Özet:

A novel coronavirus (Covid-19) spread across Pakistan and exerted its effects directly or indirectly on everyone including children at early ages. Thus, Covid-19 lockdown enforced parents to engage their children especially at Agah Walidain- Informed Parents (AW-IP) Program under Rupani Foundation (RF) Pakistan and at Early Childhood Development (ECD) level with technological gadgets at home. To explain the phenomena, parental perceptions on their children’s use of technology in terms of its positive and negative effects, during Covid-19 pandemic lockdown period, were explored. Employing cluster sampling technique, a total of 150 private ECD school teachers as parents of the children, less than 9 years of age, were selected from Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) as a sample of the study. A self-structured questionnaire, developed on five-point Likert Scale, was self-administered to collect the required data. The data were analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Both Descriptive (percentages and frequencies) and Inferential (independent t-test) statistics were applied. The findings of the study revealed that 93% of parents believe that technological gadgets have positive effects on children. 92% of parents responded that during covid-19 technology was used at the extreme level. Whereas 88% of parents believe that excessive use of technological gadgets can be harmful to children. The study recommends that parents need to educate and supervise their children’s activities and limit their access to technological gadgets to reduce its negative effects.

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