A study in JAMA Pediatrics found a relationship between screen time as a baby and developmental delays as a toddler. This draws more ground to further investigate the health effects of electronics usage by children and what types of media have detrimental effects on development.
Big if true (I’m sure more studies will follow). Usually complaints about new technologies have gone nowhere, but I don’t think they’ve targeted anyone this young until now.
Kids need to touch and feel things they see. If a kid can’t feel a shape through an iPad, I imagine that could cause some issues.
Substantial confounding in studies like this though. I haven’t read the paper but they usually can only control for basic demographics, not the nuances of parenting style and engagement, which could certainly be correlated with both screen time and development.
I was going to oppose, but I remembered that my boyfriend tells me the 2 year olds at preschool are utterly addicted and I am terrified.
Yeah, I actually don’t know how young it starts, but I’ve heard it’s very very young. If they can touch a thumbnail they can use a tablet, and then they end up with Elsagate as a babysitter.
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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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I guess this makes sense to some extent.
I mean, kids learn from copying their parents, so parents who distract their kids with an old iPad are less likely to spend as much time interacting with them. That’s no shade towards any parents, btw. I myself am a parent of a kid who had access to my phone from an early age to keep him quiet while I tried to get shit done. He had troubles with socialising at school, and ended up being kicked out of a couple. It’s entirely possible he has ADHD (as I do), but he’s 19 now, at university, far less likely to be spending his time looking at his phone, and is absolutely thriving.
So I guess I fucked him up for quite a bit there…
Silicon Valley parents have been keeping their own kids screen free for years.