The Fast-Paced Change of Children's Technological Environments

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments 19(1), 2009 The Fast-Paced Change of Children’s Technological Environments Nathan G. Freier Department of Language, Literature, and Communication Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, New York Peter H. Kahn, Jr. Department of Psychology University of Washington Seattle, Washington Citation: Freier, Nathan G. and Peter H. Kahn, Jr. (2009). “The Fast-Paced Change of Children’s Technological Environments.” Children, Youth and Environments 19(1): 1-11. Keywords: child development, technological environments, technology design, human-computer interaction, human-robot interaction, video games, education, culture and nature Children are coming of age in increasingly sophisticated and pervasive technological environments. Television, DVDs, and online movies comprise part of such environments, of course. But as parents know all too well, it does not stop there. Children spend substantial amounts of time texting, instant messaging, and web browsing. Children inhabit virtual spaces, such as SecondLife and Active Worlds, which allow “residents” to explore, create, inhabit, and trade virtual property, and to interact socially with one another through avatars. Children play massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). This technological form of a virtual environment allows for large numbers of players to interact by controlling and developing their fictional characters in adventurous game settings. In 2006, the revenues accrued through MMORPGs exceeded $1 billion (Harding-Rolls 2007). Video games of all sorts are quickly dominating children’s media entertainment, and these games are filled with dynamic, interactive, social characters (Cassell et al. 2000; Isbister 2006). Children care for and develop relationships with technological pets (Turkle 2007). Such technologies were produced at least as far back as 1996 with the introduction of the Tamagotchi, which was a small egg-shaped computational device that “needed” to be fed and regularly taken care of or it would become “unhappy” and if completely neglected would “die.” Over 70 million of these devices have been sold worldwide (Takahashi 2008). In more recent years,© 2008 Children, Youth and Environments The Fast-Paced Change of Children’s Technological Environments 2 inexpensive robot pets have also sold well, including the Teckno, i-Cybie, Pleo, and AIBO, and online virtual pets are popular. What are the impacts of such technological environments—now and in the near future—on children’s development? How do these environments affect children intellectually, socially, and morally, and in terms of their connection to space, time, landscape, and the physical and natural world? How should we design these technological environments? Which ones should we embrace or shun, or use cautiously? Where lie the most worthwhile and provocative opportunities for research and design? These are the questions of this special issue of Children, Youth and Environments on “Children in Technological Environments.” Through centuries past, technologies have offered enormous benefits to children. Written language, for example, can be incredibly beautiful, and compared to spoken language, the written word—from clay tablets, to pen and paper, to digital computers—has allowed for new depths and forms of communication and expression, and an unfolding of the human psyche. Yet, an important consideration when assessing the benefits of new technologies, especially those of a digital and virtual form that mediate our physical world, are which benchmarks we rely upon to establish the benefits and harms. As a case in point, consider two studies we and our colleagues recently conducted on the psychological and physiological effects of viewing digital nature. For both studies, we mounted a production-quality HDTV camera on top of a university building. The camera captured the image of a lovely nature scene of a form that people tend to find aesthetically pleasing and restorative