Ninety percent of the toddlers examined in a recent study are able to use a tablet with "moderate ability".
Researchers from the University of Iowa (UI) have written a paper that gives insight into how toddlers use technology, which is published in the proceedings of the CHI 2015 conference - the world's premiere conference dealing with human-computer interaction.
To answer questions as to whether babies can use tablets - and how they are using them - a team of researchers set out to study more than 200 YouTube videos. In their paper, they write their goal was to "provide a window into how these children are using tablets through an analysis of relevant YouTube videos".
What they found was information that supports "opportunities for research and starting points for design".
Juan Pablo Hourcade, associate professor of computer science in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and lead author of the study, says, by age two, 90% of the children in the videos were able to use a tablet.
For the purposes of the study, Hourcade and his colleagues defined "moderate ability" as needing help from an adult to access apps, but being able to use them while displaying some difficulty with basic interactions.
He says, that to his knowledge, other researchers have conducted surveys of the prevalence of tablet use by young children; however, the UI study is the first to investigate how infants and toddlers are actually using the devices.
YouTube analysis
Hourcade says he was inspired to use YouTube videos by another researcher who analysed online videos of computer use by people with motor impairments. He says YouTube enabled his group to conduct the research without having to ask infants and toddlers to use tablets, something that some paediatricians discourage.
"On the other hand, we know that infants and toddlers are using iPads and other devices because we've seen the videos recorded by their parents, and surveys confirm it is happening. It's happened really quickly - before we could get out and arrange for more conventional studies," he says.
Hourcade acknowledged the drawbacks of using unsolicited YouTube videos, such as not knowing the exact ages of the children pictured and that the children pictured were selected by their caregivers and may not be representative of the larger society. However, he says the researchers were able to estimate the ages of the children (two-thirds of the videos included the age) and observe a clear progression of successful performance linked to age that is consistent with developmental milestones.
"One of the biggest differences we found is that when children turn one year old, they switch from using both hands and all their fingers to interact with the tablet to using an index finger-which is what adults do," he says.
He hopes the study and others that follow will influence the development of apps that encourage interactive education for infants and toddlers. The apps he envisions might be similar to the social and interactive-like children's programmes found on public television.
"We may be able to use research on what makes certain children's educational television programmes beneficial as a starting point and go on from there," he says.
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