- cross-posted to:
- science@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- science@beehaw.org
Screen time linked with developmental delays, study finds::Screen time at age 1 is linked with higher risks of developmental delays in toddlerhood, a new study has found.
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I do not understand the amount of uninformed objections to the presented results in a number of comments here … you can’t just discount the results of a peer-reviewed study with some generic knee-jerk interjection off the top of your head. Read the original article here. It details which covariates were considered and how they were taken into account. Income bracket, educational background, gender, … all this shit is not new to researchers.
Don’t get me wrong: JAMA Pediatrics being a reputable journal shouldn’t lull you into complacency, but JFC, just because you don’t agree with the findings of a study doesn’t mean you have to dismiss it completely on first glance.
I do not see any breakdown between quantity/quality though.
It’s one thing to plop a kid in front of “junk food TV”, compared to wholesome TV, educational TV/factual documentaries, or educational games (like Homer or ABC Mouse).
Yes, obviously human interaction is necessary for human development, and more screen time will likely mean less human interaction, unless a caregiver is actively engaging the child about the content.
I still contend that there’s “good screentime” and “bad screentime”, and like food, the secret sauce is moderation.
It’s not the quality of the show or the content that matters. Have you ever put a small child in front of the TV? It’s like turning their brains off. To be honest it’s quite startling.
It doesn’t matter if its “wholesome” content or not - there is a physical decreases of core brain activity as the child disengages from the world.
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I’ll tell you that even at 4 I see differences in my son’s behavior if he watches Turtles or if he watches something like Puffin Rock.
This point is actually acknowledged in the study findings under “Strengths and Limitations”:
A limitation is that the information we collected did not allow us to separate educational screen time from other types of screen time. Doing so may have helped us in examining the association between screen time and child development while considering both positive and negative aspects of screen time.
The original data used in the study did not allow this differentiation but these findings can be used as a starting point for further research.
We’re not allowing our daughter to have screentime until she’s two. Other than one video call with her grandparents recently, or to show her images of real animals for education.
It’s been pretty easy really. I’m glad we chose to do it. She’s 17 months old now and doing great! Just watching her play and learn in the world around her is awesome, I can’t imagine her sitting and staring in one direction for 30m straight while some over-energised over-saturated kids show blares at her.
She’s too young to understand the narrative, she’s too young to understand the art, so what’s she getting out of it, other than a bright distraction?
Her mother and I are both super nerdy tech people who love film and gaming, so she’s going to have screens in her life at some point, no doubt, but why rush it? Every day she develops more, and understands more about the world around her, and I want to encourage that first.
I have a niece and nephew who are hooked on screens. And while I do care about my brother and sister in law, they obviously allow that to happen.
We were on a trip together just last week, and I was surprised to see they couldn’t get through a meal without their tablets (both had their own of course). They are both bright kids, and they still played with toys and did kid stuff. But they also did a lot of screen time that just seemed like too much. And whatever they were watching just seemed like nonsense garbage YouTube content.
That last sentence is the killer for me. I don’t want her watching absolute brain rotting unmoderated YouTube junk ever in her life.
I’d rather download a huge library of good shows and set them up so she can watch them locally.
I’m sure I can’t stop her watching absolute crap, especially when peer pressure kicks in one day, but I can hopefully help guide her little brain in the right direction to differentiate between what’s distracting and what’s genuinely interesting.
Same here, we’ve made it to 3 now without any screens and our house looks like a children’s book library, our daughter is bilingual and ahead of her age cohort. Of course that’s again a correlation/causation thing, but being able to connect with her over reading books, answering questions (so.many. questions…) has been wonderful. She’ll be hit with digital everything soon enough, so why rush it indeed. At the moment she’s doing video calls with the grandparents and very occasionally looking at photos or animals on the phone, and that’s it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The children and their mothers were part of the Japan-based Tohoku Medical Megabank Project Birth and Three-Generation Cohort Study and were recruited from 50 obstetric clinics and hospitals in the Miyagi and Iwate prefectures between July 2013 and March 2017.
Technology use can take time away from interpersonal relationships that nurture social skills since real people are more multidimensional than characters on a screen, Hutton added.
“Also, (with) passive screen viewing that doesn’t have an interactive or physical component, children are more likely to be sedentary and then aren’t able to practice motor skills,” Nagata said.
If children don’t have enough time to play or are handed a tablet to pacify negative emotions, that could prevent the important developmental milestone that is the ability to navigate discomfort.
Additionally, the authors didn’t have details on what children’s screen time involved, and not all forms are equal in their capacity to harm or benefit, experts said.
But what jumpstarts learning is content that helps children apply their knowledge beyond just rote memorization — so they can “navigate the real world, where things are more unpredictable and require more creativity and resilience,” he said.
The original article contains 1,208 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Good bot
This is a great book based on generational data from the US across several decades. It shows that average delays have increased since the rise of smartphones.
So yes, bad parenting etc. might be a factor, but it cannot be neglected that more screen time leads to more problems, especially for non-adults.
I’m not that shocked.
