Using technology to build relationships and social skills
About this resource
This article invites parents, carers, and educators to use digital technologies with children to strengthen relationships, build trust, and learn new things together.
Age range for this resource
For parents, carers, and educators of children aged 3 to 11 years.
Goal of this resource
To strengthen trustful relationships between children and their adults.
To promote children’s sense of belonging.
To provide opportunities for children to learn about themselves and their world through enjoyable social experiences with their adults.
How might educators use this resource?
Share this article with parents and carers of children and pre-teens. Highlight how using technology with children can strengthen relationships through learning about their technology interests, needs, and worries. Using technology with children shows them that you care about the things that matter to them. Explain that children benefit most from technology when it’s an interactive and meaningful experience – for example, when you play digital games or watch online content with them and talk about it. It can be a great way for your child to connect with you and others.
How might families use this resource?
Read this article to better understand how using technologies with your child can strengthen your relationship and build trust. By using technologies with your child, you can learn about their technology interests, needs, and worries and you’re showing them that you care about the things that matter to them. Your child can use technology to build and maintain relationships with other family members and friends too, especially when they can’t interact face-to-face. Your child benefits most from technology when it’s an interactive and meaningful experience – for example, when you play digital games or watch online content with them and talk about it. It can be a great way for your child to socially connect with you and others.
How might organisations use this resource?
Provide a link to this article in your communication with families and educators. Explain how learning with digital technologies is part of Belonging, Being, and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia V2.0 (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022) and the Australian Curriculum V9.0 (Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority, 2024). Highlight how using technologies with children can strengthen relationships, build trust, help connect socially with others, and promote learning.
What learning might we see?
Parents, carers, and educators using digital technologies with children to strengthen relationships, build trust, and learn new things together.
Children using digital technologies to build and maintain positive relationships with their adults, siblings, and peers.
Practices
Using
Children use digital technologies to access and share information and to communicate with others.
Showing
Children show others how to use and engage with a variety of hardware and software.
Discussing
Children, their peers, and adults discuss, consider, and reflect on digital content and/or the use and application of technologies in context.
Area
Relationships
Young children in digital contexts interact, engage, access, and learn how to use digital technologies in relationships with other people, including the adults (e.g. family members, parents, kinship members, educators) and peers (e.g. friends, siblings, extended family members) in their lives. These relationships facilitate and influence children’s engagement with digital technologies.
Connection to relevant standards
Belonging, Being, and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia V2.0 (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022)
Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity
Children feel safe, secure, and supported (e.g., Children establish and maintain respectful, trusting relationships with other children and educators; Educators value and respond sensitively to children’s attempts to initiate interactions and conversations).
Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy, and respect (e.g., Children co-use and collaborate with others when using digital technologies).
Outcome 2: Children are connected with and contribute to their world
Children develop a sense of connectedness to groups and communities and an understanding of their reciprocal rights and responsibilities as active and informed citizens (e.g., Children cooperate with others and negotiate roles and relationships in play episodes and group experiences; Educators support and build children’s skills to participate and contribute to group play and projects).
Children respond to diversity with respect (e.g., Educators use digital technologies to find answers to questions and document discoveries).
Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing
Children become strong in their social, emotional, and mental wellbeing (e.g., Children increasingly cooperate and work collaboratively with others; Educators discuss and model appropriate use of digital technologies and discuss how to keep children safe online with children and families; Educators build upon and extend children’s ideas; Educators challenge and support children to engage in and persevere at tasks and play).
Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners
Children develop a growth mindset and learning dispositions such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination, and reflexivity (e.g., Educators create responsive learning environments that promote shared sustained thinking; Educators model inquiry processes, including wonder, curiosity, and imagination, try new ideas and take on challenges).
Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, enquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching, and investigating (e.g., Children explore their environment through asking questions, experimenting, investigating, and using digital technologies; Educators model the use of digital technologies and media to assist children to investigate and document their findings; Educators intentionally scaffold children’s understandings, including description of strategies for approaching problems).
Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another (e.g., Educators encourage children to discuss their ideas and understandings; Educators encourage and enable children to reflect on and assess their learning, including progress and next steps towards their learning goals).
Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies, and natural and processed materials (e.g., Children use digital technologies and media to investigate and problem solve; Educators provide opportunities and support for children to engage in meaningful relationships that provide positive learning opportunities).
Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators
Children interact verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes (e.g., Educators engage in sustained communication with children about ideas and experiences, and extend their vocabulary).
Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts (e.g., Children view and listen to printed, visual, and multimedia texts and respond with relevant gestures, actions, comments, and/or questions; Educators join in children’s play and engage children in conversations about the meanings of images and print).
Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media (e.g., Children view, listen and respond to simple printed, visual, and multimedia texts or music and express how it makes them feel).
Children use digital technologies and media to access information, investigate ideas, and represent their thinking (e.g., Children use digital technologies to access images and information, explore diverse perspectives, and make sense of their world; Children adopt collaborative approaches in their learning about and with digital technologies; Educators encourage collaborative learning about and through technologies between children, and children and educators; Educators research topics and search for information with children).
National Quality Standard (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, 2019)
Quality Area 1: Educational program and practice (e.g., Each child’s current knowledge, strengths, ideas, culture, abilities, and interests are the foundation of the program; Educators are deliberate, purposeful, and thoughtful in their decisions and actions; Educators respond to children’s ideas and play and extend children’s learning through open-ended questions, interactions, and feedback; Each child’s agency is promoted, enabling them to make choices and decisions that influence events and their world).
Quality Area 2: Children’s health and safety (e.g., Each child’s wellbeing and comfort is provided for, including appropriate opportunities to meet each child’s need for sleep, rest, and relaxation; At all times, reasonable precautions and adequate supervision ensure children are protected from harm and hazard).
Quality Area 3: Physical Environment (e.g., Resources, materials, and equipment allow for multiple uses, are sufficient in number, and enable every child to engage in play-based learning).
Quality Area 5: Relationships with children (e.g., Responsive and meaningful interactions build trusting relationships which engage and support each child to feel secure, confident, and included. Children are supported to collaborate, learn from and help each other).
National Principles for Child Safe Organisations (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2018)
Principle 4: Equity is upheld, and diverse needs respected in policy and practice.
Principle 5: People working with children and young people are suitable and supported to reflect child safety and wellbeing values in practice.
Principle 8: Physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children and young people to be harmed.
Explore More
If these ideas are new to you, explore these related resources:
Sharing screen time and digital technology with children and pre-teens
This article explores how parents and carers can use screen time and digital technologies to have fun, build trustful relationships and learn new things with children and pre-teens.
Enjoying digital content with children
This video presentation explores how educators, parents and carers can support young children’s play and learning by viewing digital content together.
For more ideas, explore these related resources:
Unpacking imagination in action with Bluey
This video presentation explores how educators, parents, and carers can use technologies (e.g., popular television programs) to support children’s participation in imaginative play.
When the dinosaurs came to kindy
This video presentation explores how early childhood educators can connect with children’s interests using digital technologies.
If you would like to read some research, explore these related resources:
Neumann, M. M., & Herodotou, C. (2020). Young children and YouTube: A global phenomenon. Childhood Education, 96(4), 72– 77. https://doi.org/10.1080/00094056.2020.1796459
Nolan, A., & Moore, D. (2024). Broadening the notion of peer-to-peer interactions when young children engage with digital technology. Early Childhood Education Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-024-01662-4