Why AR/MR for Education?

Part 2 — Parents & Educators: Trends & Concerns

Published in

AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine

4 min readJan 26, 2021

Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the 10 biggest worries and trends in Parents and Educators, without highlighting a few contradictions as well. When schools are forced to use online tools like Facebook (seriously?) and parents are the first to use them, where and how can we set a line for online safety?

10 Biggest Worries for Parents in 2020

A survey, commissioned by Childcare.co.uk, asked 5,342 about their biggest parenting fears for the year ahead. Parents were asked to select their five biggest worries and here’s what they had to say (ranked by per cent of parents who selected the issue).

1. The anti-vaccination movement — 82%
2. Climate crisis — 73%
3. Bullying — 48%
4. Gaming addiction — 41%
5. Screen time — 39%
6. Racism — 34%
7. Mental health — 31%
8. Obesity — 28%
9. Social media — 23%
10. Crime — 19%

Top 10 Parenting Trends 2020

The survey also revealed the top parenting trends set to take hold for mums, dads and guardians in 2020.

1. Limiting social media use / screen time — 64%
2. Dismantling gender norms — 57%
3. Plant-based diets — 43%
4. Family volunteering — 33%
5. Homeschooling — 27%
6. Plastic-free parties — 23%
7. Limiting gaming time — 19%
8. Opening savings accounts — 15%
9. Eco-friendly products — 12%
10. Gender reveal parties — 8%

DISABILITY and DIVERSTY are still misrepresented or simply left-out!

What does it mean when disability is portrayed as a villainous trait?

Differently-abled characters are lacking proper representation on screen, and other findings from a recent study on UK inclusion among preschool shows.

One in five people in the UK live with a disability or impairment, yet this isn’t reflected in the content kids are consuming. Disability is not only under-represented across children’s programming, but when it does appear on screen, it’s often associated with villains, according to a new study commissioned by preschool SVOD service Hopster-TV, done in partnership with kid research firm Dubit. According to the paper, Is TV Making Your Child Prejudiced: A report into pre-school programming, disabilities were only shown in 16% of the 50 programs included in the study.

Digital Native Kids

Ofcom 2018–2020 research shows that Generation Alpha (or Gen Alpha for short) is the demographic cohort succeeding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 2010s as the starting birth years and the mid-2020s as the ending birth years. Named after the first letter in the Greek alphabet, Generation Alpha is the first to be born entirely in the 21st century. Most members of Generation Alpha are the children of Millennials. Generation Alpha has grown up using smartphones and tablets as part of their childhood entertainment.

Screen time among infants, toddlers, and preschoolers exploded during the 2010s. Some 90% of young children used a hand-held electronic device by the age of one; in some cases, children started using them when they were only a few months old. In February 2020, an updated Ofcom report reveals that kids spend more and more time on YouTube and are somewhat more aware of the games they choose to play. Social Media still represents a confusing issue. But most of the kids missed their friends during Covid-19 first lock-down (March 2020).

Ofcom 2020 Covid-19 research key-findings

Most children in the study were lacking structure and tended to fill their time with online activities. Children learning remotely were not doing as much schoolwork as they would in regular term-time.

This meant that most of the children were lacking structure and routine, and were instead spending a large amount of time online, and alone in their rooms (although some developed more of a structured routine) including getting up earlier and exercising, as lockdown went on.

TikTok was hugely popular, rivalling other media activities
Most were using the TikTok app for several hours each day and reported that it was a good way to ‘kill time’.
A majority were posting their own content on TikTok, and in some cases children were copycatting content they had seen posted by others on the platform.
Socialisation had moved online, but was often done in conjunction with other activities

The pandemic has seen most children in England slipping back with their learning — and some have gone significantly back with their social skills, says Ofsted(2020), who warns that some young children have forgotten how to use a knife and fork or have regressed back to nappies. Older children have lost their “stamina” for reading, say inspectors.