Jayne Dowle: Tablets will get your children’s creative juices flowing

My own son and daughter have had iPads for a year now. I agonised over the cost – around £300 each – but I can honestly say it was the best Christmas present we ever gave them.

That’s not because their iPads keep them quiet, by the way. It’s because there hasn’t been a day when they haven’t used them. And you can’t say that about the vast majority of the gimmicky games and gizmos children usually pester you for.

That’s why I was interested to see the Ofcom survey that shows household ownership of tablet computers has more than doubled in recent years. You will now find a tablet in more than half of all homes.

In many families, it’s the children who are the main users. In our house, the adults have been relegated to the ancient laptop. It was the summer holidays before I even managed to get my hands on one of their iPads. And when I did, my eight-year-old, Lizzie, had to painstakingly show me how to use it.

With inevitable predictability, however, the backlash has begun. Tablets are addictive, we’re told. Tablets restrict learning. They lead to obesity, laziness, lack of fresh air, exercise and, in all probability, the downfall of western civilisation as we know it. If you’re reading this and looking over at your six-year-old silently engrossed in Minecraft, take heart. None of these things will happen.

I’ll tell you what will happen though. Give your child the freedom to explore this amazing tool and they will discover levels of curiosity and creativity that will transform their childhood. Experts call this “technological intelligence”. It’s the ability to back up the imagination with technical understanding and aptitude. We ancients can only dream of it.

My two teach me things every day. For instance, until they started making iPad films with their friends, I didn’t grasp the full significance of YouTube. The children upload short documentaries about their daily lives and make “movies” starring each other using a program called iMovie. So much for tablets making children lazy. They aren’t sitting there passively watching television, they’re making television.

This lot have turned their back gardens into film sets. They run around every weekend interviewing each other, recording stunts on their scooters and chronicling the moves of every cat and dog in the neighbourhood.

The films they create are so good they even impressed the media students I teach at university. Indeed, it would be fair to say that they left some of them speechless. We’re talking about twenty-somethings with whole rooms full of computers and film-making equipment. They can’t believe that children as young as eight are capable of such sophistication.

You might feel out of touch when you see your child or grandchild tapping away. Imagine the reality check it must give to those who consider themselves on the cutting edge to discover that primary school pupils are already outpacing them.

Of course, not every child wants to make films. That doesn’t matter though. A tablet gives each of them the opportunity to develop their own individuality. Whatever they want to do, build virtual houses on Minecraft, discover new music, draw pictures or face-time their cousins in Australia, they can do it. How can we stamp on that?

My son has never picked up a Lego brick in his life. He doesn’t enjoy formal learning. He has to be forced to sit down and complete his homework. Yet he can compose a song on his tablet without the slightest bit of help or chiding from me.

To see a child who struggles in school achieve something worthwhile all by himself brings a tear to this parental eye. It gives them the confidence and self-esteem often difficult to find in the classroom.

And also, with reliable broadband, access to a tablet widens horizons in ways we could only dream of as children. Our Lizzie is currently following the adventures of an American family called the Shaytards who live in Los Angeles.

Through their films, she finds fascinating similarities and differences to her own life. It gives a small girl in Barnsley global perspective. The Shaytards are an internet phenomenon, with dad Shay Carl Butler running five YouTube channels covering everything from his daily life doing the supermarket run with his five kids to celebrity interviews.

Forbes magazine calls him one of the “most successful video entrepreneurs on YouTube”. I’d be happy to call him a role model for my children. In fact, I’d be happy to call him a role model for myself, if only I could get hold of an iPad long enough to make my own films.