Tech-savvy parents seeing phenomenon of image-obsessed tots
LOS ANGELES — Every so often, Brandi Koskie finds dozens of photos of her threeyear-old daughter, Paisley, on her iPhone — but they aren’t ones Koskie has taken.
“There’ll be 90 pictures, sideways, of the corner of her eye, her eyebrow,” said Koskie, who lives in Wichita, Kan. “She’s just tapping her way right into my phone.”
The hidden photos, all shot by Paisley, illustrate a phenomenon familiar to many parents in today’s tech-savvy world: Toddlers love selfies. Observant entrepreneurs have caught on to these image-obsessed tots, marketing special apps that make taking photos super-easy for little fingers. You can even buy a pillow with a smartphone pocket so toddlers can take selfies during a diaper change.
But toddlers aren’t the only ones taking photos non-stop. It’s not unusual for doting parents to snap thousands of digital photos by the time their child is two. Today’s toddlers think nothing of finding their own biopic stored in a device barely bigger than a deck of cards.
While the barrage of images may keep distant grandparents happy, it’s not clear how such a steady diet of self-affirming navel-gazing will affect members of the first truly “smartphone generation.”
Tot-centric snapshots can help build a healthy selfimage and boost childhood memories when handled correctly, but shooting too many photos or videos and playing them back instantly for a demanding toddler could backfire, said Deborah Best, a professor of cognitive developmental psychology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The instant gratification that smartphones provide today’s toddlers is “going to be hard to overcome,” she said. “They like things immediately, and they like it short and quick. It’s going to have an impact on kids’ ability to wait for gratification.”
Julie Young, a Boston-based behavioural analyst, has seen that firsthand. She was recently helping her three-year old son record a short birthday video for his cousin on her iPhone when he stopped mid-sentence, lunged for her phone and shouted, “Mom, can I see it?”
“It’s caught on the end of the video. He couldn’t even wait to get the last sentence out,” said Young, who has two sons. “The second the phone comes out, they stop, they look and they attack.”
Now Young and her husband make their sons wait to look at a new video or photo until after dinner or until the other parent comes home, when everyone can watch together. They are careful to sit with their kids when looking at photos and have adopted the phrase “practise patience” as a family mantra.
It’s natural for toddlers to be fascinated with their own image (think mirrors), and that interest plays an important developmental role as they develop a sense of self, child development experts say.
But like any other fun thing kids get obsessed with, too much of it can be bad. Parents should make sure some photos show the child with other family members or friends. Parents can also sit with kids and narrate the photo or video as if it were a bedtime story.
“When we read a book to a child, it’s the same thing we do with these photos,” Best said.