LATROBE, Pa. – It’s not easy to press pause on today’s hyperwired kids. But in the next year, the National Association for the Education of Young Children will attempt to do just that.

Members of the group gathered last month to begin revising their guidelines governing children’s use of technology.

The current guidelines were released in 1996, when the digital revolution was in its infancy and “Baby Einstein” had yet to be born. At the time, the team “felt gadgets were impinging on children’s growth and development,” says Jerlean Daniel, the association’s executive director designate. They focused on the growing presence of computers.

“Back in the early ’90s,” she says, “we had no idea what we were talking about in terms of the media that could come and has come today.”

Enter the inaugural Fred Forward conference, held last month at the Fred Rogers Center for Early Childhood Learning and Children’s Media. Experts in education, media and child development got together to rewrite the guidelines to encompass everything from texting and viral videos to online chatrooms for kids and DVD players in the family car.

The old guidelines don’t make specific recommendations about how much screen time is too much, and say that used appropriately, technology can be positive for learning.

But how do you write guidelines to cover technology that is constantly changing? And how do you recommend that what is now a billion-dollar industry be scaled back, if that’s determined to be best for child development?

Technology has come to occupy a central role in children’s lives so quickly that its influence has barely been studied. Possible links have been found between extended hours of screen media consumption and ADHD, with some children experiencing elevated blood pressure.

Other data suggest that indoor consumption of technology is keeping kids from playing outdoors. But kids can also learn from digital media. And its power to connect kids from around the world can help increase multicultural understanding.

The NAEYC and the Fred Rogers Center will explore all of this, seeking data and contributing their own research as they collaborate on the new guidelines. Those invited to participate include more than 200 experts in education, media and technology, child development, research and child advocacy.