"This white paper takes a first look at the everyday world of digital tools and media in the lives of three- to five-year-old children, with a particular focus on non-intentional learning opportunities in developing and least-developed nations. It begins a discussion about how digital media learning opportunities, including non-intentional opportunities such as cell phones and video games, when combined with intentional learning opportunities such as educational television or computers, may be affecting emergent literacy skills development (Anderson & Pempek, 2005). An understanding of this phenom enon is important, because when new digital tools and media, as well as novel combinations of old and new media, become available and commonplace, “the media that children use and create [will be] integral to their growing sense of themselves, of the world, and of how they should interact with it” (Center for Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital, 2008, np). Digital media may be transforming the language and cultural practices that enable the development of emergent literacy skills. A new generation of young children is experiencing a new kind of interconnectedness in the language they see, hear, and use. For example, a young child may observe a sister talking with a friend, texting (writing) the friend, and then reading the text. Young children are increasingly surrounded by language sculpted by digital media, and this process has implications for the way their neural circuitry learns to speak, listen, read, and write (Small & Vorgan, 2008)." (Page 2)