Children, Screens and Artificial Intelligence: A Developmental Framework of Attention, Attachment and Agency in Early Learning Environments
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.68854/wyg5kv09Keywords:
child development, early childhood, screen time, artificial intelligence, conversational agents, attention, attachment, play, parenting, developmental psychologyAbstract
Young children now grow up with devices that talk back: conversational assistants, AI-powered toys and apps, and recommendation systems that shape what they watch and for how long. Guidance for families, educators and regulators still rests largely on screen-time limits designed for passive television, and research on screen media, attachment and children's interactions with AI has developed in separate literatures. This theoretical paper aims to build a developmental framework for understanding what AI-mediated environments do to early learning and to derive testable propositions from it. Its design is conceptual synthesis. The population was the peer-reviewed literature on young children's development in relation to caregiver interaction, screen media and AI systems. The sample comprised 36 sources: 34 journal articles published 2023–2026, eight of them reporting African data, and two foundational theory works. Sources were chosen by criterion-based (purposive) sampling, verified against their Crossref records and screened for retractions. Analysis combined thematic coding by developmental system, design logic and interaction pathway with cross-strand comparison and the derivation of propositions. The synthesis distinguishes three developmental systems, attention, attachment and agency, each acted on by systems designed to maximise engagement, to simulate responsiveness and to anticipate the child's wants. It locates developmental risk not in the screen as such but in substitution: the replacement of effortful, imperfect and reciprocal interaction with caregivers and peers, through which attention is regulated, attachment formed and agency built, by optimised, frictionless interaction. Eight testable propositions specify when AI-mediated environments support rather than undermine development, emphasising caregiver participation (triadic use), agents that elicit rather than supply children's language, and the depletion of reciprocal interaction by parental technoference. The paper recommends that early-childhood settings protect conversational turn-taking, that parenting guidance look beyond minute limits, and that regulators require children's products to disable engagement-maximising defaults. It gives specific attention to African contexts, where young children's screen exposure is already high in some settings and likely to rise, amid thin evidence and limited developmental guidance.
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