77% of Two-Year-Olds Now Use Mobile Devices on a Daily Basis
NB Commentary: When raising my own family, I realized the danger of television, especially unsupervised. My children were only allowed to watch Channel 12 and during that time, most of the programming was educational. That was over 40 years ago. They grew up wanting to be like other children and have free access to Television. After a while, the battle that ensued required, I completely eliminate the TV from my home. To this day, I do not own one. However, if you were to enter the homes of any of my offspring, you will find their homes filled with televisions, some of them so large, you would think it was a movie screen. And they have more than one! Those who have children not only allow them to watch TV but they all have media devices.
I am not too sure if we are creating people who don’t know how to interact in a social medium with physical contact as folks are playing video games, emailing, chatting and text messaging one another all day every day. But I do know there are some wolves out there who are willing and able to use the media to distort, corrupt, and damage innocent minds. And in that vain, we as parents must monitor their use of these gadgets and maybe force them to play outside.
In fact, when it comes to taking care of our children, the majority of the population is already outsourcing their child rearing responsibilities to the machines. We didn’t notice this development, because it didn’t arrive in the way that pop culture prepared us for. Rather than being brutally subjugated by robot overlords, we’ve been conquered by consumer electronics.
- About 44 per cent of children under age one used a mobile device on a daily basis to play games, watch videos or use apps. The percentage increased to 77 per cent in two-year-olds and plateaued after that.
- One-quarter (28 per cent) of two-year-olds did not need any help navigating a mobile media device, and 61 per cent needed help sometimes.
- Of parents surveyed who allowed their child to use a mobile device, 70 percent reported letting their children play with mobile devices to do chores, to keep the child calm in public places (65 per cent) or run errands (58 percent), and 28 per cent used a mobile device to put their children to sleep.