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What Should Parents Take Away from a New Report on Screen Time?
A recent book by AEI scholar Naomi Schaefer Riley Be the Parent Please takes no prisoners about the dangers of screen time for kids and what parents can and should be doing to break their kids of the addiction. How desperate is the need for parents to pull their kids away from screens? A new report indicates the need isn’t just desperate for individual kids, but maybe for the future of an entire generation as well. CBS News reports on the findings,
The federal government, through the National Institutes of Health, has launched the most ambitious study of adolescent brain development ever attempted. In part, scientists are trying to understand what no one currently does: how all that screen time impacts the physical structure of your kids’ brains, as well as their emotional development and mental health.
At 21 sites across the country scientists have begun interviewing nine and ten-year-olds and scanning their brains. They’ll follow more than 11,000 kids for a decade, and spend $300 million doing it. Dr. Gaya Dowling of the National Institutes of Health gave us a glimpse of what they’ve learned so far.
The first wave of data from brain scans of 4,500 participants is in and it has Dr. Dowling of the NIH and other scientists intrigued.
The MRI’s found significant differences in the brains of some kids who use smartphones, tablets, and video games more than seven hours a day.
The interviews and data from the NIH study have already revealed something else: kids who spend more than two hours a day on screens got lower scores on thinking and language tests.
Parents, usually of the upper-middle class variety, are already aware of the dangers of tech; more specifically, tablets and smartphones. It’s why some of the most popular toys every year are produced by Melissa & Doug, an anti-tech company focused on wooden toys and open-ended play. A new Vox piece studied the company’s success and noted,
Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and head of its childhood development lab, has studied mice exposed to high stimulation from lights. He found that their cognitive abilities suffered tremendously, and believes this research can be applied to young children exposed to screens.
…
“I think we will look back at this time the same way we now look at the rise of cigarettes,” says Doug. “It took a number of years, but enough research showed the negative impacts of smoking. I’m not a doctor, but we do know that there are negative impacts from a child’s abundant use of technology.
As with all science, it’s important to keep an open mind and in this case wonder what comes first, the chicken or the egg; or in this case, are these lower scores due to more factors than just screentime? Kids don’t grow up in a bubble, with perfectly identical upbringings except for one variable. What kind of environment are kids growing up in if they have access to screens for hours a day? Could their lowered scores be due to more than just the screens? Nevertheless, the research on the dangers of screen time appears to be mounting, and so, parents should be aware that the downsides appear far more numerous than the upsides when it comes to kids and tech.
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This is a very important topic. I was surprised to read in one recent book about technology that Steve Jobs did not let his offspring use devices. They read old fashioned paper books. They played games outside. They did everything but what a cell phone and computer mogul’s kids would be expected to do: get on devices.
It is also important to realize that one of the ways that doctors determine the health of a baby is the age at which the infant begins to hold his or her head erectly. As a baby grows, he or she continues to hold their head at a steady even tilt or an upward tilt. Play time in a real world setting encourages this positioning of the neck and head muscles. Electronic devices encourage the head and neck muscles to be held in a downward angle. Many physiologists have stated that holding the neck muscles in a continual downward angle entrains the wiring of the brain to produce less ridges in its structures. (The more ridges in gray matter that an individual has, the more likely they are to be highly intelligent.)
The problem I have with these sorts of things is there is a clear goal in mind at the outset.
Also, every generation, ,we get this. Whwni was a kid TV and D&D were rotting my soul.
The fact that social media apps like Facebook are designed to manipulate us and increase our time in-app should alarm us all.
Ben Sasse talks about this in his book Them, which I just finished and highly recommend.
I thought there was a very good segment on Fox and friends this morning about this. YMMV.
I get that most people can’t do this, but I’m on Mac when I’m at home; then when I go out with my cheap android phone, there’s basically nothing on it to get addicted to. Quitting Twitter would be good for me, so I need to figure that out.
I’d like to hear more about what you mean in your first sentence.
With regard to your second, it seems to me that one ought to consider at least the possibility that in some generations the fear of rot was legitimate. It was with regard to television, which, among other evils, made the transition to computer screens very easy. If you consider the amount of time children do not spend with other human beings because of mobile devices and the now established connection in adolescents between screen time and depression/suicide, there appears to be a lot of reason to be concerned.
I see this at work all the time. Little kids who flip out when their parents take away a screen so I can examine them, or are hypnotized by the screen. It’s not funny. It’s terrifying.
There is always something to panic about with kids. The more safe, the more secure, the better off they are, the more we seem prone to panic about this, that or the other. In 20 years, it will be something else.
The highest rate of suicide is in middle aged white men. I doubt screen time has anything to do with it. In kids, please. There is a corrolation, not a connection.
But hey, who I am to try to stop the latest moral panic over electronics? Nothing can be more conservative than the any sentence that starts with “In my day…”
The reality is, parents have much less impact on their kids than they fear and they like. The bottom line is that outside significant trauma, we are mostly who our genes say we are going to be.
You know what a big trauma is? Divorce.
First of all, Naomi Riley is wonderful. She used to appear on the WSJ Editorial Report. Nowadays, in addition to writing well-researched books, she reviews books for Commentary. I’d pay close attention to anything she says and/or writes.
Second, we do not need a study to tell us that peering at screens for hours is bad news. As one of the comments stated, there is the tilting of the head, which can’t be good. It also encourages less real interaction, face to face, with real people, which is important to childhood development. It is just common sense to realize that all the communication problems we have today, leading to disastrous consequences, have their origin in kids addition to all the new technology.
I don’t agree with this. I can’t pinpoint the data right now, but I think there has been an increase in teen suicide.
I do agree with Bryan about the tendency today to panic. We must always be weary of studies, and things the government puts out. In this case, however, we can just use common sense to realize that the more children get involved with technology, especially at a very early age, the less they will they interact with other children. This can’t be good.
I am concerned about the handheld devices for kids. I once heard someone say that an addiction becomes an addiction because it solves all your problems. Someone else I’ve read pointed out the real harm that alcohol does for teenagers is that the teenagers drink rather than solve their relationship problems, which means that they essentially stop maturing from the moment they start serious drinking.
Like all allergens, some kids will be simply immune to the problems caused by being connected to the Internet all the time. But others will have a problem with it. Their relationships will suffer, their schoolwork will suffer, their extracurricular activities will suffer, and in some cases their sleep-wake cycles will suffer. For many teenagers, these devices will be toxic.
The interaction is filling a social need all human beings have. But when that social framework falls apart for these kids–and it will fall apart because the entire framework is constructed by other immature teenagers–it will be serious because these kids have walked away from their other important relationships (see first paragraph).
If you don’t give the elementary school kids these handheld devices in the first place, they won’t be dependent on them when they reach high school. A handheld Internet device should be given to kids like alcohol–when they are old enough to handle it and keep it in perspective because they have already built up a good life for themselves with lots of good relationships and solid achievements.
There is an increase in suicide across the board. Worst effected are middle aged men.
Kids with screens are not just alone. They are often interacting with others electronically. Kids are connecting differently.
I work with kids, a lot of them, in Scouts. They like the use of screens. And yet, by some great bit of magic, they still can communicate with each other.
And to way kids pop screens at dinner? They are board! They have no interest in conversation with their parents. Kids never have. It has to be forced with teens. Now, instead of getting into trouble they are on a screen. So horrible! Not like it was when I sat though God only knows how man boring, hell on earth, dinners and meetings I was dragged too.
My kids probably spend too much time watching TV and they don’t score high on language (one has a B in language arts and breaks gifted testing on his verbal score, the other just learned to read at almost 7, and the third started talking at 3.5).
But we also do much else. We read together, play board games and go on trips. They also get kicked out of the house regularly.
Basically, the only way to avoid tv time is to not have one. That’s it.
And while we do stuff with our kids, it emphatically is not my job to entertain them. Feed, clothe, teach, yes. Build relationship, yes. But entertain. No.
So if you can think of a way to get other mothers staying home so friends are in neighboring houses (and not after school programs), so they have playmates for impromptu soccer matches, bike races, and tag games, then we will probably watch too much tv with the occasional outburst from mother to go use their bodies and Turn. It. Off.
Actually – I just realized in my previous comment…
They should look at access to friends in the neighborhood among kids with high screen time and low verbal skills.
It’s the relationships that are missing.
Language skills are about communication. There is no need to communicate if you have no one to communicate with.
I’d be interested if there is a tertiary correlation there.
Very much agree with your statements.
I am posting this photo as it typifies the society when young people actually interacted with one another. Here in rural No Calif, I still notice such facial expressions and activities where “kids are being kids.” (Although Starbuck-style venues have sadly replaced the soda shop.)
When I go back to the Big City, it is teens sitting in cafes and even when they are sitting in a booth or Starbucks with their contemporaries, most eyes are on a screen.
But if kids interact with other kids…. that is how #metoo happens!
I am deeply amused that we are all, here on Ricochet, complaining that kids these days are too glued to their screens.
Heh
I still believe that this is common sense.
I do not have the experience that some on this thread have. I certainly admit to that. How can I deny it? But experience is not everything. Look at the way too many kids act today. Look at the rudeness too many of them display? They should not stare at their screens during dinner time. It is not just a matter of rudeness; although that should not be discounted. A telephone screen is, by its very nature, something that takes just a few seconds of your time. It neither encourages deep though, nor does it even teach the user to concentrate for any extended period of time. This is the point of the essay. I do think that we ignore that point at our peril.
This is totally anecdotal, so make of it what you will. I come from a family where pretty much everyone reads a lot and also watches a great deal of tv; growing up, all of my friends were the same. I thought everybody was like that, until I started baby sitting some neighborhood kids who totally hated television. They were not forbidden to watch it, they just naturally hated it. Sounds great, except, they also hated reading and being read to. The first couple of times I watched them, I tried in vain to read them a bed time story: they pretty much threw the book at me, and let me know that they did not like it when people read to them. I watched them for several years, and in all that time, not one of them ever picked up a book; there were three of them, and they were all alike in this respect. They were smart kids, and did well in school, but they were just not all that verbal in real life: in my family, we often asked the younger kids questions, and enjoyed the cute and clever answers they would come up with. But when I would try that with the baby sitting kids, they seemed to have no idea what I was doing; they would just give me a strange look, and tell me that I was dumb; they were not normally rude kids, I think they were genuinely taken aback by verbal communication, or something.
They were far and away the most active kids I have ever encountered: they played 24/7, literally, and they all became successful adults. But I would be very surprised if they are readers: none of them has a job which requires great verbal skills.
Reading and watching tv sometimes, at least, go hand in hand.
*All three of the baby sitting kids were girls. I understand that boys are often more active and less inclined to read, but these were girls-they were delightful, exhausting, and totally unlike other little girls I have encountered. :)
This is a shocking photograph; those children are canoodling in a most brazen fashion.
Better if they looked at their screens than this dual straw-sucking…why they’re practically petting. And all those plastic straws are going straight into the landfill.
This is a combination of many unrelated things and not about games.
Granted, my experience is with the younger set, but I’m not thinking day care and out of house working parents and growing distances or estranged grandparents helps this situation.
Technology has brought about many changes for over 100 years now that has altered family life (perhaps irreversibly) that is just being continually compounded.
Teens are not locked away in after care because they have a degree of independence. But social skills are learned young. If your interaction with friends at home is through a screen as a kid, it will be that way at an older age and away from home.
Let me tell you how blisteringly difficult it has been to get my kids together with school friends after hours. As he gets older, increasingly the only way for him to “hang” with friends in the absence of their own cars is through the xbox chat interface (my kids don’t have phones).
That isn’t their fault or the screen’s fault. It’s questionable if it is really and truly the parents’ fault. It is what it is with the tradeoffs of society that prioritizes dual-income households and nomadism for finding work – and has done so for decades now (at least since the 80s).
Of course it is the parent’s fault. Everything is the parent’s fault. It cannot ever be the culture’s fault. It cannot be the kid’s fault. Nope. Parents are always to blame for everything that goes wrong with their kids. Kid gets out of line? Blame the parents. Did not do well in school? Blame the parents. DUI? Parents.
See, kids are a blank slate, and however they turn out is 100% the impact of what is done with them. That is why boys and girls come out differently, right? They are taught that!
(note, that the above is sarcasm)
The only thing I would add to this is it obviously right that things are what they are. The question is: Should they be that way?
I guess there are two ways to look at conservatism:
Now, sure, we should try and do both: Work to accept the way things are, while trying to change them for the better. I believe that by just accepting the changes we are resigning ourselves to a world that is trending worse for everyone.
I agree with you and I don’t think they should be this way.
I made a different choice with my family, but I’m stubborn, resistant, and can be contrary. I am not a byproduct of culture because I don’t let myself be by nature.
Most people are not like that – they don’t think critically about the direction they are going with culture being the way it is. Yes, they seek the best options that they know of, but culture locks out valid ideas for no critical reasons. Consider college degrees for everyone – no one critically questions it.
It is cultural that men and women enter work and relationships without critically thinking about how these decisions will effect a future family. By the time the future is now, choices were made that can make one income seem impossible.
It isn’t, but the trick of the devil is convincing you you have no choice.
Stay at home parenting and working is gaining a bit more credence now than it had in the late 90s and 2000s. We’ll see if a culture shift is possible and if it results in some economic shifting as well.
This is pretty wise thinking, methinks. It is a great temptation to go with the crowd, rather than do what National Review advised: Stand athwart history and yell stop!
The sentence about college struck me: A few brave souls come to mind (like Michael Medved and even Dennis Prager), asking why everyone needs to go. But most just take it as an invaluable good that we should open those doors to everyone. This is why people like Bernie Sanders spout their nonsense about free college for everyone.
I agree with your (actual) position, but would point out that it tends to be considered the mom’s fault, and moms tend to feel the most guilt in any case.
It is worth noting that children are being freed from having to lug backpacks full of books around.
The government is issuing tablets.
I love this.
How do you develop human capital in this society? Does anyone care? What is capital?
link
What has happened is, the education mafia have hijacked the job signaling function and now they overcharge for teaching stupid stuff or nonsense and what you actually need to make money or be a good person that understands the world. It is a bad value, for no good reason.
When I went to college I was absolutely shocked at how many smart people were bitter about having to pay for liberal arts classes and spend time on it. All they wanted to do was get out and make money. Here’s my question: when and why did any of this have any merit? So many people think one second spent on liberal arts is a waste of time and money. Personally I think this stuff is very worthwhile as long as you don’t overpay for it.
It’s so obvious they need to increase the value proposition by selling this stuff À la carte. The accreditation system has to be exposed for the scam that it is.
With robots and globalize trade there is just no way in hell the job market will ever look the same as it did for the baby boomers: you could just get any degree and it would work out.
Originally, university was for the upper-echelons of society that had enough time to spend on deep thinking, reading, etc. They also had enough money to pay for it themselves.
Then, the sons below the oldest needed a source of income and would attend a professional school to be clergy, lawyers, engineers, or doctors.
There was also a separate school for lower level professions like teaching. L.M. Montgomery went to such a school after her school house days. It was more like a community college. Her characters pursued professional degrees after pursuing the lower level teaching degree… but they were teachers at 18! And their students graduated at 16.
I guess they were eventually all rolled into one with the same cost each, but how much better off would we be if teaching was a cheaper and shorter degree as a stepping stone to something better? What iff professional degrees were treated differently than thinking degrees and the thinking degrees were reserved for those who can pay sticker price for it, since they don’t have a return on investment? They are the leisure-man’s past-time.