Digital Smarts - Predicting Which Children Will Become Heavy Tech Users – A Study

Kindergarten students from low-income households and Black kindergartners are more likely to heavily use technology in later in life according to an analysis of 10,000 students by researchers at Penn State. The findings, that followed youngsters who started Kindergarten in 2010, do not point to potential reasons for these trends, and it is unclear if higher use is harmful, but previous research has documented that low-income families often don’t have access to high quality childcare after school or during the summers and use technology as a babysitter on occasion. According to the findings, Kindergarteners with diagnosed disabilities were more likely to become frequent online gamers but not texters or users of social media such as Snapchat, Twitter or Facebook. Among fifth graders who were heavy users, boys were more likely to gravitate toward video games while girls were more likely to text and engage with social media.

The study does suggest one antidote for parents - reading to your child and encouraging your child to read picture books outside of school might help protect children from becoming heavy device users. Children of all incomes and races who had more exposure to early literacy activities were less likely to become frequent texters or users of social media, the researchers found.