As we all seem to switch to the digital world you might be concerned about your child. Several questions might be emerging in your mind frequently like how much screen time should you allow your child? Is it impacting your child’s attention span? It is very obvious for you to be worried as a parent. Nonetheless, it is all about setting a time limit for your child to spend with the screens. Anything is bad if the limits are crossed.

Nowadays, teachers are suggesting E-Books (digital books) for children to not just gain knowledge but also read stories. ‘Highlights Learning’ offers E-Books for your children and is gaining popularity in the Middle East including Dubai. They have a wide range of fictional and non-fictional E-Books. You can pick according to your child’s interest.

Just like every coin has two sides to it, E-books and Paperbacks, both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Basically, reading E-books for long hours without any breaks can affect your child’s attention span. Continuously looking at the screen for long hours might affect them mentally and when they don’t get their laptop next time, they might get cranky or have mood swings. Make sure you don’t let them build a habit of reading e-books more than few hours because it will affect their eye health as well. Sit with your child when they are reading the book and share some of your real-life stories by narrating the story to them.

E-books have the advantage of having background music and animations so that children can not just imagine but feel like everything in the story is really happening as it builds virtual reality. Another advantage is that they can read E-books again and again. If your child doesn’t understand something, they can open the dictionary online and understand it. Quite a few schools in the UAE are taking advantage of technology and recommending E-book readers to parents so that children are constructively engaged even when they are not in school.

However, the drawback of E-books is that sometimes ads might keep popping up and numerous video links that ask you to play games. These links can be quite distracting for your child and they might end up clicking on such links. This can be distracting because your child will not be able to focus on the story.

On the other hand, Paperbacks have various advantages like it won’t affect your child’s attention span even if they choose to read the book for long hours. Your child can use a highlighter or a pen to underline a topic that they didn’t understand and come to ask you about it. This way, it will become interactive for you and your child. You can also give them a task that once they’re done with reading, they have to narrate the story back to you and elaborate on the favourite part from the story. This will help you stay rest assured because they will definitely pay attention while reading.

Some drawbacks of reading Paperbacks could be that your child can lose their book or misplace it. Secondly, they might find Paperbacks boring because their friends are reading E-books. Lastly, there won’t be background music when reading from Paperbacks so, there are chances that they might lose interest in the story.

However, everything has its pros and cons. You should decide if you prefer E-books or Paperbacks for your child because there’s no one other than parents who can understand what’s favorable for their child.

Highlights learning allow parents to choose between E-books or Paperback from amongst its collection of 1000s of workbooks, stories, magazine, and activity books. They also have gifting options available in case your child wants to gift a book to his/her friend and can be conveniently shipped across the GCC and other parts of the world!

Contact us