Welcome to the Digital Child Lab at University of Calgary!
In the Digital Child Lab, we are interested in how children develop to understand and learn from digital media and educational technology.
Led by Dr. Mengguo (Meng) Jing, the lab conducts research to understand how children's interactions with digital media develop over early childhood, what learning processes are involved in those interactions, how media use shapes children's development in everyday life, and how these technologies can be designed as effective learning resources.
We tackle these questions through an interdisciplinary approach grounded in cognitive development and the learning sciences, aiming at leveraging media and technology to support children's learning and well-being.
Visit our Research Areas page to see what we're currently working on.
News
- May 2026 — Bioinformatics student Isha Aulakh received a PURE Award from the Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute to study Canadian parents' perceptions of national screen time guidelines in the lab this summer. Congratulations, Isha!
- April 2026 — Meng discussed screen time and child development as a panellist at a public event held at the Calgary Central Library, hosted by the Kids Literacy Collective, a local network promoting literacy in Calgary children.
- April 2026 — Meng led a roundtable discussion on the eye tracking approach to probing children's learning from screen media at the Children & Technology pre-conference workshop at the Cognitive Development Society (CDS) meeting.
- February 2026 — Ethics approved! We can now begin running studies with children and families. The lab had its first end-of-semester pizza party.
- January 2026 — The lab is born! Thanks to McKinley Hogan for setting up the physical space, and to Qian Yao for building this website.