Baranova

Annotated Bibliography

The Impacts of Technology on Mental and Social Child Development

Marina Baranova
Professor Malcolm Campbell
UWRT 1103
3/8/16

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Annotated Bibliography
Bilton, Nick. "The Child, the Tablet, and the Developing Mind." New York Times, New
York Times. 4 Jan. 2013: B9, Web. 1 Mar. 2016.
This online newspaper article originally published in the New York Times was
written by Nick Bilton. Bilton observed that his sister resorted to giving her
children tablets when they were misbehaving at a restaurant. Instead of scribbling
with their crayons or talking with each other, the children spent the evening
starring at a screen. This concerned Bilton and so he conducted some research on
the impact of technology on child development, which he included in his article.
He mentioned a millennium cohort study involving 19,000 British children. The
study revealed that most kids who watch more than three hours of television or
videos often showed signs of restlessness and had difficulty forming
relationships. However, kids who spent the same amount of time playing video
games did not show any hindrance in social development. Bilton also cited
information provided by Sherry Turkle, a professor of science, technology and
society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Turkle stated that children
learn valuable lessons from interacting with one another and that prolonged daily
uses of technology inhibit their ability to develop social skills and relationships.
In general, Bilton concluded that although allowing the children to spend a little
bit of time on their phones and tablets is alright such things should be supervised
by the parents. The parents need to establish rules of what is allowed to be
watched, when it is allowed to be watched and for how long. I would determine
this article to be credible because Benton cited information from scholarly people

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who are experts in the field of study and he also provided statistical data to
provide proof behind his statements. In addition the New York Times is a
credible source of information and therefore increases the reliability of Biltons
research. I found this article interesting because the author and I had similar
concerns and similar initial questions. I will use some of the data and research he
collected from the experts mentioned above in my own EIP to discuss the
impacts of phones and tablets the on social development on children. I
specifically will focus on the results of the cohort study done on the British
children. In addition, I want to focus on Biltons point on the importance of
parental guidance over the technology uses and exposures of their children.
Brown, Laura Lewis. "When to Introduce Your Child to a Smartphone or Tablet." PBS
Parents, PBS. n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.
This online website article aimed to provide insight to parents on when to give
children their first smartphone or tablet. According to Dr. Carolyn Jaynes, a
learning designer for Leapfrog Enterprises, children learn best from interacting
with the world around them and should not have access to smartphones or tablets
till they are at least two years old. After two years-old, parent monitoring is
highly advised. Also parents are encouraged to download critical thinking games
and learning tools for their children on their technological devices to encourage
learning and thinking. The author provides very little statistical data. She mainly
provided opinions of child development specialists and pediatricians but these
opinions are not backed up with any experimental data or studies. For those

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reasons I would not consider this article credible, even though PBS itself is a
credible source. If I were to directly cite her information in my article, I would
refer to the specialists she mentioned and what the opinion of these specialists
were. I found this website article useful in that it provides a different perspective
on the impact of technology that I happened to overlook. Although, the
specialists from Nick Biltons article state prolonged daily tablet use led to
complications in social development, smartphones and tablets could easily be
used to educate children. There are plenty of educational apps and games that
could be downloaded and help aid in the cognitive development of a child.
Although, I will probably not cite anything directly from this source, it was
important and useful in that it helped me see my topic from a different
perspective. After reading this article, I started asking more questions and
focused my attention to some of the benefits of the use of technology and child
development.
Wennersten, Matthew, Zubeeda Banu Quraishy, and Malathi Velamuri. "Improving
Student Learning via Mobile Phone Video Content: Evidence from the BridgeIT
India Project." International Review of Education Int Rev Educ 61.4 (2015): 50328. SpringerLink. Web. 28 Feb. 2016.
This scholarly article focused on a study done to see if cellphones could be used
to educate children in two Indian states: Andrah Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The
India Bridge IT company launched a mobile phone video-based education
program in 134 classrooms. They were able to successively improve the AP

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scores of 4,000 students. Not only that, but statistics showed that those using the
cellphone based program performed better than those using the normal computer
based program. This is a credible source because it was a scholarly peerreviewed article. It was not biased and proposed no opinion-based accusations
but strictly statistical data and interpretations based on data collected from the
study. I will definitely cite the statistical data provided by this article to present
the benefits of smartphones in the cognitive development of children.
Williams, Amy. "How Do Smartphones Affect Childhood Psychology?" Psych Central. 6
Oct. 2015. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.
This website article written by Amy Williams provided a lot of statistical
information on the uses of smartphones by young adults. For example, she stated
that 90 percent of kids have a smartphone by age fourteen. Another interesting
fact she mentioned was that on average a person checks their phone 150 times a
day. However, this article aimed to discuss the impacts of smartphones on the
development on a child. An interesting point she discussed was how children lose
a connection with their parents when they close themselves up in their phones.
Although the phone can be used to develop social skills with friends, rarely does
it enhance communication with parents. In fact, the kids seclude themselves away
from their parents using the phones. The author also emphasized that smartphones
have not been proven to directly cause any detrimental physical harm. Williams
claimed that the fear of brain damage caused by radiation emitted form cell
phones has been disproven by several studies. Overall, the author cited credible

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sources such as Dr. Gary Small, the head of UCLAs memory and aging center,
and Dr. Jenny Radesky, from the Boston Medical Center. The article does not
show evidence of bias and uses statistics to support claims. This article was useful
in that it introduced a new perspective on the drawbacks to allowing children
constant access to smartphones. After doing preliminary research, I knew that
smartphones have enhanced social skills of children amongst their social groups.
However, I did not realize that the smartphones were discouraging
communication with their parents. I will use this article in my paper to discuss
this specific drawback as well as mention some of the interesting statistical data
she provided in her article.