Yesterday I learned that buying children e-books or e-readers is a hot topic. As in, a really hot topic. Many people are very (very!) against them and blogs are filled with reasons why they are so bad for kids. Meanwhile, as I learn of this controversy, my 5-year-old’s e-book is hidden upstairs until she gets to open it for Christmas. I’m thinking about the debate – who knew?! Apparently every parent but me.
These are the cons of e-books for kids that I have read:
Kids will learn better with real books. Kids like to hold and touch and turn pages manually. They’ll have big, colorful picture to actually touch and get the excitement of opening a real book, and the satisfaction of closing a book after completing it.
Children learn better this way. Why mess with tried and tested methods?
You can’t bond over an e-book. And since this kind of technology quickly becomes obsolete, special e-books can’t be handed down like an old and well worn book can be. There’s something really special about knowing your kid is reading the same book as you (or even their grandparents) read as a child.
It’s takes away from imagination. Touching the screen to change pages and silly cartoon type voices found in many e-books will never substitute the soft and imaginative voices of Mom and Dad as they change accents, use sound effects and stop to kiss their kid half way through the story.
Children will never appreciate real books, nor get the thrill of a second hand book store; the smell, the texture and the interesting and informative banter that goes back and forth.
Really? All this whining over an e-book? Are we turning into the "old people" who frowned upon our walkmans and CD players and all those arcade games that would lead us to petty crime and drugs? You know those old people - the ones that were told when they were young that dancing like Elvis would cause nothing more than promiscuous behavior and would lead to the downfall of the American people? Of course that made Native Americans laugh because.....well, you get the picture. Every generation looks fondly back at their good old days and tsk tsks over the new generations - the ones that really will be the proverbial straw...
You tsk tskers are turning into the folk you used to laugh about!
A book is a book, people! Modern day books look nowhere near what printed books in the 15th and 16th centuries looked like and certainly have none of the mastery that hand carved and hand written books had before that. Scribes from two thousand years ago would shed tears over the soft covered badly glued things we now call books. It may not look like a traditional book but nor does a cell phone, compared to the two pieced behemoths we saw a hundred years ago. But conversation hasn’t changed; only the tools used to provide it!
With book bags weighing up to 15-20 pounds for the average teenager, e-books will be manna from heaven.
Children need to read and need to be stimulated. Volumes can be turned down and parents can still read e-books to their kids. E-books can have visuals and some offer pens or highlights to help with difficult words and pronunciations.
Real books aren’t dying and nor should they. A real book from a much loved person or a book handed down through generations will always be vastly superior to something technology developed but books and e-books do not have to be mutually exclusive. Our kids can have both.
VCR’s didn’t ruin the movie theater experience nor did video kill radio, no matter what the Buggles told you. Fearing technology is pretty natural but do we really want to be without it? Don’t we desperately need it, even in small doses?
Let’s not fear that little e-book for our kids. They are reading, using their imaginations and having fun – just like we all did with paper books. Life is marching on and we better march with it. Every generation fears what the next one will come up with and somehow we’re all still around. Kids still have paper books (far more than e-books) and still use the library, and used book stories and discover great finds from garage sales. In fact, perhaps the paper book will become even more appreciated as kids learn to soak in the color and texture of their books and appreciate the smell and the history of second hand finds. None of us learned like our parents and our kids won’t learn like we did. We need to embrace new ways to learn because they’re here to stay, no matter how we tsk tsk. And what better way to teach our kids the joys of reading than to offer a multitude of means for doing so?
Tell Us
Do you think e-books are inappropriate for your young son or daughter to learn? Why or why not? Are you a tsk tsker or a futuristic rebel?!