Impact on Early Child Development

Impact on Early Child Development Life in Lockdown

MENTOR: Ms Shivani BhargavaUser Experience Strategist

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Mansi Aggarwal Shivang Vaishnav Mallika Mankad Anvika Maini

The Team Industrial Design Learners

IndiaPowerpuff Girls ft. Mojo Jojo

Children of the current generation grabbed the iPad before they could grip a ball. In the current lockdown time, the time kids spend on devices has exponentially increased. Sure the benefits of online learning, virtual entertainment and infinite options are obvious, however what are the overshadowed issues we are facing that might hinder the permanent cognitive development of a child if everything is restricted to a screen at an impressionable age?

Lockdown Scenario

During a time where young kids are trapped inside the four walls of their home, they turn to screens for entertainment or “play”. As many have seen, introducing them to platforms like youtube or video games in their formative years leads them to getting addicted to the same. They get aggressive and react dangerously when the device is taken away from them, similar to drug addicts.

PROBLEM IDENTIFIED

Eye strain: they are left feeling dry and also lead to blurred vision and retina damage.

Sleep deprivation: blue light emitted interferes with the production of the sleep hormone, melatonin

Obesity: sedentary nature of device overuse leads to lack of physical activity and exercise.

Physical SKILLS

SOCIAL SKILLS

Social Skills: Lack of physical socialisation leads to antisocial tendencies and feelings of withdrawal. Children do not anyone in their age group to interact with and end up feeling lonely.

Delayed Learning: Alteration of the brain’s structure due to excessive screen impacts learning abilities. Children who watch more videos have more difficulty picking up languages – this delay in learning can be as much as 50% higher for every 30 minutes spent watching video content.

Mental Health: Too much time spent on smart devices alters the structure of the developing brain by shrinking cognitive processing and deforming the network of signal communication. This results in poorer concentration, weaker memory, slower information processing and weaker impulse control.

Weakened emotional judgment: Too much time spent on smart devices also affects your ability to register and process emotions. Desensitization to violent content is one particularly worrying side effect of weakened emotional judgment.

COGNITIVE SKILLS

SAFETY

We are aware of the fact that inappropriate material on Internet that’s easily accessible to kids even while using the Kid version : profanity, sexual content, drugs, and alcohol. Pornography is flooding the Internet and children can accidently access unsafe videos. Specifically, porno audio content inserted into popular cartoons is present in YouTube, with the risk of exposing children to disturbing experiences.

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What is the current urgency?

● Once such an addiction starts to gadgets starts, it is difficult to reverse it’s effects and often leads to psychological damage in the formative years.

● During the lockdown, parents have their own stresses. It is a difficult situation and children tend to be ignored. This problem is relevant even outside of the lockdown and parents need to keep the child occupied.

● This is at an all time high under lockdown situations and could altercate the development of an entire generation.

● High contamination risks means that the child will not get traditional school and play development this is a challenging and serious issue that has permanent long term impact

STATISTICSUser research gathered from survey and phone interviewsSAMPLE SIZE: 85https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScY64EwOiY_0qmcH82x9fq8zISxomvudVesaeVKss6QIV8XdA/viewform?usp=sf_link

Company Of Similar Age Group Around children during Lockdown

Work Status of Parents during the Lockdown

No. Of Hours Spent

STATISTICS

This graph shows how the number of hours spent on entertainment on devices is greater than amount of time spent on online education.

At this age, their delicate and impressionable brains absorb everything and need to be moulded right to ensure healthy development and minimising unhealthy exposure and exploitation since “learning” and schools at this age goes beyond academia, to social and cognitive developmental skills.

As parents have very busy schedules revolving around work, financial responsibilities and social obligations, they find it easier to engage kids using digital mediums such as YouTube and video games from a very young age. They need increased awareness and action towards the destruction their child’s mind and body.

CHILDREN AGES 2 - 8 Young parents

Target audience

ONE mETER

Suvir, 8Bored kid in lockdown.

Suvir is extremely bored and is glued to his tablet all day.

Reaction to the parent:-Initial reaction when a parent takes away the device is irritability.-Soon forgets what just happened and gets distracted.

Frustrations:-Cannot play with friends in lockdown.-Has zero social life other than the one with parents during lockdown.-No physical also activity also contributes irritability

User goals:-Entertainment-Easy learning-Wants to go to kidzania

Devices used:-Tablet-Mom’s smartphone-SmartTV

Primary User

Quotes:- ”I miss my friends and I hate getting up in the morning but I want to go to school.”- ”Mummy Papa are so boring and bad at all video games.”- “When I grow up I want to become strong like Chhota Bheem.”

Adithya Ranganathan, 38Father of 2 kids (age 8 & 11)Software developer, Chennai

Adithya works in an MNC and has to work from home during this lockdown. He wants to keep his children busy but doesn’t often have the time to

involve them in activities himself.

Strategies used to reduce device usage:-Take away/hide devices-Distract kids with other activities (board games etc)-Allot time for device usage-Switch off WiFi/change password

Frustrations:-Kids stuck on YouTube for long-Has to take leave from work so that laptop can be used for e-schooling-Kids getting angry often

User goals:-Keep kids busy-Restrict screen time for kids-Spend quality time with family without compromising work-Make sure kids’ overall development is not hampered

Devices used:-Laptop (for WFH and kids’ e-schooling)-Smartphone (for news updates and socialising)-Smart TV

Quotes:- ”Disconnect from friends and peers is causing boredom.”- ”Kids are becoming lazy, full of anxiety, spoilt, no discipline/time table to follow and most importantly I am sure he is spoiling his eyesight.”- “Sure, phones are educational but the entire system essentially made to distract.”

Secondary User

● Children would be able to experience holistic developments in a physically compromised and restricted pandemic.

● Prevention of addiction and consequential mental health disorders due to prolonged usage.

● Protection from manipulative advertising and influence.

● Protection from unsafe predators and explicit/violent content.

● Improved social and communication skills.

HOW will a solution REDEFINE their LIFE?

StaGE 2 : EXPLORING THE PROBLEMS FACED

Children seemed to keenly miss physical interactions and video calls often got boring

There was lots of indiscipline in a child’s day. Despite an illusion of free time, a lot of days flew by with little to know productivity. Lethargy was an all time high.

Creativity of children was compromised as kids enjoyed watching the process of creation as much as creating it themselves and didn’t feel the need to achieve that by doing it themselves and possibly failing.

The safety of children is still at high risk as the vastness of content cannot be moderated by AI nor by parents. Predators and marketer always find ways to beat the system, target users and

extract personal information, even more so through children.

HOW MIGHT WE…

Help homeschooled kids socialise? Use self reliance to help the child?Increase mental stability of the child?

Incorporate physical activity?Incorporate self discipline?

Decrease screen time? Help parents discipline the child?Reduce addiction to devices?

Physical solutions such as play tent was explored that would include a make believe environment inside that would mimic outdoors with projections and audio.

Our final solution made us realise that although AI is the future of learning, it cannot possibly be implemented overnight and rather a SOLUTION would be to rectify existing highly used products.

The next line of solutions we believed could incorporate AI into Lego Blocks and allow kids an unlimited imagination of creations and learning.

Ideation

The most feasible solution

During the lockdown manufacturing of new products is not possible and technology is our most important source of information, connectivity and entertainment. Thus the most achievable solution is adapting the online world to fit a parent’s requirement for their child and using screens for their positive purposes.The most used app on the devices for most children with maximum screen time spent is YouTube. Thus, we need to tackle specific problems on this app as it works for all criterias - General Education, Entertainment and even Academics. While some restrictions exist in a YouTube Kids app specifically, there is room for improvement.

YouTube Kids is a kid-targeted version of YouTube that features curated, ad-supported TV shows, music, educational videos, and user-created content. You can create user profiles for each of your kids, so the app can tailor its selections individually.However the algorithm often gives way to undesirable results- kids being exposed to adult content. It is also addictive to some extent, facilitated by features like “autoplay”.

WHat is Youtube kids &, is it really safe?

Since the first video of Pinkfong’s Baby shark came out, thousands of similar videos have come up that are slight variations of the original. And there lies Youtube’s great loophole. Unending mindless content for kids that can be viewed for hours together.A lot of these are not even by the original content creator as YouTube is an open platform.

Unlimited Mindless streaming

Parental control on YouTube kids is proving futile as the simple calculations are all that kids need to do in order to override it.

Parents can also set a password but when parents are at work/away, they should be able to remotely lock/unlock the app.

Parents can set a timer after with the videos stop playing.

Ineffective parental control

When the timer finishes, the kid requires the parent to resume streaming.

Most kids are able to crack the simple multiplication that is required.

Inappropriate and often explicit content find its way to kids because they are somehow linked to the cartoons and movies targeted towards kids.

Inappropriate content

Redefined youtube kidsFrom mindless streaming to mindful exploration

Parents can control the app remotely from their own phone. None of the restrictive settings can be changed in the kids app.

History: Kids cannot clear history from the app and are careful of what they consume.

The Algorithm works to Benefit the kids, it shifts the suggested content from showing similar entertainment option to Showcasing INFOTAINMENT content that is usually missed out as kids seldom use the search button

Activity & Control: Shows division of screen time- what type of content is viewed and for how long.

Set Interests : Choose specific directions of your child to explore. Get Curated Customised content Recommendations.

Language setting : Parents can ensure kids don’t miss out on their mother tongue.

Block channels: Parents can block specific YouTube channels from their kids’ app.

The Trending feature: Shows channel on which your child has spent the most Time.

Daily average: Parents can keep track of time spent on app for education and entertainment.

Meal Time: Parents can set meal times during which the app will disable viewing.

Bed Time: Parents can set bed time during which the app will disable viewing.

Total Screen Time: Prevents addiction to

application by allowing limit of time spent

decided by parents.

Study Time: During this time kids can only watch

educational videos.

Impact

Not addictive design: New features prevent addiction to application.

Parental permission: With more control to parents, viewed content is monitored all the time.

Productive use: With more infotainment kids can be more productive this lockdown.

Verified content: Prevents exposure to content unsuitable for kids.

Lockdown Blues: The loneliness, lethargy and boredom of this time is resolved by microdoses.

Bilingual Language: Ensuring equal bilingual exposure to ensure mother tongue development.

Thank you

1. Krahé, Barbara et al. “Desensitization to Media Violence: Links with Habitual Media Violence Exposure, Aggressive Cognitions, and Aggressive Behavior.” Journal of personality and social psychology. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Apr. 2011. Web. 16 May 2020.

2. Health, A. (n.d.). What are the negative side effects of too much screen time? Retrieved May 16, 2020, from https://www.activehealth.sg/read/screen-time/what-are-the-negative-side-effects-of-too-much-screen-time

3. Buzzi, M. (2012). What Are Your Children Watching on YouTube? Advances in New Technologies, Interactive Interfaces and Communicability Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 243-252. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-34010-9_23

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References