Abstract

ICT can have unintended impacts on the social behavior of children, but knowledge about the mechanisms by which they unfold is limited. To fill this gap, this paper examines the social behavioral impacts of ICT on young children (under seven-year-olds) who are in a critical developmental period for learning their basics of social behavior. This paper focuses on the ways in which ICT encourages them to modify their turn taking, the fundamental mechanism for conducting social behavior. Analyzing qualitative video data from real life child-computer interactions and parental interviews, these modifications are summarized as the hidden curriculum of ICT. Two dynamics unique to ICT interaction, the reprehension-free breaching of social expectations and the unlimited repetition of interactions, facilitate young children internalizing these modifications, with dual impacts on their social behavior. The negative impacts stem from the hidden curriculum of ICT desensitizing young children to the situational expectations of their social surroundings. The positives emerge from it promoting resilience sustaining social behavior in general. These results implicate that harnessing the hidden curriculum of ICT is important, especially when designing ICT for young children, because the conducts of social behavior internalized before the age of seven can persist for life. Keywords: Young children, Hidden curriculum, Video analysis, Turn taking.

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