Web may not be so ‘smart’

Published 12:01 am Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Maybe it’s only here in the land of “Baby Einstein” videos that one can find the proud headline, “Study: 80 percent of children under 5 use Internet weekly.”

Gosh, it makes them sound so smart, those toddlers logging on and blogging about the green practices at their day-care. Or perhaps doing some research before their next appointment with the pediatrician. Or a background check on Bobby before their play date.

That’s one problem with the Internet and all the accompanying electronic devices. They are marvels of technology, truly amazing stuff, but simply using it doesn’t make a person (or infant) “smart” (despite the name). But we like when things sound smart, like 80 percent of kids under age 5 are using the Internet.

So it’s not surprising that the actual news, from a report combining data from seven recent studies, is that children between the ages of 0 and 5 are watching more television than ever. But not just TV. Children are increasingly “consuming” all types of digital media, “in many cases consuming more than one type at once,” Mashable reported.

(Is that another American idiosyncrasy, making it sound like we eat everything?) (And with apologies to all the Baby Einsteins, is it really possible for a baby 0 to 1 year old to do anything online?)

Watching TV overshadows Internet use in both the number of children who surf the web and the amount of time they spend on it, according to the report. During the week, most children spend at least three hours a day watching television, and TV watching among preschoolers is the highest it has been in the past eight years, the analysis found. Television accounts for 47 percent of the time that children spend on all types of media.

It also turns out that children “using the Internet” means they are simply watching videos online, another form of television. Parents in one study indicated that more than 60 percent of children under age 3 watch video online.

A 2010 Nielsen study suggests that 36 percent of children between the ages of 2 and 11 use TV and the Internet simultaneously.

In what is supposed to be good news, the report notes time spent reading remains constant even as screen time increases. About 90 percent of 5- to 9-year-olds who participated in a study reported spending at least an hour every day reading books.

So, again, the real news: “80 percent of preschoolers watch three hours of TV daily.”

Is it time to appoint that Tiger Mom the education czar?