Digital tech can offer rich opportunities for child development, study says

Activities of those aged 0 to three often involve sensory exploration and embodied cognition, researchers find

Although it has been argued that under-threes should not have any screen time at all, research has found that digital tech can offer “rich opportunities” for young children’s development.

A two-year study, Toddlers, Tech and Talk, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and led by researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), working with Lancaster, Queen’s Belfast, Strathclyde and Swansea universities, looked at children’s interactions with everything from Amazon Alexa to Ring doorbells, in diverse communities across the UK, to find out how tech was influencing 0- to three-year-olds’ early talk and literacy.