Directly mapping screen time with academic performance is difficult to correlate. Like the article shows that age 1 has the strongest association, but I feel at a very early age like 1, screen time is not in your(toddler's) hands and slowly, as age grows, kids become habitual. It like the impact is not linear.
Also, I think the type of content kids consume can tell us more about the performance, because IMO, long form content can have a different impact than short form.
It's an interesting study to follow and if anyone has access to the raw data, I would be really interested in looking into it.
Why though? I’m very much not playing devil’s advocate here… but at 1 it’s like probably a bit of calming classic nursery rhymes with benign animations; maybe start to learn some counting and ABC’s by osmosis.
That same 2 hours at 5-8 seems to me to steer towards something like: toxic wish fulfillment, materialism, inappropriate slang & behavior models, “pranks” (ptuh)
There is a lot missing here. Without paying £30 I cannot see what the adjustments in the adjusted models are.
There is no breakdown for different ages. Its very likely that the effect on a one year old and an eight year old would be very different.
There is no breakdown of what they are watching.
A whole of of confounding variables. Screen time is inevitably going to be associated with less adult attention which is known to be a major factor in development. Lots of others.
"Covariates included in this study were study center, child sex (female, male), birth order, mother’s ethnicity, parental highest education level and TV viewing time (hours/day), maternal age at delivery (in years), household monthly income at recruitment, and maternal sensitivity from a 15-min observation of mother–child interactions at 6 months. "
"Screen viewing" seems very vague. What did they do with their screens? Did they read an encyclopedia, or did they watch entertainment content videos? It's an important distinction.
I've seen hundreds of kids watching screens, none of them were reading an encyclopedia, most of them are consuming some form of low quality youtube brain rot
I'm just saying the original question doesn't make sense. The content watched by the vast majority of them is trash, we don't have to ask ourselves "what if" they were reading an encylopedia, they're not.
Sounds like it's just focused on shows and games from the description in the paper:
> At ages 1 and 1.5 years, which was conducted in a subsample, parents were asked to report the average amount of time that the child spent daily on television (TV) on weekdays and weekends within the past month. This was collected in 2010 to 2011 when TV was the primary source of screen viewing time for 97% of Singaporean families [38]. At ages 2, 3 and 6 years, parents were asked to report the amount of time, in 5-min increments, their child spent using screens on weekdays and weekend days. Three types
of devices were considered separately: (1) TV and TV-related games consoles; (2) computers (desktop or laptop); and (3) hand-held devices including tablets, smartphones, and hand-held games consoles. At age 8 years, parents were asked to report on their child’s time spent sitting or lying down while watching screens on the most recent weekday (school days) and on the most recent Saturday and Sunday. Four types of devices/media were considered separately: (1) watching videos on a TV (TV programs, DVDs, Blu-ray); (2) watching videos or playing games on computers; (3) watching videos or playing games on tablets or smartphones; and (4) playing video games on consoles.
Because that’s all we seem to have measured. So, hypothesizing about whether there’s any other finer-grained causation in the data is the logical next step.
Me personally, I have immense trouble believing that passively watching entertainment has the same effect on working memory as, say, playing video games. And even within video games there’s probably a distinction between the more story-driven games that are a lot more passive to play, versus puzzle games that require active reasoning, versus games that test reaction time or memorization, etc.
(Full disclosure: I was a child of the 80’s and raised by a Nintendo and my computer. I think I turned out ok but I don’t have any alternative childhood to compare to)
> I was a child of the 80’s and raised by a Nintendo and my computer.
I was also in this boat: My siblings and I watched hours and hours of television when we grew up, but we didn't start watching as toddlers. My own anecdata seems similar to yours, which is unable to verify what happens when you watch hours of brain rot from age 1 and up.
> And even within video games there’s probably a distinction between the more story-driven games that are a lot more passive to play, versus puzzle games that require active reasoning,
Otoh, story-driven games might be teaching social reasoning skills.
puzzle games cover a lot of ground. Some are as mindless as instagram scrolling.
We’re having this sort of conversation at the school that I work at, which serves remote communities and other disadvantaged students. One of our states is currently making noise about reducing “screen time” for schools without much distinction about what it involves.
And here’s us, an online only school that serves kids that otherwise wouldn’t be able to access education at all or some types of classes at best, left wondering where that might leave us if our state decides to zombie its way into similar policy decisions.
Edit: Downvotes for pointing out that government policies without nuance around what "screen time" means hurts kids who have no alternative education options, apparently?
Yeah, I admit I didn't click through and read the methods so it's possible they did what was necessary, but off the top of my head, you would need to do your best to model:
1. Parents' own socioeconomic status
2. Parents' educational attainment
3. Parents' working memory (since this is one of the measures, and it's somewhat heritable)
Given the negative social perception of screen time, wouldn't the parents be motivated to report lower than actual numbers? Furthermore, this is one population (Singapore) and doesn't detail (at least not in the summary) how screen time varied from day to day (eg my children have substantially less screen time on school days, than weekends. Screen time in both cases tends to be biased towards breakfast time, when the house is a bit manic, or after significant periods of outdoor/energetic activity when everyone needs a rest.)
Shouldn't the title be changed to the conclusion? "Screen viewing time from age 1 to 8 years associated with lower academic performance, but not working memory"
Interesting. I have bad hopes for the data on children growing up with AI, which makes it easy to never apply critical thinking and finding own solutions.
That's the silver lining regarding how poor Siri works on my HomePods. I'm not sure I want my kids get perfect advice from AI, but I do want them to be able to get it somehow.
Probably lot to see in the details about cause and correlation but could certainly be used to confirm that "screens" doesn't make children stupid. Just lazy or impatient at most.
But difference between passive screen like tv and active like smartphone would have been interesting also.
I've noticed that my child gets more anxious watching TV than VoD because you can't pause. For this reason we don't keep a TV and screen time is limited to the ancient rite of half an hour of evening cartoons.
In this longitudinal study, cumulative average screen viewing time was associated with lower academic performance but not working memory, with the strongest effect sizes seen for single screen viewing time occurring in early infancy.
Cumulative average exposure models showed that screen viewing time over childhood was consistently associated with poorer academic performance but not working memory.
A lot of new parents in my family are simply not giving any screen to kids until they are much older. The only exception is using it to play some brainrot to get them to eat if it's turning out to be a particularly difficult meal. Most of the time though, they're shown the birds or the clouds or something.
It works well, but I see one 11 year old watching YouTube sometimes, so I guess that's about when you just can't avoid it anymore. None of them have their own devices though.
I can understand that, but a few things that are reassuring.
Screen time is not that new a problem. Kids have been put in front of the TV since the 70s or 80s. When my older daughter was born two decades ago people said we could not do without the "electronic babysitter". We did not. I have never owned a TV in my adult life and I think it was very good with my kids (who are now adults).
Are you forced to let young kids use screens and can you control how? My kids had desktop computers in family areas to start with (and not at the age of one!), educational software (GCompris for example). Later they got ebook readers and non-smart phones, and smart phones (with rules about usage and what apps could be installed) later.
A lot of the issues are parents who cannot put their devices down. You do not need to keep your kids entertained as much if you interact with them. For example, if the adults sitting down to a meal are on their phones, they they need something to keep the kids quiet. if you talk to them, you do not. It also means you can teach them how to behave in places like restaurants.
I think the root problem is not the kids, its adults' addictions to devices leading them to neglect kids.
This is only partially true. We depressingly agreed to get my daughter a phone for her 8th birthday.
She's the last person in her class to have one. That means when we drop her off at a birthday, she's the one playing with a fake phone while all the other kids have real ones. She's the one at the end of the school day begging to use her friend's phone.
Social pressure matters and making your kid the odd one out sucks.
Obviously we will put strict limits on it but I honestly felt like I was stuck with two awful choices.
Wow that's insane. I assumed kids get phones well after 10 and even then it's crazy. IMO good guideline is when they start to roam a bit on themselves, i.e. going to clubs, mates, I guess around 12?
My kids are begging me for phones and they are 8 and 10, I'm trying to hold out a few more years if i can, but once I get one for the older brother it's pretty much over. I think a smart watch is reasonable at first at least to get a gps tracker going, and they can still use it to text home if needed.
Yea my kids span from 1 to 7, so it's too slippery slope. Even smart watch probably is too. And we living in tightly knit community so there isn't even a reason for them to be monitored so closely.
Directly mapping screen time with academic performance is difficult to correlate. Like the article shows that age 1 has the strongest association, but I feel at a very early age like 1, screen time is not in your(toddler's) hands and slowly, as age grows, kids become habitual. It like the impact is not linear.
Also, I think the type of content kids consume can tell us more about the performance, because IMO, long form content can have a different impact than short form.
It's an interesting study to follow and if anyone has access to the raw data, I would be really interested in looking into it.
An average of two hours of screen time at age 1 seems insane to me. Should be measured in seconds as far as I'm concerned.
Though I admit I'm privileged by living in Norway and don't have to work crazy hours to make ends meet.
Yes you are correct, at age 1 screen time is not at all in your hand, it's your parents who has access to it.
Why though? I’m very much not playing devil’s advocate here… but at 1 it’s like probably a bit of calming classic nursery rhymes with benign animations; maybe start to learn some counting and ABC’s by osmosis.
That same 2 hours at 5-8 seems to me to steer towards something like: toxic wish fulfillment, materialism, inappropriate slang & behavior models, “pranks” (ptuh)
Don't forget "age 1" includes 23-month olds.
There is a lot missing here. Without paying £30 I cannot see what the adjustments in the adjusted models are.
There is no breakdown for different ages. Its very likely that the effect on a one year old and an eight year old would be very different.
There is no breakdown of what they are watching.
A whole of of confounding variables. Screen time is inevitably going to be associated with less adult attention which is known to be a major factor in development. Lots of others.
Full text: https://hal.science/hal-05643897
thanks for sharing full text
"Covariates included in this study were study center, child sex (female, male), birth order, mother’s ethnicity, parental highest education level and TV viewing time (hours/day), maternal age at delivery (in years), household monthly income at recruitment, and maternal sensitivity from a 15-min observation of mother–child interactions at 6 months. "
"Screen viewing" seems very vague. What did they do with their screens? Did they read an encyclopedia, or did they watch entertainment content videos? It's an important distinction.
I've seen hundreds of kids watching screens, none of them were reading an encyclopedia, most of them are consuming some form of low quality youtube brain rot
Sure but is that evidence that content type does not matter?
I'm just saying the original question doesn't make sense. The content watched by the vast majority of them is trash, we don't have to ask ourselves "what if" they were reading an encylopedia, they're not.
Sounds like it's just focused on shows and games from the description in the paper:
> At ages 1 and 1.5 years, which was conducted in a subsample, parents were asked to report the average amount of time that the child spent daily on television (TV) on weekdays and weekends within the past month. This was collected in 2010 to 2011 when TV was the primary source of screen viewing time for 97% of Singaporean families [38]. At ages 2, 3 and 6 years, parents were asked to report the amount of time, in 5-min increments, their child spent using screens on weekdays and weekend days. Three types of devices were considered separately: (1) TV and TV-related games consoles; (2) computers (desktop or laptop); and (3) hand-held devices including tablets, smartphones, and hand-held games consoles. At age 8 years, parents were asked to report on their child’s time spent sitting or lying down while watching screens on the most recent weekday (school days) and on the most recent Saturday and Sunday. Four types of devices/media were considered separately: (1) watching videos on a TV (TV programs, DVDs, Blu-ray); (2) watching videos or playing games on computers; (3) watching videos or playing games on tablets or smartphones; and (4) playing video games on consoles.
You hypothesize it's an important distinction. For now, what we have evidence for is the correlations of those things bundled together.
Because that’s all we seem to have measured. So, hypothesizing about whether there’s any other finer-grained causation in the data is the logical next step.
Me personally, I have immense trouble believing that passively watching entertainment has the same effect on working memory as, say, playing video games. And even within video games there’s probably a distinction between the more story-driven games that are a lot more passive to play, versus puzzle games that require active reasoning, versus games that test reaction time or memorization, etc.
(Full disclosure: I was a child of the 80’s and raised by a Nintendo and my computer. I think I turned out ok but I don’t have any alternative childhood to compare to)
> I was a child of the 80’s and raised by a Nintendo and my computer.
I was also in this boat: My siblings and I watched hours and hours of television when we grew up, but we didn't start watching as toddlers. My own anecdata seems similar to yours, which is unable to verify what happens when you watch hours of brain rot from age 1 and up.
> And even within video games there’s probably a distinction between the more story-driven games that are a lot more passive to play, versus puzzle games that require active reasoning,
Otoh, story-driven games might be teaching social reasoning skills.
puzzle games cover a lot of ground. Some are as mindless as instagram scrolling.
Certainly would be interesting to test.
Totally, I didn't say it was illogical to hypothesize. GP made a factual assertion that there is a difference.
We’re having this sort of conversation at the school that I work at, which serves remote communities and other disadvantaged students. One of our states is currently making noise about reducing “screen time” for schools without much distinction about what it involves.
And here’s us, an online only school that serves kids that otherwise wouldn’t be able to access education at all or some types of classes at best, left wondering where that might leave us if our state decides to zombie its way into similar policy decisions.
Edit: Downvotes for pointing out that government policies without nuance around what "screen time" means hurts kids who have no alternative education options, apparently?
C'mon no 1 year old is going to read encyclopedia on screen.
I guess that's hard to measure, higher screen time could be correlated with less caregiving from parents - screen will not teach them.
Yeah, I admit I didn't click through and read the methods so it's possible they did what was necessary, but off the top of my head, you would need to do your best to model:
1. Parents' own socioeconomic status
2. Parents' educational attainment
3. Parents' working memory (since this is one of the measures, and it's somewhat heritable)
Not easy at all.
Yea I’d love to see what they attempted to control for. I can’t imagine it’s possible to begin to draw a causal link.
Smoking crack could be correlated with not eating a healthy died
Given the negative social perception of screen time, wouldn't the parents be motivated to report lower than actual numbers? Furthermore, this is one population (Singapore) and doesn't detail (at least not in the summary) how screen time varied from day to day (eg my children have substantially less screen time on school days, than weekends. Screen time in both cases tends to be biased towards breakfast time, when the house is a bit manic, or after significant periods of outdoor/energetic activity when everyone needs a rest.)
Shouldn't the title be changed to the conclusion? "Screen viewing time from age 1 to 8 years associated with lower academic performance, but not working memory"
Interesting. I have bad hopes for the data on children growing up with AI, which makes it easy to never apply critical thinking and finding own solutions.
That's the silver lining regarding how poor Siri works on my HomePods. I'm not sure I want my kids get perfect advice from AI, but I do want them to be able to get it somehow.
Probably lot to see in the details about cause and correlation but could certainly be used to confirm that "screens" doesn't make children stupid. Just lazy or impatient at most.
But difference between passive screen like tv and active like smartphone would have been interesting also.
What is active about touching a smartphone?
You can pause whatever you're watching.
I've noticed that my child gets more anxious watching TV than VoD because you can't pause. For this reason we don't keep a TV and screen time is limited to the ancient rite of half an hour of evening cartoons.
In this longitudinal study, cumulative average screen viewing time was associated with lower academic performance but not working memory, with the strongest effect sizes seen for single screen viewing time occurring in early infancy.
Cumulative average exposure models showed that screen viewing time over childhood was consistently associated with poorer academic performance but not working memory.
A lot of new parents in my family are simply not giving any screen to kids until they are much older. The only exception is using it to play some brainrot to get them to eat if it's turning out to be a particularly difficult meal. Most of the time though, they're shown the birds or the clouds or something.
It works well, but I see one 11 year old watching YouTube sometimes, so I guess that's about when you just can't avoid it anymore. None of them have their own devices though.
I hope to have my first child soon; I am fucking terrified.
I can understand that, but a few things that are reassuring.
Screen time is not that new a problem. Kids have been put in front of the TV since the 70s or 80s. When my older daughter was born two decades ago people said we could not do without the "electronic babysitter". We did not. I have never owned a TV in my adult life and I think it was very good with my kids (who are now adults).
Are you forced to let young kids use screens and can you control how? My kids had desktop computers in family areas to start with (and not at the age of one!), educational software (GCompris for example). Later they got ebook readers and non-smart phones, and smart phones (with rules about usage and what apps could be installed) later.
A lot of the issues are parents who cannot put their devices down. You do not need to keep your kids entertained as much if you interact with them. For example, if the adults sitting down to a meal are on their phones, they they need something to keep the kids quiet. if you talk to them, you do not. It also means you can teach them how to behave in places like restaurants.
I think the root problem is not the kids, its adults' addictions to devices leading them to neglect kids.
This is only partially true. We depressingly agreed to get my daughter a phone for her 8th birthday.
She's the last person in her class to have one. That means when we drop her off at a birthday, she's the one playing with a fake phone while all the other kids have real ones. She's the one at the end of the school day begging to use her friend's phone.
Social pressure matters and making your kid the odd one out sucks.
Obviously we will put strict limits on it but I honestly felt like I was stuck with two awful choices.
> She's the last person in her class to have one.
Wow that's insane. I assumed kids get phones well after 10 and even then it's crazy. IMO good guideline is when they start to roam a bit on themselves, i.e. going to clubs, mates, I guess around 12?
My kids are begging me for phones and they are 8 and 10, I'm trying to hold out a few more years if i can, but once I get one for the older brother it's pretty much over. I think a smart watch is reasonable at first at least to get a gps tracker going, and they can still use it to text home if needed.
Yea my kids span from 1 to 7, so it's too slippery slope. Even smart watch probably is too. And we living in tightly knit community so there isn't even a reason for them to be monitored so closely.
> adults' addictions to devices leading them to neglect kids
I suspected also that kids in such situations are learning by example, so it's a double whammy of neglect and bad habits