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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.
Published in General
That’s exactly it. No one asks any basic questions about any of this. Maybe they are forced to do this stuff, but be honest, transparent, and thoughtful about it. From where I sit it mostly looks like graft and unicorns.
Yes… but it is questionable if you need formal education for those things.
I have a bachelors in math and comp sci. It doesn’t keep me from music or textile art.
Preach!
There is simply no way government can make up for every parental deficiency.
But they have plenty of laws on the books to force parents to stop being deficient.
See, that’s when you send them home with a weekend cop in their backpack.
I have mixed feelings about this.
Sure, human spirit, creativity, yadda, yadda.
But that’s not what schools are for.
Or another way to look at it, is that if there is time left over after all of the actually relevant things have been learned, if a teacher has actually brought all her pupils to grade-level capabilities or greater, sure, arts ‘n’ crafts. But they don’t, and everyone has more fun doing fun things because fun things are fun.
Schools are for enabling children, not enriching them.
Plus there should be a way to simply give people a reading list and a library card – there is not really a good reason to make people attend expensive college classes simply to learn about Shakespeare’s or Moliere’s plays.
There are internet university classes that are online and virtually free, as opposed to the Phoenix-style college education that costs a small fortune.
I see one of the main benefits of four years of college at some pricey university as basically a method by which young adults socialize, party and if very lucky also figure out what they’ re going to do with their lives. My son grew up immensely while away at college – simply not having a parent to do his laundry or help him figure out a budget or any of the rest of the living skills he learned while there. In his case, he was fortunately on a full scholarship, but for many individuals or families this is an expensive way to go about gaining maturity.
Most of that stuff is better if it’s in a classroom and with the teacher. I’m just saying they overcharge for that. Way overcharge.
I’m not a subscriber, but I’ve seen multiple recommendations for this.
link
This article is a very important one. Wish others in the higher educational system had as much insight and decency as Mr Daniels.
Yoram Hazony