Katie Dickison

LBST 391

Sally Walters

December 2, 2019                                          

Self-Submission

Going into my second tutorial I wasn’t quite sure as to what I wanted to focus my research on. I knew that I wanted it to surround the subject of technology and children, but nothing more than that. In my previous tutorial, I explored the same subject matter and in doing so I was briefly introduced to the relationship between parental use of technology and the negative effects that can have on a child, specifically their development. I read one chapter of a book, and it had me hooked. I was intrigued and I wanted to learn more, so eventually, I decided that’s what I would focus this tutorial towards. The one thing I was not expecting, however, was the lack of research that has been done on this topic. In trying to compose a list of sources I was shocked at how challenging I found it to be to find source material, that being scholarly articles, ted talks, and even information about it on the internet. I was coming up with very little. With that being said, what I did find was very informative in the beginning, but once you read so many they all start to sound the same. What I found was that almost everyone was asking the same question and then, of course, in return they were getting the exact same answers. For example, I am well informed on issues relating to bonding and connectivity between mother and child and the effects that can have on a child’s relationships later in life. This area of research is fairly new and that’s a big reason why there’s not a lot of information out there. I do know that, but every time I try to find more resources I’m hoping that something new will pop up that I haven’t seen before. That someone will finally be asking the questions that need to be asked.                                                                                    

One of the biggest issues I’ve come to find while doing this tutorial is how little parents know and how little information is out there for them in terms of this particular issue. I checked multiple forums for new parents and very few had any information in regards to the negative effects of technology. I wasn’t even searching for parental use, this was for any use of technology that is baby videos or any other technology toy. You’d think that by how much time parents spend using technology and are on the internet rather than watching their child they would have come across the effects that their actions have on their child’s development, but it seems that this is not the case. Not enough research has taken place for the information to reach the masses. When will this become a trend similar to that of damaging baby products or that what you feed your baby matters? Before that can happen we need a greater understanding as to what about technology is so intriguing to a parent that they pay more attention to their cellphone than they do to their baby?, which is a research question I proposed in a previous review. I already know that a parent’s technology use can have implications on a child’s development, but we need to ask more questions so we can get more answers. We need the science to back up the claims so that parents can finally understand how big of an issue this actually is.                                                                     

In reflecting on this tutorial, I think it was a challenge for me initially being that there wasn’t a lot of source material to analyze. I think at one point I was stuck as to where I wanted this tutorial to go in that I believed I had read all I could read. With that being said, having to come up with future areas of research for this topic put me in a mindset that I believe will be very helpful going forward with my grad project. Overall, this tutorial was very beneficial in helping me to better understand, not only what I want to research, but what needs to be researched; what areas of research going forward will be most beneficial to an audience, that being parents.