The adoption of the tablet has come on fast and furious. In the 5 years since Apple first launched the iPad, the number of children who have access to tablets has jumped from 7% of 5-15 year olds to 71%.
Some educators worry the technology is negatively affecting kids' ability to read.
“You don’t get that opportunity to just sit and immerse yourself in a story from beginning to end. That’s brilliant for concentration, and, importantly, it creates a context for the idea of narrative. The amount of concentration required on any digital device is very short,” she says.
“So, reading for pleasure is not being supported by our educational curriculum, and there’s the prevalence of these new toys-slash-tools . And they conspire to create very short attention spans, and children who want instant gratification.”
“If they’re not getting that instant gratification from the book they’re reading, they can just play a game instead. So what happens to the story? I worry about a generation of children who don’t want to know what the end of the story is, because that’s how we make sense of the world.”
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Are tablet computers harming our children's ability to read? | Technology | The Guardian
