There is a link between the time children spend in front of screens and their development, a new study shows, with poorer outcomes in learning, speech and emotional regulation among those who spend more time on them.
Researchers reviewed decades of research on the impact of screen time on child development, which included nearly three million children aged 18 and under in 64 countries, lead author Sheri Madigan, a psychology professor at the University of Calgary, Canada, told CNN on Tuesday.
“We found that, overall, more screen time was associated with poorer outcomes for children across several areas of development, including how they think, learn, speak, behave and regulate their emotions,” she said.
“Most associations were relatively small, like most other predictors of child development, but small does not mean meaningless, especially when it comes to exposure like screen time, which is almost universal in children’s lives.”
Madigan added that more recent studies present evidence of stronger associations than older studies between screen time and child development.
One possible explanation is that screen time has changed, she said.
“Twenty years ago, a child could spend an hour watching a television program. Today, devices are everywhere, carried in our hands, and they are also interactive, engaging and tailored to the individual,” Madigan said.
“We need to better understand not only how children interact with technology, but also how technology interacts with children. »
Still, she said parents shouldn’t conclude that “screens are inherently bad for kids” after reading the study, but should instead pay attention to how they are used.
“Technology is an important part of children’s lives and digital technologies can be wonderful tools to support children’s learning, creativity and connection,” she said.
“However, they can also crowd out what children actually need to thrive, such as sleep, physical activity, human connections, learning and play.”
To start, rather than getting rid of devices altogether, parents could identify an area or time period where screens interfere with children’s needs.
“For many families, a good place to start is to have device-free dinners or create a regular time of day where everyone puts their devices aside and connects with each other,” she added.
Parents shouldn’t be left alone to manage screen time, and governments also have a role to play, Madigan said.
“Governments should treat children’s screen use in the same way as they treat other factors that we know are associated with children’s well-being, including through guidance on screen use for families, education, research and ensuring children are protected from online dangers,” she said.
“When governments do this, it helps signal to parents, schools and tech companies that screen use is worth taking seriously.”
Madigan and his fellow researchers will next study which children are most affected by different digital experiences and why.
“As our results are correlational, they do not prove that screens are causing these developmental outcomes. While it is possible that screen use contributes to difficulties, it is also possible that children who are struggling may turn to screens more,” she said.
“Unraveling the direction of these associations is therefore an important future direction. »
Tatiana Íñiguez Berrozpe, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, who was not involved in the study, said it was a “methodologically very sound paper” that draws on an “extremely large” sample..
In a commentary published via the Science Media Center (SMC), she said that “the main findings confirm what research has shown for years and which puts into perspective the current media and social moral panic around the relationship between young people and screens: there is an association between screen time and worse indicators of mental health and academic performance, but it is very weak. »
Esther van Sluijs, professor of behavioral epidemiology at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, who was also not involved in the study, said “this is a high-quality study,” with some caveats.
“It cannot draw strong conclusions about specific types of screen use, such as social media or gaming use, because there was not enough data to study this,” she said in a statement released by SMC.
“We must therefore be careful in interpreting these results in the context of current screen use habits among young people.”
The study was published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Gn Health
