This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It seems like the danger here is correlation vs causation.
It might just be that parents who are more prone to producing children with developmental delays also happen to be more likely to put those children in front of a screen to manage their behavior.
I'm not sure the data supports the conclusion this article is making.
I mean we have other studies that show kids who play video games usually are better at problem solving and fine motor controls.
Could be like you said, bad parents. Could also be that the content developed for mobile is somewhat mind numbing by design, most games are idle or just geared towards ads/in game purchases instead of game content. Apps tend to be easier to use and navigate as well.
Technology is obviously a powerful tool for both good and bad.
Also we're talking about toddlers, not 10 year olds. Toddlers still develop really foundational capabilities in cognition, vision and motor function which 2D flat screen games might have a very different effects than on 11 year old Tommy playing Roblox.
There are other factors they have observed as well. Let me quote the article.
There are other factors that can affect a child’s development, such as genetics, adverse experiences such as neglect or abuse, and socioeconomic factors, Nagata said.
In the latest research, mothers of children with high levels of screen time were more likely to be younger, have never given birth before, have a lower household income, have a lower education level and have postpartum depression.
But bad screens are a much sexier cause.
Regarding your last sentence: Are you suggesting insincere motives behind this study?
There is an argument to be made about how studies like this underpin technology averse boomers trying to vilify modern social life. OTOH, studies like this, correctly implemented, are utterly important. It wouldn't be the first time science has proven something very popular (e.g. smoking) is actually also very harmful.
That sentence directed towards the article and it choosing to focus on one part of the study. Sure I have not read the study so the link between "struggling" parents and development can be much weaker than screen time and development. It can be that the article presents the study without favoring any results. Or it could be highlighting those results that drives more clicks. I feel the second option is the more likely one.
Which are you more likely to digest and relate to as a bad parent: "giving your kids devices to shut them up is bad", or "screentime is bad"?
Most parents refuse to acknowledge that they do not know what is best for their child. "Screentime is bad" doesn't come with the caveat of "pay more attention to your child".
Yeah, that „study“ studies child neglect…
„By age 2 […] those who had spent four or more hours with screens were 4.78 times more likely to have underdeveloped communication skills.“
Wow. Children with no human interaction lacking communication skills, news at eleven.
Those poor children… this is really sad. And I’m really surprised they kept at it for so long.
What are you talking about? This data was collected in a field study, not in a lab.
I’m just finding that fact sad that people but their 1-year olds in front of a screen for 4+ hours a day, that’s all.
Ah ok, I thought you were insinuating kids were being excessively exposed to screens for the sake of research, which wasn't happening here. But yeah, I agree feeding your toddler 4+ hours of digital media a day is very depressing.
Exactly. Also, to make sure the correlation is not caused by other factors such as income, health, education of the parents there should be a statistical correction to make it a sound RCT.
That said, I would argue more than 1 hour of screen time for a 1 year old is already an extreme amount and thus I would not be surprised to see it has some significant effects on development.
Both measures were according to the mothers’ self-reports.
In other words, this study has no real scientific value.
But there are many more problems with this “study” than just that.
A lot of studies in this area will suffer from the same issue. You can't exactly take two groups of toddlers and start mandating they watch 4 hours a day. So you'll have to depend on self-reports.
I don't know about other problems with this particular study, but it's not a surprising result really. Children need interaction with their caregivers to develop.
This is actually an incredibly poor take. Why do you think self-reported data has no scientific value?
I do not understand the amount of uninformed objection 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 article. 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.
Give them access to only two things: Amazon Kindle and/or Libby (no audiobooks) for learning how to read, and a Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck.
The game console should be loaded up with puzzle games like Crossniq+ or Tetris or Pokémon Shuffle, platformers like Super Mario Odyssey or Super Lucky's Tale, and text-heavy and child-friendly RPGs like Pokémon or Squid Odyssey.
If you get a Nintendo Switch, subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online so your child can play emulated games from older consoles. The parental controls work with the emulation library IIRC and old RPGs will encourage your kid to learn to read them.
If you get a Steam Deck, it's more complicated and there's no parental control integration, but you can pirate the old console games and hand-pick which games are loaded onto the console in the first place.
I know you probably think this is just more screen time, but video games are far more mentally stimulating than purely passive TV/Movie content, healthier than YouTube for the 1-7 year old age group, and a hell of a lot healthier than TikTok.
Speaking of which, last piece of advice; If TikTok or a service similar to - or more addictive than - it still exists when your kid gets old enough for that kind of thing, don't let them use it. It's debatable how much dopamine addiction is a real thing, but TikTok is a seriously bad influence. You know the "boyfriend with a motorcycle and intentions that are most definitely not honorable" trope? TikTok is set up so that idiots who almost get themselves killed doing stupid things are given the biggest audiences by the sensationalist algorithm, and I know the peer pressure argument is iffy, but I can't exactly trust idiot teenagers to not kill themselves trying to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon powder in a single gulp (yes, that could actually cause them to choke and suffocate) and I definitely don't trust a platform that acts as a digital version of that one dumbass "friend" you had in high school who kept getting you into trouble by daring you to be a total yahoo in public.
Hopefully this helps, there's no instruction manual for raising kids but don't limit their experiences purely based on feelings. You're right about video content but games and books (even comic books) are not at all the same in their effects on kid's development.
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.
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.
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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.
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 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.
