现在的孩子从小就玩电子设备，会毁了童年吗？

随着电子设备的普及，越来越多的小孩子在年龄很小的时候就开始接触电子设备。小小年纪的孩子抱着手机和iPad等电子设备玩的津津有味，甚至比大人懂的还要多。有时候孩子哭闹，大人图省事，直接把手机给小孩玩。

现在很多成年人都有“手机依赖症”，而自制力更差的孩子从小就接触电子设备，对他们会产生什么影响？儿童媒体专家Sara DeWitt认为不要只看到消极的一面，这些电子设备也可以帮助孩子成长、沟通和学习。

演讲者：Sara DeWitt

演讲题目：现在的孩子从小就玩电子设备，会毁了童年吗？

I want us to start by thinking about this device, the phone that's very likely in your pockets right now. Over 40 percent of Americans check their phones within five minutes of waking up every morning. And then they look at it another 50 times during the day. Grownups consider this device to be a necessity.

首先，我们都来想想这台设备，你口袋里现在很有可能就有这么一部手机。超过40%的美国人会在每天醒来后的五分钟内查看他们的手机。之后在当天剩下的时间里还会再看50次。成年人将手机视为生活必需品。

But now I want you to imagine it in the hands of a three-year-old, and as a society, we get anxious. Parents are very worried that this device is going to stunt their children's social growth; that it's going to keep them from getting up and moving; that somehow, this is going to disrupt childhood.

但现在我要你们想象一下，如果这部手机在三岁小孩的手里，整个社会是不是都会焦虑起来。父母们非常担心手机会阻碍孩子们的社交进程，会让他们越来越少站起来活动，他们认为，这会毁了孩子的童年。

So, I want to challenge this attitude. I can envision a future where we would be excited to see a preschooler interacting with a screen. These screens can get kids up and moving even more. They have the power to tell us more about what a child is learning than a standardized test can. And here's the really crazy thought: I believe that these screens have the power to prompt more real-life conversations between kids and their parents.

但是，我想来反驳这种观点。我能想象的未来是我们乐于见到学龄前的孩子与屏幕进行互动。而这些屏幕能让孩子们更多地起来活动。它们比标准化的考试更能向我们反映出孩子们学到了什么。我甚至还有一种疯狂的想法：我相信这些屏幕有能力促进孩子和父母有更多地进行生活日常的交流。

Now, I was perhaps an unlikely champion for this cause. I studied children's literature because I was going to work with kids and books. But about 20 years ago, I had an experience that shifted my focus. I was helping lead a research study about preschoolers and websites. And I walked in and was assigned a three-year-old named Maria. Maria had actually never seen a computer before.

当然，我在这件事上也许没什么发言权。我过去研究过儿童文学，因为我本想跟孩子和书籍打交道。但是20年前，我经历了一件事，改变了我的初衷。我领导了一项研究，是关于学龄前儿童和网站的。我被分配到一个3岁的孩子，叫玛丽亚。玛丽亚以前从未见过电脑。

So the first thing I had to do was teach her how to use the mouse, and when I opened up the screen, she moved it across the screen, and she stopped on a character named X the Owl. And when she did that, the owl lifted his wing and waved at her. Maria dropped the mouse, pushed back from the table, leaped up and started waving frantically back at him. Her connection to that character was visceral. This wasn't a passive screen experience. This was a human experience. And it was exactly appropriate for a three-year-old.

于是我的首要任务是教她用鼠标，在我点亮屏幕之后，她在屏幕上移动光标，并把它停在一个名叫“猫头鹰X”的角色上面。她刚做完这个操作，猫头鹰挥动翅膀，冲她打招呼。玛丽亚丢下鼠标，把自己推离桌子，跳下椅子然后向猫头鹰疯狂地挥手。她跟猫头鹰这个角色的联系是出于本能的。这不是一种消极的屏幕体验。而是一种人性的体验。对于一个3岁的孩子来说是非常合适的。

I've now worked at PBS Kids for more than 15 years, and my work there is focused on harnessing the power of technology as a positive in children's lives. I believe that as a society, we're missing a big opportunity. We're letting our fear and our skepticism about these devices hold us back from realizing their potential in our children's lives.

我在公共电视网儿童频道工作15年多了，我的工作重点是利用技术的力量给孩子的生活带来积极的影响。我认为，从整个社会的层面来讲，我们正在错失一个巨大的机会。我们对于电子设备的恐惧和怀疑蒙蔽了我们，让我们看不到这些设备在孩子们生活中的潜力。

Fear about kids and technology is nothing new; we've been here before. Over 50 years ago, the debate was raging about the newly dominant media: the television. That box in the living room? It might be separating kids from one another. It might keep them away from the outside world.

我们对孩子和技术的担忧并不是新事物，之前就已经经历过了。50多年前，我们就有过激烈的讨论，关于一种新兴的、占主导地位的媒体：电视。那个放在客厅的盒子？它可能会造成孩子间的疏远。可能会让孩子天天待在家里。

But this is the moment when Fred Rogers, the long-running host of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," challenged society to look at television as a tool, a tool that could promote emotional growth. Here's what he did: he looked out from the screen, and he held a conversation, as if he were speaking to each child individually about feelings. And then he would pause and let them think about them. You can see his influence across the media landscape today, but at the time, this was revolutionary. He shifted the way we looked at television in the lives of children.

就在那个时候，弗雷德·罗杰斯，他是常青节目《罗杰斯先生的邻居们》的主持人，他呼吁社会将电视看作一种工具，一种可以促进情感成长的工具。他是这么做的：他面向电视机前的小朋友聊天时就像他逐个在和每个孩子聊他们的感受。之后他会稍作停顿，让孩子们自己思考。如今，他对媒体界的影响力随处可见，但在当时，这是具有革命性的。他改变了我们如何看待电视在儿童成长中起的作用。

Today it's not just one box. Kids are surrounded by devices. And I'm also a parent -- I understand this feeling of anxiety. But I want us to look at three common fears that parents have, and see if we can shift our focus to the opportunity that's in each of them.

现在不光只有电视。孩子们被各种设备包围。我也有孩子，我理解这种焦虑的心情。但我想来分析一下最常见的3种担忧，父母们都会有，看我们是不是有办法把关注点放在其中可能出现的机会上面。

So. Fear number one: "Screens are passive. This is going to keep our kids from getting up and moving." Chris Kratt and Martin Kratt are zoologist brothers who host a show about animals called "Wild Kratts." And they approached the PBS team to say, "Can we do something with those cameras that are built into every device now? Could those cameras capture a very natural kid play pattern -- pretending to be animals?"

那么，第一种担忧是：“电子屏幕都是消极的。这会让我们的孩子久坐不起。”克里斯·克拉特和马丁·克拉特俩兄弟都是动物学家，他们主持一档关于动物的节目，叫“野生克拉特”。他们找到公共电视网，说，“我们能不能利用一下如今每台设备上都有的摄像头。能不能让摄像头拍下孩子们玩耍的动作比如：扮动物？”

So we started with bats. And when kids came in to play this game, they loved seeing themselves on-screen with wings. But my favorite part of this, when the game was over and we turned off the screens? The kids kept being bats. They kept flying around the room, they kept veering left and right to catch mosquitoes. And they remembered things.

我们从蝙蝠开始。孩子们开始玩这个游戏，他们看到自己在屏幕上长出翅膀的样子特别开心。但最让我开心的是，当游戏结束，我们关掉屏幕，孩子们依然在扮蝙蝠。他们在房间里飞来飞去，左右变向来抓蚊子。他们能学到东西。

They remembered that bats fly at night. And they remembered that when bats sleep, they hang upside down and fold their wings in. This game definitely got kids up and moving. But also, now when kids go outside, do they look at a bird and think, "How does a bird fly differently than I flew when I was a bat?" The digital technology prompted embodied learning that kids can now take out into the world.

他们能记住蝙蝠只在夜里飞行。能记住蝙蝠在睡觉的时候，是倒挂着的，翅膀会收回来。这个游戏绝对会让孩子们动起来。不仅如此，当孩子们出门的时候，他们看到鸟儿的时候会想，“鸟儿飞的时候跟我变成蝙蝠的时候有没有不同呢？”数字技术促进了具象化学习的发展，孩子们可以应用到现实生活中。

Fear number two: "Playing games on these screens is just a waste of time. It's going to distract children from their education." Game developers know that you can learn a lot about a player's skill by looking at the back-end data: Where did a player pause? Where did they make a few mistakes before they found the right answer? My team wanted to take that tool set and apply it to academic learning.

第二种担忧：“玩游戏是浪费时间。会让孩子们分心，影响学习。”游戏开发者知道，可以通过分析后端数据来了解玩家的技能：玩家会在什么地方暂停？他们会在什么地方犯错误，直到找到正确答案？我的团队想把这套工具用在学校教育上。

Our producer in Boston, WGBH, created a series of Curious George games focused on math. And researchers came in and had 80 preschoolers play these games. They then gave all 80 of those preschoolers a standardized math test. We could see early on that these games were actually helping kids understand some key skills. But our partners at UCLA wanted us to dig deeper. They focus on data analysis and student assessment.

我们在波士顿WGBH电视台的制作人，制作了一系列《好奇猴乔治》的游戏是关于数学的。研究人员让80名学龄前儿童玩了这些游戏。之后他们对这80名孩子进行了标准化的数学测试。我们的最初结论是这些游戏能帮助孩子们理解一些关键的技能。但我们在加州大学洛杉矶分校的合作者想要我们研究得更深入一些。他们专注于数据分析和学生评估。

And they wanted to take that back-end game-play data and see if they could use it to predict a child's math scores. So they made a neural net -- they essentially trained the computer to use this data, and here are the results. This is a subset of the children's standardized math scores. And this is the computer's prediction of each child's score, based on playing some Curious George games.

他们想分析那些游戏生成的后端数据，看能不能用来预测孩子的数学考试分数。于是他们搭建了一套神经网络——简单来说就是训练计算机来使用这些数据，分析结果如下。这是孩子们所做的标准化数学测试的分数。而这个是计算机基于玩《好奇猴乔治》的游戏数据，对孩子们分数的预测。

The prediction is astonishingly accurate, especially considering the fact that these games weren't built for assessment. The team that did this study believes that games like these can teach us more about a child's cognitive learning than a standardized test can. What if games could reduce testing time in the classroom? What if they could reduce testing anxiety? How could they give teachers snapshots of insight to help them better focus their individualized learning?

这个预测惊人的精确，尤其要考虑到，这些游戏，并不是为了这次评估而设计的。进行这项研究的团队认为，这样的游戏跟那些标准化测试相比，能让我们掌握更多关于孩子认知能力学习的信息。如果游戏能减少孩子们坐在教室里考试的时间？如果游戏能降低考试带来的焦虑？那么游戏是不是可以让老师更直观的察觉，从而帮助他们为孩子们制定更加个性化的学习策略？

So the third fear I want to address is the one that I think is often the biggest. And that's this: "These screens are isolating me from my child." Let's play out a scenario. Let's say that you are a parent, and you need 25 minutes of uninterrupted time to get dinner ready. And in order to do that, you hand a tablet to your three-year-old. Now, this is a moment where you probably feel very guilty about what you just did.

我想说的第三种担忧，通常也是最大的一种。就是：“这些电子屏幕让我和我的孩子疏远了。”让我们来设想一个场景。你是一名家长，你需要25分钟不被打断的时间来准备晚餐。为了做到这一点，你把平板电脑递给了3岁的孩子。也许这个时候，你会觉得非常愧疚，对于自己刚刚的所作所为。

But now imagine this: Twenty minutes later, you receive a text message. on that cell phone that's always within arm's reach. And it says: "Alex just matched five rhyming words. Ask him to play this game with you. Can you think of a word that rhymes with 'cat'? Or how about 'ball'?"

但想象一下：20分钟后，你收到一条短信。就在你那台永远近在咫尺的手机上。短信说的是：“亚里克斯刚刚填对了5个押韵的词。让他跟你一起玩这个游戏吧。你能想到一个跟‘猫’押韵的词吗？或者跟‘球’押韵？”

In our studies, when parents receive simple tips like these, they felt empowered. They were so excited to play these games at the dinner table with their kids. And the kids loved it, too. Not only did it feel like magic that their parents knew what they had been playing, kids love to play games with their parents. Just the act of talking to kids about their media can be incredibly powerful.

我们的研究发现，如果父母收到这样的小提示，他们会觉得自己掌控了一切。他们会感到非常高兴能够跟孩子们在餐桌上一起玩游戏。孩子们也喜欢这样。他们不仅因为父母居然知道自己刚刚在玩什么，而感到非常神奇，而且他们喜欢跟父母一起玩游戏。仅仅跟孩子们讨论他们使用的媒体，这件事情本身就有令人难以置信的力量。

Last summer, Texas Tech University published a study that the show "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" could promote the development of empathy among children. But there was a really important catch to this study: the greatest benefit was only when parents talked to kids about what they watched.

去年夏天，德州理工大学公布了一项研究结果，证明《小老虎丹尼尔》这档节目可以促进孩子们的情感成长。但这个研究有一个重要的关键点：只有当父母跟孩子讨论他们所看的节目时，效果才会最好。

Neither just watching nor just talking about it was enough; it was the combination that was key. So when I read this study, I started thinking about how rarely parents of preschoolers actually talk to kids about the content of what they're playing and what they're watching.

仅仅是看节目或者只谈不看，都不够，两者结合才是关键。因此，当我读到这项研究的时候，我开始思考，学龄前儿童的父母几乎很少跟孩子们讨论他们在玩什么或者他们在看什么。

And so I decided to try it with my four-year-old. I said, "Were you playing a car game earlier today?" And Benjamin perked up and said, "Yes! And did you see that I made my car out of a pickle? It was really hard to open the trunk." This hilarious conversation about what was fun in the game and what could have been better continued all the way to school that morning.

于是我决定跟我4岁的孩子尝试一下。我说，“你今天是不是玩了一个汽车的游戏啊？”本杰明振奋起来，说，“是呀！你看到我用腌黄瓜做的汽车了吗？它的后备箱真是很难打开。”于是那天早上我们聊得很欢，关于这个游戏多么有趣，怎么才能做得更好，一路聊到他的学校门口。

I'm not here to suggest to you that all digital media is great for kids. There are legitimate reasons for us to be concerned about the current state of children's content on these screens. And it's right for us to be thinking about balance: Where do screens fit against all the other things that a child needs to do to learn and to grow? But when we fixate on our fears about it, we forget a really major point, and that is, that kids are living in the same world that we live in, the world where the grownups check their phones more than 50 times a day.

我今天并不是想说所有的电子媒体对孩子都好。我们有理由担忧如今的孩子们流连于各种屏幕不能自拔。我们也有理由考虑平衡的问题：怎样才能让电子产品融入孩子学习和成长所需要的其他事中？但是当我们一心担忧的时候，我们忘记了很重要的一点，孩子们跟我们同处一个世界，在这个世界里，成年人看手机每天超过50次。

Screens are a part of children's lives. And if we pretend that they aren't, or if we get overwhelmed by our fear, kids are never going to learn how and why to use them. What if we start raising our expectations for this media? What if we start talking to kids regularly about the content on these screens? What if we start looking for the positive impacts that this technology can have in our children's lives? That's when the potential of these tools can become a reality.

电子产品已经是孩子们生活的一部分。如果我们不愿承认这一点，或者我们被担忧冲昏了头脑，孩子们就永远不会明白使用它们的原因和方法。我们何不对这种媒介多一点期待？我们何不经常跟孩子们讨论一下他们看的内容？我们何不多考虑一下这种技术能给孩子们带来的正面影响？到那时，这些工具的潜力才能得以实现。

Thank you.

谢谢大家。

来源：TED演讲

长按识别二维码可关注该微信公众平台

往期回顾