メディア監視団体の「Common Sense Media」が行った調査で、幼い子供たちのなかでモバイル機器の使用が驚くほど増加していることが明らかになった。この傾向が長期間にわたる場合の影響が懸念されている。
1463人の親を対象に行ったこの調査では、スマートフォンやタブレットを使う幼児の数が、この1年で急増したことがわかった。報告書（PDF）によると、モバイル機器を使用したことがある2歳未満の幼児の割合は38％で、この数は2年前の10％から急増している。
モバイル機器を使って過ごす時間も、増加の一途をたどっている。8歳以下の子供がモバイル機器を使う時間の1日の平均時間は、2年前には5分だったが、現在は15分と、3倍に増えている。
タブレットを使う子供の数の増加は、この機器の劇的な普及を反映するものだ。8歳以下の子供がいる家庭のタブレット所有率は、2011年には8％だったが、今回の調査では40％と、5倍に増えている。
一方のテレビは、相変わらず子供向けメディアで支配的な力を維持しているものの、1日の利用時間は減少している。モバイル機器やゲーム機などが子供の娯楽や教育に参入しているためだ。2011年と比べると、8歳以下の子供が従来のテレビを見る時間は12分、DVDを見る時間は9分短くなった。
Common Sense Mediaの創設者でもあるジム・ステイヤーCEOは、「HuffPost Live」に対し、この年齢の子供が何らかのデジタルメディア画面を見ることについて米国小児科学会が警告していることを指摘した。
米国小児科学会では最近、子供たちの「メディア・ダイエット」を勧める呼びかけを、親に対して発表している。
「発育を損なう可能性のあるいくつかの点については実際に実証されている」とステイヤー氏は述べる。「さらに、2歳になるまでは、メディアを通じて何らかの学習が行われるとの証拠はない」
「『iPhone』のようなスマートフォンや、iPadのようなタブレットは、子供を黙らせる玩具といえると思う。（中略）子供を車に乗せているときや、しばらく子供から離れて1人になりたいときは、iPhoneやiPadを渡して「ほら、このゲームをやってごらん」と言えば簡単だ」
しかし、例えば子供に本を読んであげたり、ブロックやパズルで遊ばせる方が常に望ましいとステイヤー氏は主張する。そして、現代にはどんなことにも代わりになるアプリがあると思われる状況だが、従来からの教育用ツールを思い出すよう、親たちに強く求めている。
[Lydia O'Connor(English) 日本語版：平井眞弓／ガリレオ]
ハフィントンポスト日本版はFacebook ページでも情報発信しています。
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Studies About Kids And Technology
March 2013: Teens and Technology(01 of22)
Source: Pew Research Center\nGist: \"Fully 95% of teens are online, a percentage that has been consistent since 2006. Yet, the nature of teens’ internet use has transformed dramatically during that time ... Teens are just as likely to have a cell phone as they are to have a desktop or laptop computer. And increasingly these phones are affording teens always-on, mobile access to the internet — in some cases, serving as their primary point of access.\" (credit:Shutterstock)
February 2013: Preschoolers Can Learn Great Things From TV(02 of22)
Source: Huffington Post (to read the actual study, visit Pediatrics -- subscription required)\nGist: \"New research out today by Dr Christakis finds that putting our time and energy into working to improve what our children watch, not just how much they watch, can have a positive impact on their behavior -- even for children as young as 3 years of age.\" (credit:Alamy)
February 2013: Media and Violence: An Analysis of Current Research (03 of22)
Source: Common Sense Media\nGist: \"While longitudinal research does allow us to speak in terms of a \'causal\' relationship, it is probably more accurate and useful to think about media violence as a \'risk factor\' rather than a \'cause\' of violence — one variable among many that increases the risk of violent behavior among some children.\" (credit:Alamy)
January 2013: Screen Time Not Linked To Kids' Physical Activity(04 of22)
Source: Reuters (to read the actual study, visit JAMA Pediatrics -- log-in required)\nGist: \"[R]esearchers said the new study backs up earlier findings showing too much screen time and not enough exercise may be separate issues that parents and schools need to address independently.\"\n\n (credit:Alamy)
December 2012: How Families Interact on Facebook (05 of22)
Source: Facebook\nGist: \"We investigated anonymized and automatically processed posts and comments by people self-identified as parents and children to understand how conversation patterns with each other might be a bit different from those with their other friends.\" (credit:Alamy)
November 2012: Parents, Teens, and Online Privacy (06 of22)
Source: Pew Research Center\nGist: \"Most parents of teenagers are concerned about what their teenage children do online and how their behavior could be monitored by others. Some parents are taking steps to observe, discuss, and check up on their children’s digital footprints.\"\n\n (credit:Shutterstock)
November 2012: Public Supports Expanded Internet Safety Requirements to Protect Kids(07 of22)
Source: C.S. Mott Children\'s Hospital National Poll on Children\'s Health\nGist: \"In this Poll, nearly two out of three adults expressed strong support for proposed COPPA updates, including requiring apps designed for kids to confirm that users are at least 13 and prohibiting apps from collecting personal information from users under age 13.\" (credit:Alamy)
November 2012: The Online Generation Gap(08 of22)
Source: Family Online Safety Institute\nGist: \"These surveys indicate that teens’ concerns about their online safety parallel parents’ concerns more closely than parents realize and that many teens are taking steps to protect their privacy and personal information. Nonetheless, teens suggest that parents are not as informed about what their teens do online as parents think they are, and some teens are taking risks by providing personal information to strangers online.\" (credit:Shutterstock)
November 2012: Children, Teens, and Entertainment Media: The View From The Classro(09 of22)
Source: Common Sense Media\nGist: \"America’s teachers -- whether they are long-time classroom veterans or young, tech-savvy ones, at wealthy schools or low-income schools, public or private, elementary or high school -- surface relatively consistent concerns: Students are having issues with their attention span, writing, and face-to-face communication, and, in the experience of teachers, children’s media use is contributing to the problem. On the plus side, teachers find that young people’s facility with media is helping them find information quickly and multitask more effectively.\" (credit:Shutterstock)
November 2012: How Teens Do Research in the Digital World(10 of22)
Source: Pew Research Center\nGist: \"Three-quarters of AP [Advanced Placement] and NWP [National Writing Project] teachers say that the internet and digital search tools have had a \'mostly positive\' impact on their students’ research habits, but 87% say these technologies are creating an \'easily distracted generation with short attention spans\' and 64% say today’s digital technologies \'do more to distract students than to help them academically.\'\"\n (credit:Shutterstock)
June 2012: Social Media, Social Life: How Teens View Their Digital Lives(11 of22)
Source: Common Sense Media\nGist: \"Three out of four teens have social networking sites, and half of all teens are on their sites on a daily basis. But despite our concerns about social media, in the vast majority of cases, these media do not appear to be causing great tumult in teenagers’ lives.\" (credit:Shutterstock)
March 2012: Teens, Smartphones and Texting: Texting Volume Is Up While Frequency of Voice Calling Is Down(12 of22)
Source: Pew Research Center\nGist: “The volume of texting among teens has risen from 50 texts a day in 2009 to 60 texts for the median teen text user. The frequency of teens\' phone chatter with friends - on cell phones and landlines - has fallen. But the heaviest texters are also the heaviest talkers with their friends.” (credit:Alamy)
February 2012: Impact of an Active Video Game on Healthy Children’s Physical Activity(13 of22)
Source: Pediatrics\nGist: \"There was no evidence that children receiving the active video games were more active in general, or at anytime, than children receiving the inactive video games.\" (credit:Alamy)
November 2011: Teens, Kindness And Cruelty on Social Network Sites: How American Teens Navigate the New World of “Digita(14 of22)
Source: Pew Research Center\nGist: “As social media use has become pervasive in the lives of American teens, a new study finds that 69% of the teenagers who use social networking sites say their peers are mostly kind to one another on such sites. Still, 88% of these teens say they have witnessed people being mean and cruel to another person on the sites, and 15% report that they have been the target of mean or cruel behavior on social network sites.” (credit:Shutterstock)
November 2011: Preschool-Aged Children’s Television Viewing in Child Care Settings (15 of22)
Source: Pediatrics\nGist: “We found that children in as many as 70% of home-based child care settings and 36% of center-based child care settings watch television daily. More importantly, when television is viewed at all, infants and children spend 2 to 3 hours watching in home-based programs and ~1.5 hours watching in center-based programs.” (credit:Alamy)
October 2011: Media Use by Children Younger Than 2 Years(16 of22)
Source: Pediatrics\nGist: “This updated policy statement provides further evidence that media—both foreground and background—have potentially negative effects and no known positive effects for children younger than 2 years. Thus, the AAP reaffirms its recommendation to discourage media use in this age group. This statement also discourages the use of background television intended for adults when a young child is in the room.” (credit:Alamy)
October 2011: Zero to Eight: Children's Media Use in America(17 of22)
Source: Common Sense Media\nGist: \"Nine-month-olds spend nearly an hour a day watching television or DVDs, 5-year-olds are begging to play with their parents’ iPhones, and 7-year-olds are sitting down in front of a computer several times a week to play games, do homework, or check out how their avatars are doing in their favorite virtual worlds. Television is still as popular as ever, but reading may be beginning to trend downward. Having an accurate understanding of the role of media in children’s lives is essential for all of those concerned about promoting healthy child development: parents, educators, pediatricians, public health advocates, and policymakers, to name just a few.\" (credit:Shutterstock)
July 2011: Cell Phone Study ‘Misleading’: Children May Still Be At Increased Cancer Risk, Expert(18 of22)
Source: The Huffington Post\nGist: “[E]xperts have some serious concerns regarding the methods and conclusions of the first study evaluating the connection between cell phone radiation and brain cancer in children and teens. Not only was the study flawed, they note, but it was also financially supported by the cell phone industry.” (credit:Alamy)
October 2010: Children's Screen Viewing Is Related to Psychological Difficulties Irrespective of Physic(19 of22)
Source: Pediatrics\nGist: “This study found that greater television and computer use was related to greater psychological difficulties, independent of gender, age, level of deprivation, pubertal status, and objectively measured physical activity and\nsedentary time.” (credit:Alamy)
July 2010: Television and Video Game Exposure and the Development of Attention Problems(20 of22)
Source: Pediatrics\nGist: \"Viewing television and playing video games each are associated with increased subsequent attention problems in childhood. It seems that a similar association among television, video games, and attention problems exists in late adolescence and early adulthood.\" (credit:Alamy)
April 2010: Teens, Cell Phones and Texting: Text Messaging Becomes Centerpiece Communication (21 of22)
Source: Pew Research Center\nGist: “Fully two-thirds of teen texters say they are more likely to use their cell phones to text their friends than talk to them to them by cell phone.” (credit:Alamy)
January 2010: Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds(22 of22)
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation\nGist: “Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.” (credit:Shutterstock)