Monitoring Toddlers and Technology

This paper discusses the impact of technology on toddlers, including impaired social skills, disrupted learning and development, and health issues. Strategies to address the issue are also provided.

Running head: MONITORING TODDLERS AND TECHNOLOGY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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MONITORING TODDLERS AND TECHNOLOGY
Introduction:
Monitoring toddlers and technology has been a public concern since it causes the
impairment associated with social skills of children, affects the learning and developmental
phase and induces the array of health issues which disrupts the quality of life. Although
technology can be a potential educational tool for children, it has the ability to disrupt the quality
present and future life of children (Mooney, McElnay & Donnelly, 2015). The focus has been
given to this developmental stage because the children of this age rapidly develop the habits
from surroundings. This paper will provide a rationale behind choosing this topic and strategies
to address the issue.
Discussion:
Rationale:
The rationale behind choosing this issue is that the technology affected the normal
development of a significant number of children. The activity of healthy kid report in Canada
highlighted that the children of 3 to 5years old spent average 2 hours with screens and only 15%
of infants of preschool able to reduce the screen time to less than 1 hours. In 2012, the average
child in between 8 months to 8 years is exposed to the television for 4 hours. As discussed by
Lestantri et al. (2017), children who are constantly exposed to technology tend to interact less
with their peers. They experience the issues associated with the sleeping pattern and early
childhood physical and cognitive development. Moreover, childhood obesity, one of the public
health concerns are observed in children because children are spending more time with
technology and less time in physical activities such as playing. Consequently, children of 2 to 7

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years are experiencing childhood obesity (Peng et al., 2016). Hence, this is required to mitigate
in order to reduce early childhood developmental difficulties.
Strategies to mitigate the issue:
• In order to address the issues, parents can screen use with creative and activate play or
educational content with the intention of facilitating cognitive development.
• Parents can minimize their screen view while children are around and encourage to read
books instead of spending time with technology since children tend to imitate their parents, they
do not follow the examples of their children (Peng et al., 2016).
• Parents can increase interaction with their children through conversation and play in order to
keep them away from technology
• Be present and engaged with the children when technologies are used in order to avoid
abnormal development.
Conclusion:
Thus it can be concluded that although technology can be a potential educational tool for
children, it is associated with defective physical and cognitive development. The rationale behind
choosing this issue is that the technology affected the normal development of a significant
number of children; induce abnormal sleeping pattern and cognitive capacity. In order to mitigate
the issues the strategies such as increasing interactions of parents with their children through
conversation, minimizing screen use of parents, encouraging children to read books and
combining the screen use with creative and activate play or educational content.

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References:
Lestantri, I. D., Ilham, I., Yusnita, Y., Kardiana, A., Budi, I., & Indra, D. (2017). Analysis of
User Acceptance of the Electronic Malaria Monitoring System Based on Technology
Acceptance Model. Journal of Telecommunication, Electronic and Computer
Engineering (JTEC), 9(2-6), 73-77.
Mooney, K., McElnay, J. C., & Donnelly, R. F. (2015). Paediatricians’ opinions of microneedle-
mediated monitoring: a key stage in the translation of microneedle technology from
laboratory into clinical practice. Drug delivery and translational research, 5(4), 346-359.
Peng, Z. Z., Zhang, M. Z., Sun, Y., Bai, J., Gu, H. B., Liu, P. P., ... & Cai, M. H. (2016). The
agreement between oscillometric and intra‐arterial technique for blood pressure
monitoring in the lower extremities for infants and toddlers undergoing aortic coarctation
repair. Pediatric Anesthesia, 26(11), 1091-1096.