technology reports about kids have come out from The NPD Group (see prior blog post in March 2007), Nickelodeon (prior posts in Nov 2006 and Jan 2007), and recently a new division of Weekly Reader called Weekly Reader Research. Each group has something very unique to share about kids and technology. Yesterday, portions of a new study called “The Circuits of Cool / Digital Playground” was released. This study, which interviewed 18,000 kids and youth from 16 different countries, was collaboratively developed by MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft. This latest survey looks at technology and its influences on lifestyle of kids (8-14) and young people (14 – 24) around the globe.

Here are a few top level insights from the study:

• Technology has enabled young people to have more and closer friendships, thanks to constant connectivity.
• Kids and young people don’t love the technology itself — they just love how it enables them to communicate all the time, express themselves and be entertained.
• Digital communications such as IM, email, social networking sites and mobile/sms are complementary to, not competitive with, TV. TV is part of young peoples’ digital conversation.
• Despite the remarkable advances in communication technology, kid and youth culture looks surprisingly familiar, with almost all young people using technology to enhance rather than replace face-to-face interaction.

Here are a few data snippets from this survey looking only at kids 8-14:

• 59% of 8-14 year olds still prefer their TV to their PCs.
• 68% of 8-14 respondents said they felt safer having their mobile phones with them outside the home.
• When parents aren’t around, 8-14s are more likely to communicate with friends, participate in chat forums and use the internet for entertainment.
• Under the age of 14, kids generally use the phone as a toy. After 14, the mobile phone quickly becomes a means of self-expression and communication.

The full press release, which includes comparison data for kids and young people around the world regarding cell phone use, online friends, social networking, TV, computer use and more, can be found here.

Dr. Ellen Wartella, executive Vice Chancelor and Provost of the University of California at Riverside, and youth media expert, spoke in Boston recently at a conference put on by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). Ellen has been involved with many important studies regarding kids, young and old, and their media habits. During her presentation, Ellen discussed the ever expanding nature of media use by youth audiences citing three different studies that collectively span almost 100 years.

The first study presented was conducted in 1911 in New York City. 1,140 youths age 11 – 14 participated in the study and were found to be spending 4 to 5 hours a week watching movies at the nickelodeon. It’s worth pointing out that movies were the primary media format consumed at the time by younger audiences; Radio and television were not available yet, and magazines specifically targeting this demographic had not yet been discovered as they would be in later decades.

Next, Ellen referenced a study conducted in the 1930’s outside of New York City in Westchester County. 795 high school youths were asked to keep a diary of their media habits. The results of this study showed that this audience had an average of 7 hours of leisure time during the week on weekdays and 11 hours of leisure time averaged over the weekend. This group listened to the radio on average for almost 5 hours a week (4 hours and 40 minutes) and watched about 5 hours of movies per week. Collectively this group consumed about 10 hours of media a week, out of a total of 18 hours of leisure time within that week.

The latest study discussed was that of the Kaiser Family Foundation on Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year olds, published in 2005. More than 2,000 children were asked to keep diaries of their media habits. The results of this study found that this age group spends about 6.5 hours a day consuming media, primarily screened media, and of that, about 26% of this time is often spent using multiple media types at the same time. (Also surprising in this and related research at Kaiser which I discuss in a prior post that children ages 0 – 2 were found to be watching about 2 hours of screened media a day.) In another post I reference a 2007 NPD Group study that found kids ages 5 – 12 have about 6 hours of leisure time per day with about 14 hours per day over the weekend. While these two different studies were not conducted using the exact same age group, the research suggest about 45 hours of media consumption a week out of about 60 hours of leisure time a week.

If you would like to hear an audio recording of this entire presentation where Dr. Wartella touches on other aspects of media use, like the type of content viewed and food advertising to kids through media, click here.

In my last few posts, I took a look at what new learning and technology toys you’ll be hearing about throughout 2007. But February isn’t just a time for new toys, its also a time when new reports come out about kids, and its a time when this industry looks to The NPD Group for the latest and greatest. While NPD reports on marketing and consumer trends across many different and varied industries, many stats and financial news that make headlines in the toy or video game industry come from this one organization.

One industry expert from NPD to watch for is Anita Frazier. Most quotes in the press about video game sales or the noteworthy toy trends come from her and her colleagues. One recent report by NPD, called the Kids’ Leisure Time II (a follow up to a similar report released in 2006), was presented by Ms. Frazier recently. While this presentation was very data rich, a number of noteworthy points about kids and their leisure time rose to the surface. These broader findings include:

• On average, kids ages 5 – 12 have about 58 hours of leisure time a week, with almost difference in time noted between genders. As kids get older within this demographic the amount of free time available tends to increase slightly.
• Kids ages 5 – 12 have about 14 hours of leisure time a day on weekends as opposed to about 6 hours of leisure time a day during the week.
• Of all the leisure time activities that kids participate in, kids generally spend more time doing those activities on the weekends than during the week, in all activities except for reading. The amount of time kids spend reading remains roughly the same through weekdays and the weekend.
• The number one leisure activity for kids 5 – 12 is watching TV or movies, followed by doing homework, then playing with toys and games, household chores, and finally using a computer for non-homework related purposes.
• Kids in the 2 – 4 age range have the greatest amount of free time, that being a little more than 94 hours a week.
• The number one leisure activity for kids 2 – 4 is playing with toys, followed by watching TV or movies.
• In terms of the kinds of activities kids participate in during leisure time, gender differences appear with kids 5 – 12, whereas these differences typically so not appear with kids 2 – 4.

The amount of information presented in this short overview was pretty extensive, and I know it was just the tip of the iceberg when compared to the full report. These few points alone hint to the rapidly changing nature of the toy industry. Kids have a growing interest in technology and consumer electronics as playthings. And as this report describes TV viewing as the number one leisure time activities kids engage in, its no wonder why we see more and more products for kids that hook up to a TV, have their own screen, or work in some combination with a DVD player, plug and play device or computer.

In my next post, I’ll take a look at the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative spearheaded by MIT and technology evangelist Nicholas Negroponte. Make no bones about it, this initiative is picking up speed quickly. The $100 laptops will be rolling off of the assembly line shortly in very large numbers, to be distributed to children in early adopter countries around the globe!

Nickelodeon recently released a new study that looks into technology use by kids ages 8 – 14 and parents of kids ages 0 – 14. This new report called The Digital Family is mentioned as a follow-up to an earlier Nickelodeon report released in 2006 called Living in a Digital World which cited that 86% of kids ages 8 – 14 are playing video games online. While this earlier report has some very interesting findings about kids and video game, television, instant messaging and chat room use, the publicly available findings are not necessarily data rich. However, this new report is chock-full of great stats, providing excellent insight into Internet, cell phone, television and MP3 player use.

Among the key findings in this study, kids, as well as parents, report:

• a decline in the use of and a reliance on newspapers, maps, and dictionaries because of the availability of information found on the Internet
• a decline in radio listening as a result of MP3 players
• a continuing and growing interest in TV viewing and use of TV as a means to relax and unwind
• a declining interest in purchasing of music albums and CDs
• safety and piece-of-mind from owning a cell phone
• the empowering, creative, and educational benefits of having access to the Internet
• parents using the Internet over 33 hours a month and kids using the Internet more than 19 hours a month
• parents being just as tech savvy or even more so than their children

What this report calls into question is:

• older incorrect assumptions about digital media use and digital media consumption by kids and adults
• shifting perceptions about what is “important knowledge”
• traditional school skills being outdated
• the value of older print-based media and radio
• traditional music and information distribution method
• incorrect perceptions about parents ability to keep up with kids when it comes to technology

Technology and the Internet continue to change the world of kids as well as parents in amazing ways. And surprisingly television looks like it will be the only older media format to have ongoing staying power for young and old. But if there’s one thing you can rely on as a result of this study’s findings is that more change in our future… change with how technology will impact media consumption, communication, learning, family dynamics and wider social interactions. Assumptions about the way things have always been are being challenged in a significant way. The rules of child engagement are being rewritten right before our very eyes.

To read the full Nickelodeon Press release, and see the wealth of stats, click here.

What makes a good learning game for classroom use? This is the question I was recently asked by a coworker. It’s a good question, and one that immediately brings up other questions… What is a good learning game and what should a learning game include (or not include)? What considerations are necessary? How should it be developed? What should a developer be aware of? Each question is as important as the first. There are so many different paths you can take when building a learning game. Where do you begin?

During a recent conversation with researcher Carrie Heeter, professor at the Michigan State University GEL Lab (Games for Entertainment and Learning), she shared with me the results of a project she and her colleague, Brian Winn, had recently completed. This study was called Implications of Gender, Player Type, and Learning Strategies for the Design of Games for Learning and it proved to be an excellent resource for answering our classroom learning game question.

When you think of a good video game, what kind of experience is delivered to the end-user? Most likely one that is challenging, fun, and engaging. But what about a learning game? Certainly these experiences should also occur in a learning game, but if learning is the desired outcome, the planning process of such a game might benefit from a slightly different perspective than that of a game whose intent is not specifically learning related. With the end result in mind, this research report defines four very specific characteristics for consideration in the development of all learning games. When developing a learning game for classroom use the development effort should result in a product that:

• strongly engages both girls and boys
• accommodates diverse play style preferences
• provides support where needed for learners with limited gaming experience; and
• results in deep learning through play

Let’s consider these items as the “Essential Requirements” for developing any classroom learning game.

Next, in the gaming world there are many different game mechanics to engage a user in a game and, depending on how those game mechanics are used, can make a game more enjoyable. Game mechanics can be thought of as a kind of carrot used to drive the player’s game experience. Game mechanics can also be emphasized (or minimized) through different reward structures. Some common game mechanics include things like:

• finding or collecting items of value
• eliminating or minimizing items that are considered a threat
• beating an opponent
• beating your best performance
• achieving the highest score
• beating the clock

As interest in learning games has grown over the last few years, it’s funny to see how these and other age-old game mechanics are incorporated into classroom games without much consideration, resulting in outcomes that unintentionally put certain audience members at a disadvantage. Two different studies cited in this research bring this game mechanic mismatch to light.

The first is by Maria Klawe and her colleagues (Klawe, Inkpen, Phillips, Upitis, & Rubin, 2002). Klawe observed 10,000 children playing video and computer games at the Science World museum in Vancouver with the Electronic Games for Education in Math and Science group (E-GEMS). What these observations discovered is that boys tend to exhibit a greater interest in completing or winning a game in the shortest time possible. Girls on the other hand were much more interested in exploring through a game.

Brenda Laurel (2001) also describes similar findings. Laurel notes that boys will tend to rush through a game in an effort to beat it, whereas girls are more likely to take their time and explore. What these observations suggest is time-based games, or a “beat the clock” game mechanic, favors a masculine play style, whereas exploration favors a feminine play style.

Therefore, creating a game that rewards speedy play will benefit boys and place girls at a disadvantage. This may be fine for creating a consumer game targeting a niche audience of users, but when it comes to creating learning successes for everyone in a classroom setting, relying on speedy play results in gender inequalities (see Essential Requirements #1). One would also assume a game that relies on exploration as a main game mechanic would benefit girls over boys� or would it?

A major component of this study involved the development of a web-based learning game called Life Preserver (LP) to be played by middle and high school students. This game�s focus was to teach national science standards related to evolution. Many iterations of this game’s design were built and tested to balance out interests of creating a good game with that of making sure the game was pedagogically solid and real learning was taking place. This iteration process also tested to make sure both male and female players were equally successful in the game’s outcome. (For more information on this iteration process read the article Resolving Conflicts in Educational Game Design Through Playtesting, written by the same researchers.)

As the LP game development neared completion, three different versions of the final game were created to test with middle school students. Here I will compare only two of these versions. One version of the final LP game incorporated a reward structure that encouraged speedy play. The other rewarded users for exploration.

As one could predict based on the gender play preferences described earlier, girls took longer to play the speedy version of the LP game than boys, but girls did play faster than they naturally would. When exploration was rewarded in the other version of the game, boys slowed down and explored more content.

But how well did the students perform? Which version produced the greatest learning? In the speedy play mode both girls and boys made mistakes, but girls made more mistakes than boys. In the exploration version of the LP game girls scored better than they did in the speedy version, but boys also scored better than they did in the speedy play version of LP. This suggests that while the natural play pattern for boys is to race through a game, boys will focus more on content in an exploration mode and both girls and boys will perform better where exploration is rewarded.

Surveys were conducted after each group completed playing their assigned games and were then compared. Assumptions could be made that boys would find the speed play mode more fun than the exploration version. Similarly, girls would find the exploration version more fun that the speed play mode. However, the results of the survey showed no difference in enjoyment in one mode versus another. There were no significant differences found in how fun a game was for either boys or girls in any mode of play.

This research will appear as a chapter in the upcoming book From Barbie to Mortal Combat: New Perspectives on Gender, Games, and Computing. This book will also investigate other issues related to gender and technology and is scheduled to be released sometime in 2007 by MIT Press.

Nickelodeon and MTV recently announced their findings from their Wellbeing Study of kids and young people across the globe. The study looks at differences and similarities with today’s youth across fourteen different countries. The data collected in this study reveals noteworthy differences between developing nations (Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa) and developed nations (Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, UK, US). This study groups its participants into two major demographics; kids ages 8 – 15 and young people ages 16 – 34. Removing the research findings for young people to focus just on the findings for kids the following observations appear…

Experiences that all kids share:

• Kids are growing up younger and appear to be experiencing higher levels of stress in their daily lives
• Kids across all ages and in every country feel pressure to succeed
• In 12 out of the 14 countries surveyed, two thirds of kids said that getting good grades in school was their top priority
• The more news media outlets a nation has, the less safe kids feel regardless of where they come from in the world

Experiences that are different for kids in developing nations versus their counterparts in developed nations:

• Kids in developing nations feel more positive about their future than kids in developed nations. They are also happier and expect to have more fun in their future
• Kids in developing countries expect to earn more than their parents, while kids in developed nations expect to earn less than their parents
• Bullying happens everywhere but it’s generally more of a problem in developed nations than in developing nations
• Kids in the developing world are more patriotic than their counterparts in developed nations

What is noteworthy about this study is how MTV plans to use this research to generate new programs for young people ages 16 – 34. For example, one noteworthy concern for all young people across all nations is the worry about jobs and working. As a result, MTV plans to develop programs specifically for this demographic that demystifies the job market.

What insight is unveiled here for kids ages 8 – 15? What content could be created that would appeal to a broad base of kids everywhere? Certainly creating content that informs kids about media literacy skills and strategies to feel safe in their surroundings. If getting good grades in school is a major concern for all, what content could be created that empowers kids to be better learners? How can you create a lifelong love of learning with this information? While the findings suggest a path for how to make content more relevant, and possibly more appealing to kids, translating that relevance into successful content is the challenge. While the available data is limited, it defines universal issues important to kids and important to include in all new product development.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been a part of a conference called Dust or Magic held in Lambertville, NJ, for many years now. This conference reviews the best interactive products developed for children over the past year. It’s attended by many noteworthy electronic toy developers, video game developers, child researchers, and content experts. This year I was asked to be the closing speaker (November 7, 2006) and I decided to do something really different.

My presentation was delivered through a parody of the successful Nintendo DS learning game called Brain Age. Before the presentation started, I handed out laser pointers to the 60 or so conference attendees. I instructed the audience to participate with my presentation through the use of these laser pointers.

The content of my presentation covered a variety of topics touching on children and interactive products, including:

• Children and the time they spend with objects that have screens. Among the stats shared, new research indicates children 1 year old and younger are watching just about 80 minutes of television a day. 19% of this demographic also has a TV in their bedroom.
• Revenue trends in the toy and video game markets. The NPD Group projects a big year for the toy industry, with supercategory leaders in Learning & Exploration (toys that teach, now showing a six year growth trend) as well as Youth Electronics (the blending of toys and consumer electronics). For the video game industry, we are just at the beginning of a new console revolution by the three main platform leaders; Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.
• Alternatives to user input in technology toys. Expect to see more dance pad, bongos, guitars, digital cameras, and other motion based input devices.
• Opportunities to be found within the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative out of MIT’s Media Lab. Even if this initiative only partially succeeds, it has already sparked a technology race to create cheaper hardware components that run on less power and has added fuel to the open source movement.
• How best for large corporations to get technology traction in the living room. If plug and play electronic toy devices are so prevalent now, and High Definition Televisions (HDTV) are projected to overtake our living rooms within the coming years, isn’t it possible that computer products in the future will ship without a screen to be plugged into your home HDTV?
• A discussion about the idea of childhood and what we can do collectively to improve childhood for children everywhere (I called this part Childhood 2.0.) Children have remained the same throughout the ages… It’s the society around children that has changed. Being aware of this allows one to see that actions taken by adults in commerce, healthcare, government, and many other social institutions shape the idea and experience of childhood. Collectively we have the power to improve childhood for all children through our thoughtful actions.

Within the game Brain Age, the user is often asked to write down an answer to a question on the game screen using a stylus pen… a question like “What did you have for breakfast last Monday?”. I asked my audience the question “What can you do to make childhood better for children?” Each member of the audience wrote an idea down on an index card that was handed out at the beginning of the presentation. The audience later learns that the ideas they wrote down will be tied to balloons and launched into the great blue sky. (After the event, a couple of participants expressed concern about released balloons causing harm to wildlife and sea creatures. Researching the matter online I found a detailed article about Balloon Releases which states latex balloons are biodegradable and the potential harm to land and sea creatures is virtually nonexistent.)

My presentation is posted on YouTube in 6 parts (click a video clip number to see any of the posted videos: 1, 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ). The videos collectively make up a runtime length of 34′14″.