By Sarah Sparrow, MT-BC
The incorporation of mobile devices into music therapy sessions has evolved through the course of my music therapy career. I have been recently reflecting on both the impact and effectiveness of these tools as a professional, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and findings so far.
When I graduated from college, I knew only a handful of people who had iPhones. Now, it’s hard to find a 2-year-old who doesn’t know how to operate any smartphone or mobile device (Seriously. There is a 2-year-old living in my house and he asks me every hour if he can do something with my phone. It’s an epidemic.). As a music therapy intern, incorporating technology was just beginning to become a “thing” in music therapy sessions, and now it’s hard for me to plan a session without involving my phone or ipad. Truly, technology is a gift. We can download apps to assist clients with communication, song choice, songwriting, and a myriad of other things. This age of mobile devices has opened up many wonderful opportunities for people with diseases, disabilities, and limitations to engage in music and music therapy sessions in new and exciting ways.
As a music therapist and a mother of two small children, I am conflicted when I think about the future of music therapy when it comes to devices. We can easily recognize the benefits and convenience of iPhone apps and digital keyboards in the palm of your hand (and don’t even get me started on singing the praises of my guitar tuning app, which has caused me to almost lose the ability to tune by ear anymore). With that being said, I think it is important to keep our clinical work in the “Digital Age” in perspective.
Devices and Young Children
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Television and other entertainment media should be avoided for infants and children under age 2. A child’s brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens.” For those of us who have kids under the age of 2 in this society, we know that following this recommendation is very hard and at times almost impractical. But as music therapists, the opportunity to model and encourage social skills with true person-to-person interaction is well within our reach. The majority of public school programs, even those designed for children with special needs, incorporate screens of all kinds into their curriculum. Of course these programs are educational and helpful, but as a music therapist who interacts with young children a handful of times a month for a short period of time, perhaps hands-on, face-to-face is largely preferable for enhancing social skills and reinforcing the extremely concrete neural processing skills of children in the toddler and early preschool years.
Older Children and Young Adults
The AAP states that kid spend an average of 7 hours a day on entertainment media – this is not including educational time on computers and other devices. Surely the opportunities for emotional expression, appropriate social interaction, and group cohesion that are offered in music therapy are needed more than ever for this age group!
The Elderly
This ever-growing age group in a music therapist’s scope of practice has little to no knowledge of digital technology. Because of the short amount of time it took for our society to move from car phones to iphones (i.e. the childhood years of Generation Y), one would be hard-pressed to find even a spry lady in her 80’s who could operate an iPhone, let alone appreciate its full potential in a music therapy session. That is not to say that mobile devices are never appropriate, but I always exercise caution when whipping out my ipad in the middle of a session with geriatric groups. The unfamiliarity of a high-tech device can cause clients of this age range to become uncertain or even agitated, depending on their cognitive function.
One last thought for us as clinicians: when utilizing our devices in our sessions, let us all commit to making the client the priority. There are lots of fancy apps and devices that can – and should – enhance our sessions, but they should never take precedence over the people that we serve every day in our jobs. Many of the creators of the devices that we use, including Steve Jobs, severely limited their families’ usage of these items for fear that their children (and they) would not as easily acquire the life skills and family cohesion necessary for a well-rounded life. If you use your iPhone for a segment of your session, put it off to the side, making it easily accessible without the too-easy possibility of it becoming your focal point throughout the session instead of your clients. Let’s use but not overuse, and make sure that our practice is enhanced but not dominated by our mobile devices.
Sources:
https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/pages/media-and-children.aspx
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-apple-was-a-low-tech-parent.html?_r=0