Illustration by Francisco Caceres

It’s been a long time since libraries were paper-only domains. Computers, from laptops to tablets, and digital content are featured as prominently as print volumes in many institutions. But even the most experienced librarians and educators may find themselves flummoxed by the recent profusion of digital resources intended for the youngest users: preschoolers. The number of websites, apps, and ebooks for children under five has grown exponentially, leading librarians, teachers, and parents to wrestle with new questions about which digital offerings are appropriate and when.

Even more confusing are the conflicting messages about these resources. Advocates for technological tools tout their capacity to teach young children about letters, numbers, and every informational topic under the sun. These kids are growing up in a digital world, the e-enthusiasts point out, so why wait to expose them to the electronic riches the rest of us enjoy? Others, however, urge caution. Research on the effects of digital media use is still spotty, they note, especially where very young children are concerned. And the excessive use of digital products can crowd out other experiences essential to young children’s development. Alarmists have issued dire warnings that the use of technology is “rewiring” young children’s brains, harming their ability to pay attention or to control their impulses.

So what’s a librarian to do?

The best place to begin thinking through preschoolers’ use of technology is to consider what young children need. Kids under age five need to handle real objects, learning for themselves how the natural world works. They must move their bodies, coordinating their movements and gaining physical confidence. They should engage in unstructured playtime, exercising their imaginations, managing their emotions, and solving problems in scenarios of their own creation. And, most of all, young children need to interact with other people, navigating relationships with their peers and receiving guidance and support from adults.

The limits of digital media

All of these needs are met most fully in the offline world. In fact, researchers have a term—“the video deficit”—to describe the poor potential for learning when very young children watch an onscreen presentation, even one featuring a person. For children under three years old, especially, the capacity to “transfer” knowledge from one context to another (to learn a new word from a video, say, and then use it in conversation) is quite constrained. Kids learn much more readily from a live human, likely because their conversational partner is able to respond directly to their gestures or utterances, and also because a live person presents a much richer array of cues than does a two-dimensional image.

There are other limitations of electronic media of which librarians should be aware. Many digital products aimed at young children are marketed as “educational,” but present no legitimate research to support that claim. A recent report by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and the New America Foundation found a “disturbing disconnect between children’s needs in early learning and literacy and the current bestselling apps.” Moreover, much of the electronic media used by children doesn’t even pretend to have an educational purpose, seeking only to entertain. This is especially true for use by children approaching school age, according to a study produced by the Cooney Center: it documented a drop from 78 to 27 percent in the proportion of digital media devoted to educational content used by children as they grow older. And even the benefits of genuinely educational products, like ebooks, may come with caveats: recent research suggests that the visual and auditory gimmicks and game-like elements included in many electronic titles can distract young readers from the book’s text.

That’s not to say that the digital alarmists are right, however. Every experience children have, from reading a book to holding a conversation, leaves an impression on their brains—so to claim that digital devices are rewiring kids’ neural circuits in some unique or insidious way is simply not true. For adults, the primary worry is not that electronic media itself will harm young minds. What should be a concern is the potential of media use to supplant other activities—relating to people, spending time outside, engaging in physical activity, playing in an unstructured environment—that are critical to kids’ development.

All that said, digital media can provide a useful vehicle for preschool children’s learning—if it’s thoughtfully chosen and managed. Librarians can play a key role here, and it’s called “media mentorship.” Educators are hungry for this kind of guidance: In a recent survey by the LEAD Commission, 82 percent of teachers reported that they had not received the training that would allow them to make the fullest use of technology in their classrooms. In another Cooney Center survey, 55 percent of parents said they would like more advice from experts on finding videos, games, and websites that will support their children’s learning.

What qualities characterize the kind of electronic media that should be recommended to young children and their parents and teachers? Organizations like the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media and the New America Foundation Early Learning Initiative have undertaken efforts to define such attributes, and have come up with some conclusions. Digital tools for preschoolers should be easy to use and readily comprehended. They should be playful and enjoyable, encouraging creativity and imaginativeness. They should make connections to children’s everyday experiences while exposing them to new information and perspectives. They ought to be accessible to kids of varying abilities and levels of maturity. And the experience of using them is ideally open-ended and interactive, not one-sided or passive.

To find digital resources that fulfill such rigorous criteria, librarians can acquaint themselves with—and share with teachers and parents—online clearinghouses that review and rate children’s media. Some of the best of these include Common Sense Media, Graphite, Children’s Technology Review, and Google Play for Education.

Beyond identifying and recommending specific ebooks or apps, librarians can also offer advice on how such tools should be used. For example, they can suggest that parents and teachers engage in digital media with young children, posing open-ended questions or asking kids to describe what’s happening in their own words. Research shows that the use of such “dialogic techniques” leads to more learning by children—yet parents or teachers who would naturally pause and make a comment or ask a question while reading a storybook may not think to do so when the medium is a video or an app.

Librarians can also counsel teachers and, especially, parents on setting appropriate limits on preschoolers’ use of technology. The American Association of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children under age two get no screen time at all, and that older children be limited to two hours of screen time a day. In a recent AAP survey, however, 90 percent of parents said their two-and-under kids use some form of electronic media ; in another survey, researchers reported that 25 percent of children aged two to five spend three or more hours a day in front of a screen.

Digital tools for preschoolers are not mind-melting abominations, but neither are they educational miracle workers. They are one kind of resource among the many that libraries can offer to their young patrons, alongside reading buddies, storytime, crafts projects, and a comfortable corner stocked with books—the paper kind.

Journalist and author Annie Murphy Paul (anniemurphypaul.com) has written the upcoming book Brilliant: The New Science of Smart (Crown, 2016).