Families have been increasingly dropping traditional print books over the years and embracing new alternatives, we see that toddlers these days have become well-versed in using their own tablets and smartphones. But a new study surprisingly revealed that toddlers might interact and benefit more from print books than their tablets.

“The print book is really the gold standard in eliciting positive interactions between parents and their children,.. Our goal with some of the kinds of findings in the study is not to make things harder for parents, but to help them focus on activities that spark interactions with their children where they feel that back-and-forth is really easy.” - Dr. T Munzer

The study involved looking at several pairs of parents and toddlers, the pairs being looked at were observed and videotaped in a lab where they were required to read a variety of stories. The parents read different stories for the children in a variety of ways. They read from an electronic tablet that had both visual and sound effects, as well as a tablet without any effects, and from a print book that had illustrations. Overall, researchers tallied the amount of interactions that the families shared while reading the stories.

They discovered that the parents had more engagement when they read from print books.

They also saw that the children had made more interactions, such as making statements about the story etc, with print books. Researchers also noticed that were more non-verbal signs of bonding with the pairs when print books were used as well.

That shared reading time between parents and their children has been shown to have long-lasting positive benefits, including helping to promote language development, improve family interactions, and more.

Previous studies have found that reading books at home can help children to do better on tests, that reading regularly helps to encourage a love for reading in them. Reading books at a young age helps to improve literacy and is believed to profoundly benefit attention and behavior.

One previous study with kindergarten children had discovered that those who read regularly, at least 3x per week, had significantly greater phonemic awareness compared to those who didn't read as often.

When reading from electronic devices, children from the earlier mentioned study had been seen to spend more time talking about the device and how to operate it than they spent time discussing the context of what they were reading with their parent; it easily distracted from the story. As for why the print books might have worked better than the tablets, researchers with the study suggest that it might be because of the distractions that are built into the alternatives, as well as the automated replacements that they offer which replace the sounds and other efforts that parent would have to make when reading the story.

Tablets Vs Books In School

The question of whether tablets are better than books for learning and more, has continued for years, with plenty of discussion on either side. The kids have even gotten involved in the discussion too; children from various schools have spent time officially debating the merits of both.

In previous debates on this topic, surveys have found that at least 57 percent of students wanted tablets to replace textbooks in school, with at least 43 percent wanting to stick with the traditional reading method. Schools in some regions have continued to adopt tablets instead of print textbooks, whether the children like it or not.

There are some venues though that are surprisingly shunning technology, despite the growing popularity. Even those who you might least expect, such as parents working in Silicon Valley who are reportedly opting to send their children to a learning venue that prefers to teach without the use of computers and tablets.

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