 Hello, this is Andres Martinez, Vice President and Editorial Director at the New America Foundation. Here at our think tank, we tend to spend most of our time grappling with wars in Afghanistan, unsustainable fiscal policy, and other issues that are in vogue in Washington. But today we want to wrestle with a much larger and really more urgent question, which is holiday shopping. I'm here with Lisa Guernsey, who is the Director of our Early Education Initiative and Amanda Ripley, a Schwartz Fellow. And my son, Sebastian, who is seven years old, really wants an eye touch for Christmas. And Lisa, I haven't called you here just for this, but I do need to know, is this an appropriate gift for a seven-year-old? It's not inappropriate, actually. There are lots of seven-year-olds that are playing really cool games on the iPod Touch, and there's a lot of schools that are using them in really engaging ways. So there's a lot he could do with it. It's going to come down to three things. And this is what I get into in my book, and so what the research really is pointing us these days, there are three C's that all parents need to think about when they're looking at tech toys, the content, the context in which it's used in the child, whether that child will be really engaged and excited or maybe upset and terrified by what they have. So if you can make sure that the way your little boy's using that iPod Touch is both engaging, stimulating to him, and fun, but that he's not necessarily taking it to bed with him at night and not falling asleep until midnight, then there's... He already wants to take my iPad to bed, but we have boundaries. The iPad is the number one gift on the wish list for children 6 to 12, according to Nielsen. So they want what we want at this point. I guess one question I wrestle with is how to think about the hardware separate from the content. You've written... Your book Into the Minds of Babes is about screen time and how kids should interact with these technologies from the ages of two to five, and I think traditionally we've felt that certain types of exposure to screens is harmful to the development of our kids, and it's better for them to be reading and playing outside, and now we have these amazing interactive technologies. Should we be thinking about where do we draw the lines in terms of the hardware, or is it just all about the content, and iPads, it's all fine so long as you've got the right apps for kids? It's about the content and the context, and that's why it's going to be important that what they see on screen or that they interact with is appropriate for their age, it's not full of aggressive or violent behavior or images, it's not something that's going to make them really scared or upset, but that also that there's someone that's interacting with them around that, the same way you would want to make sure that a young kid... I thought the screen was supposed to be the babysitter. Yes, yes, and this is the thing... So that daddy can have... Can read the newspaper. And there'll be times for that, I mean I do think that, and I certainly, we use that in our own house with my kids seven and nine now, there's plenty of times when I'm like, you know, go play with this thing, you know, take my iPad. It's like the only thing my kid does by himself is watch TV, you know, it's the only time you have... And we all need breaks, and even the kids need breaks from us, you know, so I think that's all totally legit, but there is a lot of research showing how much the interaction between the parent and the child matters around whether it's reading a book or reading a book on an iPad or playing a game on an iPad or some sort of droid device or maybe just even on a desktop computer or even using digital imagery interaction. We saw that hilarious video of the babies playing with iPads and clearly we're beyond that stage. Amanda, you have a four-year-old. Do you think it's appropriate or do you feel sort of squeamish about having your child playing with iPads and iPods and such at this age? I feel like it's, you know, it's just a means to an end, like it's like so many other things. I mean, you can do really cool things on an iPad, right? But you also have to kind of police them at that age, like you're always worried they're going to break it. It's actually a really expensive piece of equipment and, you know, you don't want to be constantly yelling at them. So I feel like there's some stress that comes with it with young children that maybe isn't worth, I mean, you know, obviously I wouldn't buy an iPad for a really young child. But I mean, even dealing with a child when it's your device is kind of stressful. It can do really cool things, but you need to be doing it with them or else A, they're going to break it or B, they're not going to get anything out of it. So it doesn't serve the babysitter function as well for me as 20 minutes of TV. Yeah, it's just kind of like I have to be hovering around. But I do think that it's true, I mean, even internationally, the interaction you have with kids is really important. So maybe in a way, maybe in a way the thing to do is to get them something that you're into as well, that you're both into. So then if there is something that overlaps nicely, so if it's an app or an e-book or whatever that you can both get excited about is probably going to yield a lot more than something that he's just going to go off and do on its own. And I should mention that you wrote a really good book called Unthinkable, which is about surviving disasters. And I'm tempted to bring that into this conversation, but let's set that aside for a moment. And I should plug your next book that you're working on currently, which is a look at how U.S. kids and schools compare to how schools and kids are performing in a number of other countries. And so you mentioned the international, you referred to internationally what other kids are doing. And how are our kids coming along in terms of embracing technology? Are we too quick as Americans to look at technology as a quick fix and is that a shortcut that we're relying on? Or on the contrary, are our kids sort of falling behind and are kids in Korea on the Wii at one? I mean, I have no idea. Yeah, you know, it's a great question. And I was obsessed with disasters and then became obsessed with education around the world and spent a lot of time visiting schools and countries. Was that a natural segue? Yeah, because actually they're both about how the brain actually works and how we think it works and the disconnect, like the vast disconnect between those two things. So, you know, one interesting thing is that historically we spend a lot more money on technology, particularly in our schools. So even then, I mean, compared to even Korea in some ways. So when I visited schools in Korea, when I visited schools in Finland, which have wildly better outcomes on education at almost every level, those schools, the classrooms didn't tend to have smart boards necessarily in every classroom. And then I would go to a really solidly mediocre school in like rural, you know, U.S. And they would have smart boards in every classroom and be really proud of that. So often it's, you know, unfortunately, it goes back to that old truth. It's less about the device and more about what you do with it. The same is true with homework, you know. American kids do way more homework than kids in much higher performing countries. But it's about the quality of that homework and whether it's kind of, you know, individualized for that kid's needs. So now, how does this all relate to holiday shopping? Well, that's a good question and I'm going to tell you. And the answer is when I think about it, I think about, you know, there are a lot of things that are great about being a kid in the United States. There's still a lot of opportunity in the United States. There's a lot of creativity. There's a lot of entertainment energy and innovation. There are a lot of things that are pretty terrible compared to other developed countries. And so maybe the thing to do is to think about how to kind of go against the grain on those terrible things. And so we know that, for example, American kids at the lower end of the income spectrum do not do well in reading math and science, right? But we also know that reading to them when they're little every day, all kids, definitely yields returns, okay? So even if it's not every day, that might be unrealistic, but almost every day, that's a much better use of your time than almost anything else when they're little and talking to them about your day. So the research on this international is pretty clear that when they become 15 years old, those kids that think critically that can solve problems and absorb new information, those kids tend more likely to have parents who did those things with them when they were little and when they were older, those parents stopped reading to them, but then talked to them about news of the day and that kind of thing. So just to bring this back to our holiday shopping, not that it's an urgent, I mean, it is an urgent, so I should just wrap up a piece of paper and give it to Sebastian saying, Merry Christmas, I'm gonna read to you every night. Well, that would be awesome. I don't know how Sebastian would feel about that, but one thing to think about is, actually I have a prop here that I'm gonna show you, but this is actually a book for parents, but kids can read it too and it's 50 dangerous things you should let your children do. So this kind of combines a bunch of things. We know that American kids tend to be in some ways more coddled than kids in other countries. They're not allowed a lot of autonomy, there's a lot of anxiety in our parents, particularly upper income parents about letting kids just run free, right, for lots of reasons. But anyway, this is this really cool book that came out a couple years ago and it gives you things you can do with your kid that are really fun for both of you and kind of go against the cultural grain. So for example- Learn tightrope walking. Yes, or break a glass, or go to a dump, or dismantle an appliance, you know, like things that help that what we're not great at in our education system or at home these days is letting kids fail. And letting kids- Sebastian, we have a great Christmas. We're all too busy. Lisa, Amanda reminds us that, you know, there's no substitute for reading to children. But again, does it matter if we're reading in an old school, you know, in the old school way with the actual book, physical book, or is doing it on a Kindle or an iPad just as well? There's a new study on this with three and four year olds that showed that as long as the parents are interacting with the story by using like questioning techniques and helping children think ahead to, well, what's going to happen next? Or what do you think that character is on? That it really makes no difference whether it's kind of in a video form or in an old fashioned kind of print paper form. So it goes back to what's happening around the use of that media that matters so much. So one idea is was you're kind of putting your gifts under the Christmas tree or figuring out how you're going to kind of both get your kids super excited on Christmas morning and have something that they want to unwrap in our throat about and yet at the same time kind of match what we know about developmental science and that's just kind of bank some time to spend with your child around whatever it is that's under the Christmas tree, whether it be a brand new beautiful hard band book or some sort of tech device as well. Just kind of keep yourself in the loop there not to the point that you're hovering but that so that you can be kind of someone to give them something else. Does your nine year old daughter have a cell phone by the way? She does not have a cell phone. Yeah, we're drawing along. That's gonna be middle schooler later. And that's actually where we're trending so far. I mean, we're seeing some in the lower ages. Because on the one hand, there might be a disaster. They might be in your other book. I'd like my kid to be about 35 by the time. But I'm just counting on all your kids to have cell phones. So if there's an emergency, you'll just borrow it. But it's funny because when you say bank some time to spend with, you know, the first thing I think a lot of parents feel is like, oh my God, yet again I need to bank more time. We're gonna get that time. Am I gonna carve it out here or there? But then it occurs to me that you could bank time doing, like one thing I've done in the past is stay up until one in the morning Christmas Eve putting together some stupid thing that may or may not actually be fun for my kid. But if you actually put it together with them, like it depends on the age, right? But if you built it with them, then I could go to bed at like 11, right? And spend two hours with the Ikea wrench putting this train table together with my kid who would probably have loved that, honestly. I mean, not just because I'm there but because it's fun to actually build something instead of, you know. It might be even nice and dangerous for him. Yes. I do say if there's like a power tool. Especially with the Ikea. Well, and in Finland, you know, elementary school kids use power tools. This is, you know, in other countries, kids are allowed a lot more freedom to, you know, and think about what that brings. Is it sort of a sense of your own competence and a sense of how to mitigate risk and, you know, sometimes things go horribly right, but maybe that's worth it. So, you know, one thing that I also find curious about this time that we're living in as opposed to when I was a kid. When I was a kid, it was very clear that my Christmas present should come from a toy store. Nowadays, so Sebastian is saying, okay, if you're not gonna spring for the eye touch, I'd like a Nintendo DS, which is more, you know, it's a classic, it's a toy marketed for kids. A little more like a toy. Yeah, although there's lots of adults who still use it. But yes, yes. So, you know, but it's like, you know, kids wanna play with our toys, and I feel, I mean, at the end of the day, you put on an app that's essentially a toy, but it's still this weird, you know, crossover where, you know, Sebastian wants to play with my camera, my cell phone, my, and there's this whole category of kid gadgets that, do I just skip over them? I mean, how does that? I think that by the time because they're seven or eight, you actually may wanna start skipping over the toy version. And it goes back to giving them kind of the freedom of empowering kids to start using something in a much more kind of serious way and feeling responsible for what it is. And it does mean that they're gonna get frustrated by it sometimes, or they're gonna need maybe a little extra help. It also might mean that maybe they'll actually want to, like, listen to the tutorial, or read a little bit more about how it works. But, you know, having kind of plastic-coded versions of this stuff can, over a year or two, you start just collecting it all on shelves, and you realize, the kids are never going back to this stuff. So, unfortunately, I think you will be shifting out of the toy store realm very soon. Amanda's not gonna let her kid have a cell phone till he's 35. And I know a lot of people, seriously, who, you know, feel strongly that, you know, no Wii, no Xbox, no screens, you know, for a long time, and that all feels like responsible parenting at some level, and admirable because I think some of us do rely on screens as, you know, babysitters. But is something lost if we kind of try to shield our kids, protect them from too much technology too soon? I think so, actually. I think that there's a real value, media literacy-wise, as well as just having children understand how this media fits into their life and having some models for self-discipline around it. There's real value in having them see how their parents are using some of this, as well as starting to understand, okay, we're gonna only play the Wii on the weekends, and I'm gonna, it's gonna be a social thing that we do as a family, and it's not something, you know, having some parameters around the way children use media and giving them a sense of what that looks like at very early years can be a good thing if we're going back to that interaction. And is it, might it also be about understanding the technology, or is that too much of a? Doesn't it seem like they're born understanding at these days? I mean, really, like they all kind of just seem to, like it's so much around them and in the ether, and even, again, our schools tend to be pretty, I mean, you know, there are exceptions, but in general, we don't lack for technology in our schools and libraries compared to other developed countries. Right, that's interesting. Okay, well, this has been fun. I have to go shopping, and apparently 2012 will be the year of living dangerously. Yeah, hope so. Thanks.