We’ve seen buzz around the internet this week about something called the video deficit. A claim was made that children cannot learn from screens before age four, and research about the video deficit was used to support the claim. This is a misinterpretation of the research, and is probably causing a lot of unnecessary stress.
The truth is, research is complicated and easy to misunderstand if you don’t have the whole picture. One of our goals at Those Media Moms is to use our PhD training to accurately distill and translate research in an accessible way and to give you practical takeaways. In this post, we’ll break down the video deficit: what it is not, what it is, and what it means for you and your young kiddos.
What it is NOT:
The video deficit does NOT mean that young children are completely unable to learn from screens before a certain age. This is an oversimplification and misinterpretation of the research.
What it IS:
Put simply, the video deficit is a developmental period of time when toddlers learn better from real-life people than from video. Many research studies have shown that toddlers learn better from an in-person demonstration of a lesson than from a video demonstration of the same lesson. This does not mean that toddlers cannot learn from screens at all, but rather that an in-person lesson will be more effective. While the video deficit is most commonly observed in toddlers between the ages of 15-30 months, research has shown that there are many exceptions and nuances. For example, toddlers older than 30 months may still experience a video deficit effect if the lesson on screen is especially challenging for their ability level.
What this MEANS for you:
Despite challenges like the video deficit, young children still can and do learn from digital media. So far, research has shown that toddlers can overcome the video deficit effect when they have more experience with screen media, are familiar with the content and characters of the digital media they’re consuming, and if the content is well-suited for their cognitive skills and abilities.
If there’s something you want your young toddler (especially between 15-30 months old) to learn, place a greater emphasis on teaching it to them in person rather than relying on video to teach the lesson. When possible, we recommend watching with your child and discussing what they see to help them understand and connect the content to their own life experience.
One caveat to this–we want to be clear that we do not think that learning is the only valuable reason for screen use. There are a number of reasons that parents may choose to use media for their kiddos beyond education. We want to give you the tools you need to make research-based decisions about how to use media for your family.
If you’d like to read more about the video deficit, including examples from research and further reading resources, check out this paper from our research lab.
If you found this post helpful and have other media topics you’d like us to unpack the research about, we’d love to hear from you! Send us a DM on Instagram @thosemediamoms or email us at hello@thosemediamoms.com. We look forward to hearing from you!