Can toddlers learn a language from videos, apps and video calls?
From a video on its own, very little in the first couple of years. From a live video call, quite a lot. And from almost anything on a screen, much more when a grown-up sits next to them and joins in. That's what the experiments show, and it's why we design LingoPlaytime as something to play together.
The live tutor experiment
The study everyone in this field cites gave 9-month-old American babies twelve 25-minute sessions of Mandarin over four weeks, about five hours in all. One group played with live Mandarin speakers, another watched the same kind of sessions on video, and a third heard only the audio. Only the babies with live speakers learned to tell apart Mandarin sounds that English doesn't use, scoring about 66 percent correct against 57 percent for babies who heard only English. The video and audio groups showed no learning at all (Kuhl, Tsao and Liu, 2003). The groups were small, but the result has held up as a reference point for two decades.
How big the video gap is
A 2020 meta-analysis gathered 59 reports on children up to six and found that, on average, children learned about half a standard deviation less from video than from the same thing taught face to face (Strouse and Samson, 2020). The gap shrank with age. The authors also flag that some studies were small and that publication bias may have inflated the average, so think of it as a real gap of uncertain size rather than a precise number.
Video calls are different
A video call works differently, because the person on the other end answers your child. In one experiment, toddlers aged 2 to 2½ learned new verbs over Skype about as well as from a person in the room, and learned nothing from a recording of another child's lesson (Roseberry, Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff, 2013). Children aged 12 to 25 months who had FaceTime chats with a new adult recognized and preferred that person a week later and learned more of the patterns they were shown, while children who watched pre-recorded videos of the same person didn't (Myers and colleagues, 2017).
There's a limit. In a harder task with 176 toddlers, where children had to follow a speaker's gaze to work out which hidden toy a new word meant, a responsive person in the room taught the word and a responsive person on screen didn't, even when they used the child's name and made eye contact (Troseth and colleagues, 2018). Calls with grandparents are worth every minute, and for a toddler a person in the room is still best.
By four, a good video story works
Older preschoolers close most of the gap. Fifty-eight children around age four heard a picture book read live, over video chat, or as a carefully scripted recorded video built to feel interactive, and they did about equally well on understanding the story and learning its new words in all three (Gaudreau and colleagues, 2020). So the case for avoiding screens is strongest for babies and young toddlers, and a well-made story video becomes a reasonable stand-in for a four-year-old.
Sit with them
The most useful finding for parents is how much a grown-up beside the screen changes things. In a study of 88 toddlers about 2½ years old, children whose parent joined in with the actions in a video went on to learn a new word from it, whether the video was live or recorded, and children who watched without that parental lead didn't learn it reliably (Strouse and colleagues, 2018). In that study the parents only modeled joining in. In your living room you can do more: say the word, point at the real cup on the table, ask your child to find one.
How much screen time
The World Health Organization recommends no sedentary screen time for children under two, with video calls the usual exception, and no more than an hour a day for two to four year olds. The American Academy of Pediatrics treats live video chat with family differently from other media and stresses watching and playing together.
What that means for language games, including ours
We make a language game for toddlers, so here's how we read all this. A game can't answer back the way you can, and for the youngest children a recording on its own teaches little. So LingoPlaytime is built to be played with a grown-up: the sessions are short, every tap says a word in a natural-sounding voice in one of your family's languages, and the fun part is you saying it too, pointing at the real dog, and laughing when your child mashes every key at once. Goodnight room ends by itself, so the last game of the day leads into bed instead of another round.
For the languages your child hears every day, the best screen is still the one with grandma on it.
Questions parents ask
Can babies learn a language from TV or videos?
Very little on their own. In a classic experiment, 9-month-olds learned Mandarin sounds from live speakers but showed no learning from the same amount of Mandarin on video or audio. A meta-analysis finds children up to six learn less from video than face to face, with the gap shrinking with age.
Do video calls with grandparents help language learning?
Yes. Toddlers have learned new words over live video chat in several experiments, unlike from recorded video. For young toddlers a person in the room is still best.
Are language apps good for toddlers?
They help most when a parent plays along, naming things and linking words to real objects. Toddlers whose parent joined in with a video learned new words from it, while toddlers watching without that lead didn't.
Sources
- Foreign-language experience in infancy: effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning, Patricia Kuhl, Feng-Ming Tsao and Huei-Mei Liu, PNAS, 2003
- Learning from video: a meta-analysis of the video deficit in children ages 0 to 6 years, Gabrielle Strouse and Jennifer Samson, Child Development, 2020
- Skype me! Socially contingent interactions help toddlers learn language, Sarah Roseberry, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff, Child Development, 2013
- Baby FaceTime: can toddlers learn from online video chat?, Lauren Myers and colleagues, Developmental Science, 2017
- Let's chat: on-screen social responsiveness is not sufficient to support toddlers' word learning from video, Georgene Troseth and colleagues, Frontiers in Psychology, 2018
- Preschoolers benefit equally from video chat, pseudo-contingent video, and live book reading, Caroline Gaudreau and colleagues, Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
- Co-viewing supports toddlers' word learning from contingent and non-contingent video, Gabrielle Strouse and colleagues, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2018
- To grow up healthy, children need to sit less and play more, World Health Organization, 2019
- Media and young minds, American Academy of Pediatrics, Pediatrics, 2016
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