Children reading a story on the children's stories app "The Dream Box"

The benefits of digital reading for children

Reading is an essential activity for the cognitive, linguistic, and emotional development of children. However, with the emergence of digital technologies, reading methods are diversifying and transforming. What are the advantages of digital reading for children? How can applications enhance the story-reading experience compared to traditional books? Here are some insights.

Interactive Features that Stimulate Understanding

One of the main benefits of digital reading for children is the ability to offer interactive features that make the story more vivid, immersive, and engaging. For example, digital books can incorporate animations, sounds, videos, games, or quizzes that enhance children’s engagement in reading and help them better understand the text, context, or characters. These interactive features can also promote active participation in the narrative by giving children the choice between multiple options or allowing them to create their own story.

Customization to Adapt to Children’s Preferences

Another advantage of digital reading for children is the ability to customize the story based on the children’s level and preferences. For instance, digital books can offer different difficulty levels by adapting vocabulary, syntax, or text length. They can also provide options to change the font, size, or color of the text, or choose between multiple languages. These customization options can help children read at their own pace, at their level, and according to their preferences, increasing their motivation and self-confidence.

Accessibility for Inclusive Learning

Finally, a last advantage of digital reading for children is the accessibility it offers to children with special needs. Digital devices can provide solutions tailored to children with visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor impairments. For example, digital books can offer a text-to-speech feature that reads the text aloud, a zoom option that enlarges the text or images, or a touch interface that facilitates manipulation. These solutions can enable children with special needs to fully enjoy reading and develop their skills.

Conclusion

Digital reading has numerous benefits for children, whether it’s stimulating their engagement and understanding, adapting to their level and preferences, or facilitating their inclusion. Digital devices can enrich the experience of reading stories and complement traditional books. However, it is important to ensure a balanced and supervised use of digital reading, respecting the screen time recommended by experts and guiding children in their exploration of the digital world.

Effective Children’s Story App: The Dream Box

The Dream Box app not only allows users to read various stories but also provides an option to listen to them while following the text and they like it.

Moreover, to motivate children to read stories, they can generate an infinite number of stories using the Magician feature. The Magician is a functionality that, based on a hero, a place, and a theme, creates a story from scratch, unique and personalized. This encourages children to discover what their choices have led to in the story.

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/just-for-you/202306/digital-books-benefit-equitable-childrens-reading