“We found that the typical 2 year old spends, on average, 20-30 minutes a day with their favorite toy. And we know that children will happily spend way more time with an iPad than they would with any traditional toy. If we think of these things as toys, they are not functioning the way any other toy has for millennia.”

The introduction of technology as a tool for learning has always been a point of controversy among parents and researchers alike. Dr. Dimitri Christakis sits down with us to discuss the many implications of what technology can mean for the future of education and early childhood cognitive development.

He is a pediatrician, researcher, a parent, the George Adkins Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, Director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and an attending pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

He is the author of over 230 original research articles, a textbook of pediatrics and The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television work for your kids. (September 2006; Rodale). In 2010 he was awarded the Academic Pediatric Association Research Award for outstanding contributions to pediatric research over his career. He was also a speaker at the WISE 2019 Summit.