Does screen time negatively affect childhood development?

Time and time again, research has proven that prolonged screen time in children is associated with many detrimental effects; such as a decrease in exercise (leading to obesity and sleep disturbances), psychological effects (depression and low self-esteem), and lower academic achievements. However, since exposure to screen time is continually being initiated at younger ages, these researchers investigated the effects of screen time exposure during early childhood and postulated that the negative effects in younger children would be even more significant.

How was the effect of screen time on development analyzed?

Methods – A long term, prospective study that followed women from late stages of pregnancy (2012-2013), with continual follow up of their children until early childhood. All screen time exposure from the age of 6 months was recorded. Bayley Scales Questionnaire was used to asses development at one year of age. Moreover, a socio-emotional evaluation was performed at the age of 4-5 years old and cognitive developmental was assessed through a validated, reputable questionnaire at the age of 6 years old.
Of course, endless data such as demographic details and social-economic status was collected, recorded and assessed as well.

So… what’s the final verdict on the effect of screen time in young childhood?

The children were divided into three groups:
1. Continuously low screen time exposure: at all ages these children were exposed to low levels of screen time, starting from their first assessment at 6 months and all throughout the current research (at 6 months the daily screen time average was 7 minutes and at 6 years old the average screen time average was 68 minutes).
2. Incremental screen time exposure: these children were exposed to increasing amounts of screentime throughout childhood, with an incremental increase around 3 years of age. The average screen time at 6 months and 6 years old was 16 minutes and 230 minutes respectively.
3. Decreasing screen time exposure: these children had high levels of screen time that decreased with age. At the age of 6 years old, the average screen time a day was 124 minutes.

So how did screen time affect these three groups? There were two interesting findings…

First, children from all groups started out more or less the same in terms of development at the assessment performed on 1-year-olds. However, at the age of 6 years old, both the children with incremental screen time and decreasing screen time exposure had lower outcomes in terms of intelligence, cognition, emotional maturity and other parameters. Needless to say, these results were deduced after factoring all of the other confounding variables into account.

Discussion and significance – This research was impressive in terms of the long follow up, even if the number of participants wasn’t extremely large. Their division into the aforementioned three groups was creative and brilliant, since we can all compare our own children’s exposure to one of these three groups.
The results found, that large amounts of screen time exposure were determinantal to children’s development, just like the results found in other comparable researches. With this, I would like to remind that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends eliminating screen time for young children. Moreover, I would like to note that another recent research has found an association between screen time exposure at the age of 1-year-old to autism diagnosis at the age of 3-years-old, see this link.

Trust me when I say that limiting screentime is easier said than done, but here is another fact to motivate us all to lower screen time exposure.