Children, television, and the importance of social interaction
In a recent article by DeLoache et al. (2009), researchers indicated that forty percent of mothers of young children believe their children can learn from television. Interestingly, the New York Times published an article on the children’s series SpongeBob Square Pants. Researchers reported that 4-year-olds who watched the cartoon did worse on tests of attention and problem-solving than young children who watched an educational program or who spent time drawing. These findings raise the question of whether or not social interaction has implications for child learning? According to developmental psychologist Piaget, children are active participants in the learning process, constantly seeking out and trying to assimilate and accommodate new information. Both observational learning and modeling necessitate some form of social interaction. Interaction with a parent can provide important scaffolding for children’s understanding and learning, and parent-child interactions hold major implications for how children come to understand their world. Through quality interactions with a caretaker, children stand to learn not only about facts, but about their world, their relationships with others, and their own self concept. Ultimately, a television is not a substitute for a babysitter, and children’s environments need to be enriched by social interaction for substantive learning to occur.