Dr. Dimitri Christakis
Featured in interaction, June 2007 (PDF)
Nine years ago, Children’s researcher Dr. Dimitri Christakis was home on paternity leave with his newborn son. One of the greatest joys of spending time with an infant lies in observing their natural curiosity unfold in response to the everyday wonders of the world they’ve just joined, and Christakis was likewise amazed by his son’s natural inquisitiveness. At the same time, however, he couldn’t help but notice how uniquely mesmerized the boy was by the television set, and he began to wonder exactly what effect the machine was having. It wasn’t long before similar reports and questions from the parents he met with in his daily practice convinced him that this was a topic that merited more investigation.
Since then, Christakis has transformed this early experience with his son into a research focus. Now he studies the relationship between technology and children, and the impact of different forms of technological media on children’s development and health. He has also written a new and highly acclaimed book on the subject, The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids. As he suggests, such studies are desperately needed in today’s highly mediated context.
“In the last 10 to 20 years, we’ve technologized childhood in a way that is completely unprecedented,” Christakis notes. “There’s an up side to that as well as a down side, but at this point we just don’t know enough about what all of the dimensions are.”
Recently, the down sides of the technology boom and its impact on children’s development have received a good deal of attention. Through his research, Christakis has led the movement for greater caution in exposing young children — especially infants — to forms of technology that may be inappropriate or even damaging to their development.
Children’s television viewing is chief on the list of concerns. “Childhood obesity, excessive aggression and attention problems all have roots in excessive or inappropriate television viewing,” Christakis notes. And dangers are greatest for the youngest children.
One of the biggest problems for infants in this regard concerns the growth of the “brainier baby” industry that makes dramatic claims about the educational value of their products. “The simple truth is that none of them have been tested,” he notes. “And the best evidence we have about television viewing among children under the age of 3 is that not only is there no discernible benefit, it most likely will harm the child by overstimulating their brain at a critical point in development.”
While parents do need to be cautious about the quality and quantity of their children’s television viewing, especially in the child’s most tender years, Dr. Christakis insists that the news about children and technology isn’t all bad. “There are many very high-quality television programs for children in the 3-to-5-year-old range,” he notes, “and there are many ways we can help make technology work for parents.”
One potential area of interest concerns the development of educational software for preschool children. These kinds of quality programs, Christakis notes, could present a very cost-effective means of improving kindergarten readiness, especially if such programs were made available to low-income and underprivileged children who might not have access to other kinds of educational opportunities.
With funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Christakis is also currently at work on a study to develop and evaluate an Internet-based interactive program for parents of children with asthma. Parents in the program are able to log into the program monthly in order to receive advice and feedback on their children’s health, as well as information that may improve their regular interactions with their family physician.
In the immediate future, Christakis is also interested in other low-tech forms of play that may be in danger of becoming squeezed out by glitzier types of child entertainment. In particular, he has recently been involved in a project to study the effects of block play on child learning. “Our study showed that parents who facilitate block play with their children can help foster their child’s creativity and language acquisition,” he remarks.
Whether speaking about the impact of high-tech media offerings on children or old-fashioned parent and child play, Christakis is clearly passionate about the possibilities of improving children’s lives and the potentially positive role that technology can play in that project.
“All of this ties together,” he notes. “There are more and more technology options open, from infancy through childhood. The question is how to make sure these are positive developments for parents and children.”