Society - Written Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Denis Hancock - 9 Comments

The iPhone, growing up digital, and my daughter’s education

I have a daughter that is almost two years old. As a general rule, she is not allowed to watch TV – but she is allowed to spend quite a bit of time on her Mom and Dad’s iPhones. She’s learned, over time, that she has her own page of apps she can use (which I regularly add to / change), the rest are for “daddy’s work” (fine – a bit of a lie, as more than a few of them are for “daddy’s play”), and she accepts that and does all kinds of interesting stuff on there. At least some of the people I know find this to be a rather strange combination – particularly those that let their child watch a bit of TV most days as downtime, but would never consider allowing them to touch such a device (and in many cases, don’t have one).

Given the questions I’ve received about it, that I’ve worked with Don Tapscott et al on a number of things around “growing up digital”, and just general parental concern, I’ve spent a lot of time watching (and helping) my daughter use  it, and thinking about how it might impact how she learns. In general, I think it’s an extremely positive thing – and while much of the stuff I mention below might seem rather simple and obvious (particularly to other iPhone users), I believe they are worthy of discussion – and might point towards how education itself should change in the future.

Obviously, part of the story is that she is going to grow up in a digital world – and being comfortable with technology is going to help in that regard. But that’s not the first thing I focus on. What I tend to hear from skeptics is that they don’t want their kids “playing virtual games” – they’d rather have them building their skills and imagination with real world stuff- building blocks, puzzles, etc. My response is that obviously I want my daughter doing that too – but I find that the touch-screen interface on the iPhone actually helps her in this regard.

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