Dimitri Christakis: Media and Children (2011)

Dimitri Christakis – Media and Children
TEDxRainier. Dec 27, 2011

Dimitri Christakis is a pediatrician, parent, and researcher whose influential findings are helping identify optimal media exposure for children.

Baby Einstein: Baby MacDonald
there were 17 scene changes; about one every three seconds …
and of course, it’s nothing like being on a real farm, right?
Adults watching this find it confabulating because your mind is trying to make a coherent narrative out of this. And there is no coherent narrative, it jumps all over the place!

The Overstimulation Hypothesis:
Prolonged exposure to rapid image change during critical period of brain development ->
Precondition mind to expect high levels of stimulation ->
Innatention in later life.

13:12 Novel Object Recognition

13:49 Overstimulated mice either don’t remember which object is novel or don’t care. But one way or another, they were not learning, not acting like normal mice.

14:15 Building Blocks Study
Parents got “blocktivities”

promoting interactive play promoted language development

If we change the beginning of the story, we change the whole story.

related:
an illustrative example: League of Legends

When It Comes to Kids, Is All Screen Time Equal?
Dimitri Christakis, MD
September 11, 2015
http://www.npr.org/2015/09/11/439192407/when-it-comes-to-kids-is-all-screen-time-equal
The way our brain is stimulated matters, especially when we’re young. Our brains are being shaped by that stimulation.
typical passive media
“I did it”: how important it is to their cognitive and social development

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Tablet technology & joint attention

Parenting In The Age Of Apps: Is That iPad Help Or Harm?
March 16, 2014
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/16/290110766/parenting-in-the-age-of-apps-is-that-ipad-help-or-harm

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician

“One thing children of all ages never say or never even think when they interact with passive media is, ‘I did it,'” he says. “Because of course, you don’t do anything when you watch a screen. But you do do things when you interact with a touchscreen device.”

media consumption

overstimulation damages young brains
hyperstimulation

mouse model of overstimulation -> deficits in cognition

iPads are only 4 years old
Because tablet technology is so new, pediatric researchers don’t have a lot of data on how touchscreen devices affect children.
“Unfortunately, the pace of research is much, much slower than the pace of technological advances,” Christakis says.
[see also: https://franzcalvo.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/no-recommendations-on-educational-screen-time]

there’s no reason why a caregiver can’t use an app with their child,” he says.
“It’s a great opportunity for what we call ‘joint attention‘ — the interactions between a child and a caregiver, the back-and-forth, which is critical not just to language development, but brain development.”

related:
https://franzcalvo.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/should-toddlers-own-tablets

Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say

Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say
November 1, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/education/technology-is-changing-how-students-learn-teachers-say.html

She also wondered if teachers were adding to the problem by adjusting their lessons to accommodate shorter attention spans.  “Are we contributing to this?” Ms. Molina-Porter said.
“What’s going to happen when they don’t have constant entertainment?”

Scholars who study the role of media in society say no long-term studies have been done that adequately show how and if student attention span has changed because of the use of digital technology.
But there is mounting indirect evidence that constant use of technology can affect behavior, particularly in developing brains, because of heavy stimulation and rapid shifts in attention.

nearly 90 percent [of teachers] said that digital technologies were creating “an easily distracted generation with short attention spans.

The heavy technology use, Dr. Christakis said, “makes reality by comparison uninteresting.”

Dr. Dimitri Christakis,
studies the impact of technology on the brain
director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Hospital

Common Sense Media Inc.
http://www.commonsensemedia.org

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http://techconference.tamu.edu

An EdTech Buzzword Bingo Card
October 15, 2015
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/15/436984129/an-edtech-buzzword-bingo-card

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/games

The Journal
transforming education through technology
https://thejournal.com/Home.aspx

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