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A comment on 6-Month-Old Babies Are Now Using Tablets and Smartphones.

Re:6-Month-Old Babies Are Now Using Tablets and Smartphones by eliben on Sunday April 26, 2015 @11:50AM (#9442110)
Hyperboles aside, tablets are vastly easier and more intuitive for small children to use than keyboards and mice. Undoubtedly, a very different generation is growing up now, for which a "computer" means a screen you can touch, and actual laptops and PCs are something esoteric you sometimes use for schoolwork to input large amounts of text. If there ever was a strong case for "mobile is eating the world", this is it.
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Re:6-Month-Old Babies Are Now Using Tablets and Smartphones by stinos on Sunday April 26, 2015 @11:59AM (#9442146)
tablets are vastly easier and more intuitive for small children

They sure are, and I don't really think there is a minimum age at which newborns and beyond should be allowed access to them. Yet it is of utter importance they also get access to actual non-flat toys/tools/... in order to develop dexterity, the feeling to handle objects and even creativity. Also not to forget about getting enough movement/excercise and not getting used to a sedentary lifestyle: most tablet apps unfortunately don't require the user to move around, on the contrary.

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Re:6-Month-Old Babies Are Now Using Tablets and Smartphones by icefox on Sunday April 26, 2015 @12:47PM (#9442332)
It is one thing to say that a two year old is randomly hitting buttons on your phone until it accidentally makes a call. Its shiny, it lights up, etc. It was another thing completely when at 9 months or so my daughter could consciously open the photos app and then scroll left and right to look through our family photos. Just because they can't talk yet they can still comprehend things and will happily learn sign language (taught her that at 6 months) and can use a touch device to accomplish things.

And as for screen time I have no regrets about letting her play various alphabet games on the ipad* to keep her stationary on the potty during toilet training.

It was weird realizing that she might never buy a keyboard.

*along with books toys and anything that would keep her there

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Re:6-Month-Old Babies Are Now Using Tablets and Smartphones by ChuckMcM on Sunday April 26, 2015 @01:21PM (#9442470)
Pretty much everyone gets the "point at it". As opposed to the cognitive skills to dial a phone number, and then push the handset into an acoustic coupler (extreme ends of the computing spectrum).

My kids were all very comfortable with mice at a very young age, not as much typing until they needed to type to get things done. (it always annoyed me that the Reader Rabbit app had the same icon for the uninstall and launch feature though.)

Next up will be better audio processing and then your two or three year old will able to say "Why!" repeatedly to your tablet and get an endless stream of entertainment.

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Re:6-Month-Old Babies Are Now Using Tablets and Smartphones by tripzilch on Sunday April 26, 2015 @06:44PM (#9443601)
One trend I don't like very much (in my very personal experience[0]), is that over the past few years I've seen a trend with not-quite-so-young children (ages 8-12) having more trouble navigating a basic desktop environment like Windows 7.

For an 8 or 9 year-old, that is fine. And navigating a file/folder system can be quite an adventure. But some of the older ones (10-12) lately are having trouble with finding the proper X (close) button when there's multiple windows (and sub-windows) on the screen. Or what minimizing does (the window is gone but it's not really gone? how will you figure out the restore button?). Definitely a tricky one is what the taskbar is for (most tablets / phones don't have that).

They do love it when I teach them "special tricks" like copy-paste with shortcuts, moving by word with ctrl-arrow. What NumLock does. And for some reason they all know "backspace", but do not discover the "delete" key. One kid, upon explaining it's like backspace but deletes the other way: "oh my god, this is so cool I'm going to use this EVERYWHERE!!!" (and I smiled and thought, yes, DELETE ALL THE THIGNS)

:-)

[0] I teach children at a volunteer's centre to do interesting/creative/technical/cool stuff with computers--anything that gets them enthusiastic that isn't YouTube or Minecraft--yes yes Minecraft is a very creative environment in a sense, but it's quite easy for them to revert to "consuming" all day long instead of "building/crafting". However I'm also aware that this is my own lack of knowledge, meaning I can't properly stimulate them to take on creative challenges. Plus they can't play (properly) without their own paid account (right?), making it a bit unfair towards kids whose parents can't or won't buy them an account (the volunteer centre itself aims to be almost-absurdly cheap, €20/year, attracting children from all strata of society).

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