AN EXPLORATION OF THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOUR IN THE EARLY YEARS

This research aims to gain an insight into the influence technology has on children and their behaviour. The three aims within this are: - Parents views of the benefits and challenges technology has on children - Has childhood changed as a result of technology? - The uses of technology for children This study was motivated by the lack of existing research into whether technology is definitively harmful or beneficial for children. Technology does appear as a subject within the Early Years Foundation Stage, however this is a subsection of the topic ‘Understanding the World’. This lead me to question whether it needs to be extended to suit the needs of children within today’s society, or whether it should be discarded all together. The study is underpinned by a positivist paradigm, using a quantitative method of questionnaires to gather the data. The participants for this study are parents of children aged 0-5 years old that attend a nursery school. The sample size for this study is 40, using snowball sampling to gain this number of respondents. Due to the current pandemic, these questionnaires were administered electronically. Within this research paper, the existing research into the rising use of technology in children’s homes, including the benefits and the negatives that are associated with this will be explored. The findings were generally consistent with the current research; however, they disproved the hypothesis and instead highlighted the parents’ dependency on technology