Tech tots: Today's kids can catch their favorite shows any time, any place

As boomer experts continue to debate the effects of watching television, many preschoolers yawned and moved on: Linear TV is so last millennium.

Instead, tots can watch "Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!" cartoon podcasts on an iPod, check out streaming video of "Blue's Clues" on the computer, view clips of Playhouse Disney on a cellphone or insist on "Barney and Friends" at any hour from video on demand.

Remember when having cable TV was cool? Now kids as young as 2 interact "across platforms" in this new era of a "changing digital children's media landscape."

"Children are platform agnostic," said Alice Cahn, vice president of development for Cartoon Network. "If you want to look foolish with a preschooler, say, 'Sorry, you can't watch that. It's not on.' It's TiVoed, it's online, it's on video on demand. 'Appointment viewing' is not part of their lexicon and never will be. There's not a sense that television has any primacy with them."

Kids will follow beloved characters "all around the multiplatform world," said Pete Danielsen, senior vice president for production and programming at Nickelodeon, which targets kids on 15 platforms. "Watching TV on small screens is just normal to them. It's portable, and it's fun."

Many younger parents who grew up with TV and computers are enthusiastic media consumers. "Parents go into new platforms and bring their children right in with them," Danielsen said.

Most preschoolers don't own their own cellphone or $400 iPod (yet), but they benefit from what's dubbed "pass back technology": Parents download a preschool-friendly show or clip and pass it to the backseat for kids to watch in the car (or in the grocery store line or doctor's office).

Consider "Dora the Explorer," a top-rated Nickelodeon preschool show. According to Nickelodeon:

• "Dora" videos on Nick Jr. (www.nickjr.com) generated almost 2.8 million streams so far this year; Dora video games on the site accounted for more than 180 million plays in 2005.

• The first preschool property available on iTunes, "Dora" now makes up 16 percent of Nick sales to date for iPods.

• On video on demand, "Dora" averages between 1 million and 1.5 million views per month.

• "Dora" is also Nick Jr.'s most streamed property on Verizon Wireless' V CAST service for mobile phones.

"For us, it's all about being ubiquitous — we are wherever kids are," said Jodi Davis, vice president of communications for Nick Preschool and Nick Digital Television.

Cahn agreed. "I don't know anyone who develops children's TV programs who doesn't have an online component and isn't thinking about how it will transfer to handheld games, cellphones and other smaller screens," she said. "It's not a question of, 'Should we move beyond TV screens into other media?' It's pretty much a given."

Whether new media is just adapting to youngsters' style — or by sheer volume, altering how and how much kids use it — is debatable.

Young children have "grown up with media that allows them to make decisions and choices; it's not a passive experience," said Lesli Rotenberg, senior vice president of PBS KIDS Next Generation Media. "It's 'What can I get? What can I do?' It's inspiring those of us who are content providers."

As children access all sorts of media at younger and younger ages, they risk "watching up" with inappropriate shows or games, Rotenberg said. New media fans argue that the bounty of choices makes it easier for parents to find programming that meets their approval; critics, however, decry networks for encouraging more use by very young children.

The previous generation would come home after school and watch whatever was in front of them, said Christine Bielinski, associate creative director for Cartoon Network. "Now children's media is 24/7. And it would be more if there were more hours of the day."

That concerns pediatricians already worried about the amount of time very young kids spend in front of screens. Children under age 6 who use screen media on a typical day — more than 80 percent of them — average about two hours, according to a national study released this week by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

"We used to be able to ask, 'How much TV do you watch?' " said Dr. Jill Sells, director of Docs for Tots Washington State. "Now they can get content in tons of different ways. Parents need to think of all those things together as total time in front of screens."

With easy access and so much variety, it's harder for parents to stick to limits and say no to kid pleading. "The temptation is to let kids do it all the time," said Sells, mom to a 5- and 9-year-old. "Suddenly it's gone from a couple hours of screen time to eight because it's in six different places."

As long as content is age-appropriate, the medium doesn't matter as much as the amount, Sells said. "Parents just have to decide how they want kids spending their time," she said. "If they're in front of the TV or other media, there are other things they're not doing: not playing with friends, not physically moving around."

Sells also warns parents against setting precedents with young children that will be hard to rescind with older kids "when they learn to use these gizmos themselves."

"Most kids won't self-limit," she said. "If you start young, kids will accept your rules. But it's really hard to go backward."

Stephanie Dunnewind: 206-464-2091 or sdunnewind@seattletimes.com