IPAD CHILDREN 2.0
This article was originally published in German. The English version is an automatic translation and may contain errors. The German original is authoritative.
On the train, the music from my headphones is drowned out by a screaming child. Around 3 years old, it sits visibly unhappy in its pram. And as the screaming gets louder, the stressed mother resorts to the last solution: the iPad. In this case, to be precise, a children's tablet by AngelTech in bright pink with matching headphones.
Not only can I now listen to music in peace again, the tablet also becomes the longed-for noise cancelling for the mother of the little girl. The term "iPad children" has long since stopped referring only to primary school children who get their first mobile phone or tablet. It has expanded to an entire generation whose everyday life has been accompanied by a screen from an early age (and continues to be): from soothing YouTube videos to fall asleep to toddlers who know exactly how to video call relatives on WhatsApp.
The Digital Natives, iPad children or simply Generation Alpha (roughly 2010–2024) probably know more about mobile phones and the like than all of us.
IS THAT AN ADVANTAGE OR A DISADVANTAGE?
According to studies in paediatrics and adolescent medicine, experts recommend a maximum of one hour of screen time per day for primary school children, and up to two hours for adolescents. But reality, unsurprisingly, looks quite different. Twelve- to 13-year-olds are online an average of 142 minutes per day, whilst 14- to 15-year-olds spend 206 minutes and 16- to 17-year-olds spend 203 minutes. And 18- to 19-year-olds? They come in at 252 minutes, a full 110 minutes more than the youngest group, and that's without counting online screen time.
Even though it sounds quite negative at first and like a problem, digitality also holds many opportunities. Tablets and the like open up new learning worlds. Interactive books, explainer videos and apps that could finally make maths understandable without a teacher having to divide herself among 30 students.
Creativity is also already taking place online and digitally — video editing, graphic design, TikTok, Procreate. Distraction is available at the push of a button, not just for toddlers.
And that's exactly where the point lies: iPad children are officially those who grew up with touchscreens, but if we're honest and look around, aren't we all a bit iPad children? Playing Hay Day in the upper sixth form, shopping online during lectures, whilst we smile at the little children watching Peppa Pig and talk about our liberated childhood and youth, we sit in the library with multitasking headphones and three screens.
The boundaries between generations and between "too much" and simply "a lot" blur, whether we like it or not. The digital learning that perhaps we once lacked, we're now catching up on all the more thoroughly, and for today's primary school children, learning on screen will remain self-evident, for a lifetime. We just don't yet know exactly how that will shape us.
WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS NEW NORMALITY?
The solution cannot lie in radical digital detox; hardly anyone wants to go back to zero. It makes more sense to engage consciously with screens and the time we spend on them. Fixed screen times that are adhered to, digital breaks. Spaces where there is the opportunity to live more analogously and return to the analogue.
At university or school, formats could help that combine both — for example, using digital tools but in real discussion spaces without distraction. Creativity and learning need both input and downtime; the latter is often easier to find online and offline.
In the end: almost all of us are iPad children or already iPad adults. Our childhood may have passed without WhatsApp groups, but today we sit at the same devices as the little children on the train that we make fun of. The question, then, is not whether we are digital, but how we want to be digital.