A Safe Playground for Kids?

Spending hours in front of a computer has become a phenomenon of modern children in this information age. There are many possibilities how computer and Internet can be an interesting playground for the children. From playing the computer game, doing Internet surfing, chatting with friends, watching movies at Youtube and playing online game, there are millions of possibilities that children can do using these electronic media.

Giving children access to computer and Internet can often be the easiest way for making the children happy and giving the parents to a bit of time for themselves. However, parents should remember that these media are not always the safest playground for them.

According to the Department of Health Australia, children 5-12 years old are recommended to have physical activity. Children need at least 60 minutes and up to several hours of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. Children should not spend more than two hours a day using electronic media for entertainment, such as: computer games, Internet and TV, particularly during daylight hours. Furthermore, from the health perspective, sitting too long in positions that are not natural for the body can cause repetitive stress injury.

From social perspective, children do not meet people physically on the Internet and possibly get physically injured, however, there is currently an emerging trend of cyber bullying of children - bullying through a computer or other communication device.

Recent studies found that 8 percents of children users have received harassing computer pictures or messages and 6 percents were bullied by mobile phone. More boys were cyber bullies and more girls were cyber victims.

Frederick Zimmerman, an associate professor from the University of California, Los Angeles reminded that parents could help reduce the risks by having knowledge of what their kids doing alone in their rooms.

The impacts on what children have encountered, learnt, watched, engaged on these media are also something that parents should concern about. Communication and good relationship between parents and children play a very important to tackle the changes and trends in this information age.

I'll catch you with my "cam" phone

Recently, I have been observing the use of mobile phones by several children from 4 to 8 years old. They used different kind of phones, such as Nokia N70, Nokia 5140i, Nokia 6630 and Nokia 6680.

All of those children were very fascinated with camera functions of mobile phones. In the beginning, they thought that it was cool to take a picture with a mobile phone. It seemed for them that interacting with a camera phone was easier and safer than a digital camera. Their parents often warned them when they touched and played with digital cameras. Yet, nobody reprimanded them when playing with mobile phones. They could also use one hand to play with them as well as move easily while trying to catch pictures of their friends. Most of them have already got some interaction with phones, either to make a call, send SMS or just playing with them. None of them have used a mobile phone with a camera.

When they were about to take a picture, they faced difficulties because they did not know what to do/press. Some of those children did not yet read or read fluently. The user interface and interaction on the mobile phones were more complicated than a normal digital camera. Compared to one button to press in taking a picture with the digital camera, there are more steps to do with mobile phones. Those steps include defining buttons to press, scrolling down choosing the right function, defining whether they want to take “image” (photo) or video clip, pressing a button to take the image or video. What the children usually did was coming to me and asking what to press and choose, then they tried to remember the steps by hearts executed the actions and repeated the steps .

I also observed how a very young child used SMS to learn alphabets and numbers by pressing the buttons of the mobile phones. The child could also learn some metaphors from user interface of the mobile phones and their applications. During the process of writing an SMS, the child was suddently confused when they could not erase some words because there was no “C” button on Nokia 5140i, because the child had memorised that by using other phones that a mistake in writing SMS could be erased by pressing the C button.

I learn that it is important to design a consistent user interface and interaction of mobile devices and applications for children. A mobile phone usually has limited numbers and possibilities for physical interactions, yet a physical button could conveys multiple functions instead of one-to-one correlation. Young children may not be able to read, but they interact by memorising a set of procedures. Consistent graphical user interface, metaphor, physical and visual interaction are important in reducing cognitive burden of those children and developing more enjoyable experience when using mobile devices. These aspects are also worth to consider when designing a mobile learning system for this group of users.