While a lot of the time I write as a mom – I’m also a professor of education who reads new research on technology and kids for fun (ok, well, maybe not exactly fun).
Last month’s JAMA pediatrics article on the association between screen time at 1 year of age, and the impact on child development at 2 and 4 years, is hugely important, large-scale, longitudinal study of the impact of technology. And it tells an important and interesting story.
This study followed over 7000 mother-child pairs over a four year period, drawn from 50 obstetrics clinics and hospitals in Japan. This is both an impressive size, and a nice, random sample.
When their children were 1, parents answered the question: On a typical day, how many hours do you allow your children to watch TV, DVDs, video games, internet games (including mobile phones and tablets), etc?
At age 2 and 4, the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) was answered by parents. This a is a really commonly used questionnaire – if you’ve taken your child to the pediatrician for an annual visit in the US in the last few years, you’ve certainly completed it.
So we have a good measure of children’s screen time, and a widely used measure of development.
And the research team had data on things like maternal age, parents’ education, sex assigned at birth, and even less regularly collected data such as postpartum depression.
So what did they find… Yep, screen time at 1 year old has an impact on development at 2 and 4. In particular, more than 4 hours of screen time at 1 year old is associated with developmental delay in communication and problem solving at 2 and 4 years.
Delays were also seen in fine motor skills and personal and emotional skills with more screen time at 2 years of age, but these didn’t show up at 4 years.
It’s a great study. It finds what we would expect: kids don’t learn communication and problem solving from screens and a large dose (4+ hours per day) does the most damage.
It doesn’t tell us if there’s any difference between type of screen time (e.g. educational content, FaceTime with family, generic entertainment) and developmental delays. And whether other contextual factors are also having an impact on development (for example – more screen time may be used by families with less child-care support… ask any of us who were home with small children during the covid lockdown.)
Still it’s a big study, and it does suggest we should limit screen time for little ones.
Really interesting – thanks for another great blog!
The allure of screens is all too great for busy moms. Thanks for pointing out the consequences. We don’t let our babies put dangerous things in their mouths. Armed with this information, moms will also limit what their children do with their free time.