Primary school children’s involvement in the digital environment: Review of available research

Abstract

In the modern world children become involved in the digital environment from an early age. Nevertheless, scientific literature pays more attention to the influence of the digital environment on adolescents, while studies aimed at primary school children are insufficient. At the same time, it is during this period that active cognitive and emotional development takes place. The study aim was to analyze the scientific literature on chilthe last five years. The article reviews Russian and international school children. We pay special attention to the available research which identifies the relationship between involvement in the digital environment and the development of emotional intelligence as a significant sum of skills of a modern person. The review demonstrates that researchers consider the influence of the digital environment in isolation from the influence of the family environment, ignore the type of digital content consumed by the child and study the influence of the digital environment only on certain individual components of emotional intelligence. The study results establish that the age of free access to digital devices for children has decreased, while we still lack holistic understanding of what the consequences of ‘digital childhood’ may be. The review provides ideas about the risks and opportunities related to the primary school children’s involvement in the digital environment. We emphasize that the influence of the digital environment is ambiguous and further research is necessary to explore the influence of the digital environment on the development of emotional intelligence.