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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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Define “return on investment”. That’s the issue.
As a society accumulates more capital and wealth, it leaves space for all kinds of human improvement. The issue is, we are screwing this up, big time.
I really think liberal arts can make you a better person and help you understand the world better if you do it right.
In a few years all of this stuff is going to be completely atomized and then people will be able to select the kind of education they need and want.
Bottom line is people need something to trade for housing and food.
It is a bad idea to put people who need to work for food and roof in a profession that doesn’t give them tradeable value.
An expensive 6 year degree in art history that gets your foot in the door of a museum for minimum wage isn’t for the guy who can barely afford rent and food. If he pursues a degree that earns him tons of tradeable assets, then maybe his son or grandson can pursue art history as a career.
I’d add that the cumulative effect of thinking people who study history, art, music, etc builds the human capital that makes us better in governance and culture, but it still is not the type of thing for people who must work to eat.
We aren’t disagreeing very much. All of this stuff just needs a fair price.
Part of this is I have some personal axes to grind, which most people don’t, but it also pisses me off that the system is really set up to just waste people’s money so they can give it to the education mafia. In a way, ever since so many started participating from the G.I. Bill, half of it was just one gigantic lie. That’s what people are effectively saying.
I’ve said this before. I really recommend listening to the renegade history guy interview by reason magazine.
Also, Nick Gillespie of reason magazine has a short interview with rebel media that is very good.
It’s going to be a while, but all of this stuff is going to get blown apart, as it should be.
If it’s not the next bubble to burst, I’d be surprised.
But economically, I operate on gut instinct and not any formal analysis, so there’s a good chance there’s something else worse off. It does seem like another tech bubble is forming around social media and that seems far more unstable. Business demand for degrees as a culling factor has provided education stability that it increasingly doesn’t deserve.
Either businesses will discover their workforce being increasingly incompetent before they abandon it or we do away with the regulation against business skill testing. I think the former is reaching a peak, but it is slow moving and universities may feel the pressure from decreased donations and admissions before that does peak. The regulation would burst it immediately.
Think of all of the excess fixed and variable overhead at those places. All of the stupid administrative jobs. All of the fixed assets. Think of all the businesses surrounding this stuff that will just evaporate.
I think the University of Minnesota system is actually trying to force kids to go to some other weaker campuses so they can put the stuff off.
I thought of an example. I sort of know a guy on Twitter like this. What if you have a family of five, which is basically a big family now. Everyone in the family is very productive and above average intelligence. The parents made all right choices so their kids turn out good including sacrifices. What if they all have great technical ability and they should all be CPAs and engineers and so forth, and what if every single one of them resents having to take liberal arts classes? The parents and the kids. What if they don’t have extra money laying around for this stuff? It’s disgusting. It’s a rip off, and it’s a drag on society.
FWIW, I love this
This is a really great comment. What state do you live in, Stina?
I don’t necessarily even care if the liberal arts “learning for the sake of learning” degree is expensive – the question is whether or not the government should be subsidizing it.
The whole concept that we treat education as an actual “public good” that saves us all money by making people un- poor and un- stupid, or makes the whole society more productive is a complete joke now. You will never get any kind of political leader to say that, though.
Florida and thank you.
To say nothing of the class divisions that would likely prevent a guy with a Brooklyn accent from a job in docentry.
It is certainly not a panacea. We also end up with people who are differently-poor and…well, a half-wit is better than none.
You could have a two year liberal arts degree and have all the books picked out by Mises.org or whoever you trust. You don’t need perfect teachers given all the capabilities of the internet. Then spend the rest of your time learning something that you can make a pile of money on that won’t be outsourced. I really wish the libertarians and the conservatives would by a dead mall someplace and try that. I bet you could do that for really cheap too.
The problem is, some of the really gravy stuff is only taught by accredited colleges: finance, accounting, biology, chemistry.
I love that.
Someone needs to think harder about this stuff. We are just going on and on with the same Prussian crap they shoved down our throats in the 1800s.
The Minnesota Education Mafia Brain Washing Program is creative.
It is the might of the States that moved us from private accreditation/degree-granting institutions to State Universities, and the power of the Feds that moved us from students who could pay/students who were exemplary to students who were deserving because they served in the military, and then to students who were deserving because they were poor. (I don’t really object to the GI Bill, btw.)
@cm is right though, that the big-box approach to education isn’t working well.
@rufusrjones is quite correct that degree pursuers resent taking liberal arts-oriented classes. These have been minimized to a high degree, and are a holdover from more gentlemanly times – indeed, they are part of the brand, and a fig leaf preventing us from noting the overpriced trade school underneath.
Maybe we could make such schools a condition of receiving unemployment.
I’ll just throw some things out there.
The guy that runs the renegade history website is a PhD from Columbia or NYU or something like that. I think he’s more of a democrat then Republican or libertarian. He is literally making a living being a history teacher over the Internet. He has all kinds of guys with PhD’s that want to work for him. Tom Woods has a bunch of classes. I mean like a ton. Then you’ve got Kahn Academy. Mises.org has some plans, but they’re being quiet about it right now. Cheap Liberal arts, from any perspective you want.
The other thing is there’s this entrepreneur that started a program called Praxis or something like that. He tries to talk kids into not going to college and just joining his internship program. Supposedly it’s very successful. They may be very selective about who they in. You could do that or get a plumbing license. Coding doesn’t have to be taught at big colleges.
All of this needs to be al a carte and cheaper. Most of this stuff is priced way too high for no good reason.
Oooohhh…. that could be the work-around to skill test regulations…
I’m not convinced that last part is true.
A half-wit who thinks he’s a whole-wit is *way* worse than a half-wit or no-wit who is aware of their limitations.
There is no substitute for good parents.
I forget what the term for it is, but they’re trying to add all kinds of services to schools to make up for the fact that kids come from crappy homes now. Lebron James is one of the people behind it. Free meals, psychologists, yada yada yada. It’s a big deal in Minnesota.
I can never get a Democrat to explain to me in plain English why we need free school meals. A parent, a welfare check and a social worker should be enough. Communism has been tried already.
The other thing is, how do you fight all the lies that the left perpetrates about history, economics, government, sociology, and economics etc. ?
Ah, but learning how to make things with color, sound, fabric, bricks, wood, (art and music) make life worth living.
The problem is the healthy human spirit wants MORE, way more, than food and shelter. And American culture should be making that happen for America.
Instead we are telling 10 year olds to start thinking about their career, 13 year olds to start choosing their career, and 17 year oldsolds to make that career happen.
All that instead of learning how to LIVE.
Personally, I think there could be a lot to this, if done right. So many don’t care, and I guess that’s fine too.
The truth comes out: Parents in Philadelphia are going to have a fit with 2 weeks of winter break. Because child care costs, and no breakfast or lunch for 2 weeks.
Seriously, it’s a thing to send kids home with weekend food backpacks, because no one feeds them on the weekends.
That sounds like neglect to me.
Meanwhile, there might be 10 kids in our building that don’t have a smart phone. But everyone starves on the weekend??
Wow. And I mean Wow. Incredible.
“Full Service Schools”
They want social workers, cops, job counselors for the parents, three meals a day, summer meals etc.
The teachers union is very fired up about it.
Might as well start state-run
orphanagesboarding schools.Just to be clear, an expert I know says the teachers genuinely are being burdened by new procedures related to social dysfunction and they likely need some support. The problem is all of this needs to be rethought from square one.