Effects of new and old media on young children’s language acquisition, development, and early literacy : findings from a longitudinal study of Australian children

The current generation of young children has been described as “digital natives”, having been born into a ubiquitous digital media environment. They are envisaged as educationally independent of the guided interaction provided by “digital immigrants”: parents and teachers. This paper uses data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) to study children’s (aged 0-8 years) development of vocabulary and traditional literacy; access to digital devices; parental mediation practices; the child’s use of digital devices as recorded in time-diaries and, finally, the association between patterns of media use and family contexts on children’s learning. The analysis shows the importance of the parental context framing media use in acquisition of vocabulary, and suggests that computer (but not games) use is associated with more developed language skills. Independently of these factors raw exposure to television is not harmful to learning.