10 ms·

Studies Shoot Down Tech’s Harmful Effects on Kids – So Now What?

119 points by mhalle 8y ago

ovx99 8y ago
Well, can't argue with "studies," folks. Wrap it up and proceed with the ipad babies.
rogerkirkness 8y ago
People are idealistic about their children. The studies consistently show that passive screen time is bad and active screentime can be good or neutral. It applies for anyone past the age of five where it becomes a net benefit to have active screen time.
- headsoup 8y ago
  It also depends on what the screen content happens to be... I'd be sure running Horror flicks or Bold and the Beautiful all day for the kids won't give the same outcomes as Sesame Street and Playschool. It's also what are kids missing out on by sitting in the isolated screen environment, not that they feel ok doing so... The point is always simplified for some broad guidance rule while ignoring the required complexity to properly understand and advice on a 'problem.' That and people lie/embellish when interviewed on the phone, so that would have a huge margin of error.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    I dunno.. kids raised on the bold and the beautiful would probably have a wide range of interpersonal skills. They may be narcissists and not nice to their neighbors but I'd bet they'd climb the corporate ladder.
djohnston 8y ago
if you're the nyt, you ignore this information as hard as possible
paulcole 8y ago
Try another study until you get the result you want?
- msla 8y ago
  Better: Say what you're going to say regardless and cite to these studies, knowing that people will agree with what you're saying because Kids These Days and That Newfangled Technology are both evil by definition, so they won't bother to read the studies, and/or will read the studies such that they agree with you.
- flukus 8y ago
  Are there any web sites that summarize studies by topic like this? It does seem like anyone can cite a study to prove anything but there is no layman equivalent of the meta study. Even better if the studies were weighted by things like sample size and reproducability.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    Not really. Systematic meta-analyses take an enormous amount of effort and aren't particularly exciting, so they're difficult to fund. Lay people are not the primary audience, so there's little incentive to translate the findings into plain English. The Cochrane Collaboration produce meta-analyses and plain-language summaries for important clinical topics, but there's no equivalent for social science. https://www.cochrane.org/evidence https://www.cochrane.org/evidence
  - rjf72 8y ago
    This topic is a very good example of the risks inherent in trying to do science by consensus. The study [1] this article references had a huge sample size (19,957) and is also probably very replicable. It's also complete trash. The methodology was to call and survey parents of 2-5 year olds asking questions such as on a (1/never to 5/always) 'How would you rate your child's interest and curiosity in learning new things' or 'How would your child's laughing and smiling tendencies'? They then proceed to massage the data in a bunch of different ways, in no small part because they acknowledge that their variables ended up providing no decent mapping of reliability - in the study's words, "these variables were not combined into a composite well‐being measure because the reliability of these items was relatively low." And after this massaging and subjective "normalizing" they conclude that TV and video games are just awesome for 2-5 year olds. Ultimately on complex topics that cannot be objectively and meaningfully tested you can generally prove whatever you want to prove. To actually have something vaguely resembling meaning here you'd need to take a random sampling of children and then require that one group provide no access to digitech, another provide 1-2 hours of digitech, and the final group 5+ hours or whatever. Do this for years and then compare the children using objective measurements determined by a blind third party or examination. The random factor there is also required. If you just survey households that chose to allow their children e.g. 0 or 5+ hours of digitech per day, then you're going to get some severe environmental and perhaps genetic confounding variables in your results. In any case no study like this is ever going to happen in modern times. And granted even that sort of study would have a million possible flaws, but studies such as the one this article are just jokes. And they are very much the rule rather than the exception. We tend to attribute quality to something with a doctorate or two behind it, but publish or perish alongside let's say 'motivated' research is increasingly distorting science. [1] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdev.13007 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdev.13007
xanth 8y ago
There is a strong correlation between the increased usage of social media by young people and an increase in suicide rate, that being said the US went through an economic depression at the same time so maybe it has more to do with young peoples guardians economic stability.
- headsoup 8y ago
  While that is somewhat true, it's far more complex than that correlation. We must understand why social media is a negative environment and not just state that it is bad as an idea. Advertising, influencing, addiction, social breakdowns, attachments, medications, wealth, etc, all play a role in what creates a negative environment for young people on the internet.
etiam 8y ago
Tendentious language. Who actually worries about children's "well-being" (in the short term) being impaired by too much iDevices? I'm concerned about interference with learning and development needed to interact with actual people and the physical world. The kids themselves may not be particularly unhappy about losing those skills as long as mummy and daddy earn the money, serve the meals and drive them to daycare, but long term it's a major blow to their lives as independent individuals and the vitality of society, if the risk proves to realize itself to actual problems. Weird stance to effectively advocate unfettered full-scale testing at high stakes just because the "has never been conclusive evidence that screens are a direct cause of harm".
- rhizome 8y ago
  >but long term it's a major blow to their lives as independent individuals and the vitality of society Is the idea that only the kids being studied will be subject to this deficiency? I'm pretty sure it would be widespread, and that society itself would adapt. I'm not arguing with "tendentious," though. These studies are invariably BS.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  > I'm concerned about interference with learning and development needed to interact with actual people and the physical world. Correlation is not causation. You're taking it given that tech is a cause of that, but it may well be that other trends are driving kids to be indoors and separated from their peers (see various "mother gets arrested for letting child walk half a mile to a park" news stories), with tech merely filling the gap of lost activities.
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    I don't buy that. I know from my own experience that tech is addictive. Just like I know from experience that sugary foods are addictive (in the sense that absent of discipline, people would choose to consume more of them than is good for them). And just like parents need to exercise some level of control over their childrens' diets, they should exercise control over their technology use. At least in a UK context, "mother arrested for letting child walk to park" stories aren't realistic, but kids here still spend an awful lot of time using technology.
JauntyHatAngle 8y ago
I have questions about this article. The stated issues the article lists ("well being") is not the primary concern that most people I have discussed this with - or at least, does not appear to be on the surface. The fear is long term effects of sustained screen time for long periods that supplant all other forms of play may essentially stunt some forms of social or physical development and at a later age have significant negative effects on their ability to cope and/or function in terms of social ability, attention span etc. Well-being is not clearly enough defined for me to take a proper conclusion out of this article, and the studies I clicked through to (albeit, quickly) I could not access. Also, to make a sweeping conclusion about "Tech's harmful effects on kids" from that measurement seems as foolhardy as thinking that technology is also extremely damaging to children - it's just one measurement, and does not apply to a whole range of other potential issues. Not a fan of this title. The article itself appears to mostly be arguing that screens are a useful tool for children to utilise and are not damaging as such compared with other methods of play, which is a fair argument, but the title and the common complaints don't marry up.
wopwops 8y ago
"Well being." This is tobacco industry grade nonsense. haha Try looking at language acquisition or physical development and screen time. Many studies linked here: https://theswaddle.com/effects-of-screen-time-on-children/ https://theswaddle.com/effects-of-screen-time-on-children/
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  Exactly. The methodology of the study solely involved telephone interviews to caregivers about screen time (which itself is likely to be inaccurate) and questions related to children's "well being" (also likely to be inaccurate). At no point was screen time actually measured, nor children's well-being independently assessed. The whole study is bunk.
- fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago
  I don't find those much more convincing. Mostly they say the negative effect comes from missing out on physical activity (in older children). For babies, I am not sure what to think. Who watches 1 hour of movies with their baby? Were they really able to disentangle that from all other factors (socioeconomic status and so on)?
WheelsAtLarge 8y ago
I can't agree with the primary message that gives tech a pass as virtually harmless towards kids' development. I've yet to see anything that is used in excess that is harmless. The use of tech these days reminds me of television watching in the past. It has been impossible to determine TV's impact on society but it has had an impact but we can't tell if it's been good or bad. I also think that one study can't possibly test the whole impact of tech on kids' development. A generation from now there will be an impact but we won't know whether it's been good or bad. What I do know is that there is an opportunity cost by tech on a whole generation. Time that could have been used on other activities but yet it would have been used on apps. I think it's up to parents to make sure their kids use their time effectively and it's not lost in front of a useless app.
- diminoten 8y ago
  The definition of "in excess" is that it's harmful, so you're kind of begging the question here. Why must there be a problem with screen use? Why can't you live in a world where screen use is neutral?
bellerose 8y ago
/rant Society has become more of a cluster mess and the more I’ve aged makes me clearly aware of it. Most if not all entities seeking capital, create a type of negative outcome for some unfortunate souls. I don’t think people either have the power, and or even the care to do real action anymore. For example the individuals today who act on suicidal ideation because of a valid reason to them (outside their control) can righteously be blamed on certain entities. But people rather just label the unfortunate person mentally ill for the cognitive dissonance bliss and falling for sloth. It’s like if the economy crashed today. The generation hurt the most would be ostracized and taken advantaged by the other generations who have more resources to ride out the storm with better health.
plainOldText 8y ago
So parents have to make a crucial decision vis-a-vis the environment and the brain development of their children? Good luck making your decision giving too much weight to recent studies, which will probably be validated 20 years from now; if. Children growing up without screen time have stood the test of time (think robustness); I’m not so certain the ones growing up with iPads will.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  Anecdotally, but I'm already seeing it in high school age kids. These kids haven't really grown up without access to a smartphone, and you can tell the difference in how they interact with each other. There's a lot less social talking, and they don't understand emotions or empathy very well at all. And heaven forbid you try to get them to put down the damn phone and take notes or do something. "Why do I need to learn this when photomath does it for me?" was often heard, or they'd just Google the answers because they're there. They work a lot less hard to try to get stuff, and it hurts their discipline and focus, for sure. And I'm going to stop my rant there, because I could continue on with it forever.
  - rubyfox 8y ago
    apropos of nothing, I had not heard of photomath until your comment. I’m 40 and it’s like…magic. I understand how it all works, I even write image processing models...but it’s like having a magic wand that turns your A-Level questions into answers. Astounding. I can see why it’s a problem…
  - plainOldText 8y ago
    I think I’ve heard it in an interview with the physician Gabor Maté, that the prefontal cortex is responsible – among other things – for empathy, and he was making the case that in the modern age, the conditions for the proper development of the prefrontal cortex are not sufficiently met, because kids nowadays are exposed too much to social media and too little to physical interactions with other kids and other adults. Thus, the newer generations will most likely be deficient in the empathy department; and empathy is very important as it allows one to see things from another person's perspective and understand other people's emotions, which is crucial for effective communication.
acjohnson55 8y ago
I think that like everything, there's a balance to be struck. I want my kid to develop skills of interacting with the physical world and with physical people. But I also want her prepared to enter a world of technology with full fluency. And there are a lot of things that are actually well learned via screen media. I think about how valuable video games were to my development and how little enthusiasm my parents had for my interest in them. For the past several generations, each generation has encountered entirely new forms of media and technology that revolutionize social and economic processes. Each preceding generation confronts that change with full-scale freak out. Everything in moderation. It'll all probably be okay.
- icc97 8y ago
  > I want my kid to develop skills of interacting with the physical world and with physical people. I came across a fascinating BBC article on treating ADHD with music [0] > "The ability to time, to synchronise with others underlies all face to face communication," says Khalil. "People imagine that synchronizing is doing something simultaneously. But synchronizing actually means processing time together - perceiving time together in such a way that we have this common understanding of how time is passing." [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21661689 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21661689
jryan49 8y ago
If there are doing useful and constructive things with tech some of the time it's good. I used to play 50% video games, 50% programming and I turned out good enough IMO.
- goldcd 8y ago
  I mysteriously never got the computer I wanted for Christmas for years. Only eventually turned up when I'd saved up pocket money for over a year to contribute half the cost. Turned out my grandmother "didn't like them" (not that she'd ever used one) - and she'd been a teacher. I think I turned out 'OK'
vnorilo 8y ago
Kids can't resist addiction as well as adults. Screens are easily the thing that get the most compulsive reactions from my 4yo. My feeling is that too much video stimulates him enough that he will end up repeating phrases and songs rather than invent stories and playact. Not sure how any of this would show up in a survey like the one in the article, but I'm pretty convinced that our daily quota of one hour of screen time is a good idea.
- crucialfelix 8y ago
  Mine is 3 and we do zero screen time. Once every few months I watch something with him and he gets obsessive when it's over. we read books, he knows the stories, he memorizes lots and lots of songs and speaks 3 languages daily. iPad turns him into a whiney addict right away.
nzjrs 8y ago
Let's see if this validates. It's a first salvo against the Haidt et al hypothesis
- etiam 8y ago
  Haven't been following Haidt on this topic. What's the hypothesis?
goldcd 8y ago
Isn't this just the latest - "Think of the children!" We've had Reefer madness, Elvis' hips, satanic rock and roll played backwards, video-nasties, murder-simulator computer games - and all the rest of it. Every set of parents seems to look at what their children seem to mysteriously like - and determine it's harmful (accompanied by mixed scientific evidence). By no means am I simply saying that this means that there can't be an issue with screen-time - Simply that older generations have a long and ignoble history of "this type of stuff".
- goldcd 8y ago
  Or to look at it another way. I can't think of an example where we've greeted change with open arms. I presume somewhere back in history there's a parent monitoring their childs harpsichord time, or telling them to stop drawing on the cave walls and get out there to kill a real mammoth.
  - diegoperini 8y ago
    That's actually hilarious! Too much cave wall time
    - krapp 8y ago
      Kids these days, with their fire don't know how good they have it. In my day, if it was cold, and it was always cold, you just beat something warm to death with your bare hands and ate your way inside. Built character.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  even going way back people worried about kids reading to many "trashy" novels - of course those novels are now part of the englit cannon
  - goldcd 8y ago
    Yep - fiction wasn't what books were for. Books were for men to exchange serious knowledge. Start of the 19th century we had Austen knocking out chick lit, Shelley on a Euro-bender knocking out horror, then Dickens serialized gubbins selling pamphlets on the street etc etc
pelario 8y ago
Relevant Scott Alexander's essay: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-...
coldtea 8y ago
>It looks like grownups can disregard the fear-mongering about the ill effects of digital media on kids. A 2017 study in Child Development found “little or no support for harmful links between digital screen use and young people’s psychological well-being.” Someone might come out of reading this article with the idea: "so, there's no harmful link between digital screen use and young people’s psychological well-being". Whereas the full story is: a) A random 2017 study said that. b) We aren't shown the criticisms from other studies done later on this one (e.g. for its methodology, etc) c) We aren't told that scientific papers have a huge reproducibility crisis d) We aren't told that papers in soft-sciences like psychology have even worse crisis e) We aren't told that what "well being" is fuzzy and depends on one's definition. The article implies that some PhDs doing a study can determine generally, and across cultures and worldviews, what "well being" is. Which would be very convenient, but hardly realistic -- instead they just take their culture's current biases for wellbeing as a universal default (or measure some trivial aspects of it, e.g. the kids don't end up having worse health stats).
- sadris 8y ago
  It would be shared environment. Which we know basically doesn't matter: for any trait. The shared environmental impact on behavioral and psychological traits is next to zero in every instance ever examined.
- BlackFly 8y ago
  The reproducibility crisis is largely related to publication bias and the lack of low hanging fruit. That is to say, the only real effects left out there are small size effects that most studies do not have the power to measure anyways and often end publishing the few random Type 1 errors that occur. In fact, when there is a reproducibility issue and you don't suspect ethical issues, the issue is probably due to small effect size. The real take away is that, even if there is an actual effect on well being, digital screen time's effect on well being is likely less than 1% of variation. Which is a mostly meaningless effect.
- Recurecur 8y ago
  > We aren't told that what "well being" is fuzzy and depends on one's definition. Right. I strongly suspect there's a correlation (and in fact causation) between lots of video watching and lower reading level. I don't know if there are low-level brain effects, but I think once a child realizes that one can watch a movie or read the same book, the easier and more visual option is going to look more attractive. Reading is fairly hard work at first...
RobertRoberts 8y ago
I don't need a scientific study to tell me that focusing purely on your own self interests for extended periods of time (doesn't matter the activity) is _not_ conducive to either long term happiness or a successful life in multiple measures. Any study that says being selfish as a way of life is not "harmful" is flawed in the most fundamental manner.
- buboard 8y ago
  > Any study that says being selfish as a way of life is not "harmful" is flawed in the most fundamental manner. Ironically, you just disregarded other opinions to focus purely on your own interests
  - RobertRoberts 8y ago
    My "own interests" are to be a good example to my kids, so they themselves don't become selfish people. There's a dichotomy here, self interest working side by side with interests for others. You simply cannot help others if you don't do what is right for yourself. The trick is to find the things that are right for both/multiple parties, not _only_ yourself. There's possibly no such things a pure selflessness. Even an act of giving provides a benefit to the giver, even if it's only an emotional one. And, I am allowed to disregard everyone else's opinions, it's a fundamental right of every living being. More importantly, if we only rely (or somehow over value) science instead of common sense, then all it takes is another counter argument from "science" to change our minds. This is being blown around by the wind instead of thinking for yourself.
perseusprime11 8y ago
This study is sponsored by who?
huffmsa 8y ago
"Well being", sure, but how about their cardiac well-being and muscular well-being?
miki123211 8y ago
When talking about such things, we should always remember how resistant some people were to new technologies (like electricity, the bicycle, mass schooling, the radio, the TV, the walkman, mainframes, gaming PCs, chatrooms etc). Most of those fears turned out to be overexaggerated. My favrite is the fear that hearing one sound pattern (multiple times, for example one song played from tape, instead of a live performance, will somehow make us go crazy.
Waterluvian 8y ago
I'm reminded of this South Park quote: "Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but… well, son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored. And it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything." An endless stream of Facebook or Twitch or YouTube probably won't do acute harm, but it fills a void that might have otherwise been filled with something more nurturing. But... I have a cousin who spent an insane amount of time watching YouTube. She loves all the usual personalities. And one day something clicked in her and she wanted to do it too. She spent an incredible amount of her free time bashing her head against creative tools, learning how to animate and draw and make video. She's 13 and can use illustrator and a Wacom and publish animations to YouTube. All self taught. I'm jealous. My parents had the best interests in mind but still did the, "get off the X and go play outside." My cousin has parental figures who noticed and nurtured her passion, even though it looked a whole lot like her YouTube addiction. Buying her a tablet and whatnot. So like all important issues I'm left with "balance" being probably the safest approach.
- RobLach 8y ago
  I work with kids in tech (including “at-risk youth” with limited means), and their abilities these days are downright frightening. When I was 11 I was riding a skateboard around until I got into coding and by 13 I had Hello World and an OpenGL triangle and felt so empowered. Some of these kids though are pumping out small 3D games about whatever interests them with their own custom shaders and models. Part of that is access to information / better tools, but also I feel part of it is being tuned to absorb, find, and filter information through these mediums. If they are into something they will grasp it at astounding rates. I haven’t come across any education system currently that outright targets exploring the interest space or doing a good job of offering to kids why they should be interested in something that isn’t immediately obviously very cool or fun or feeling attainable. And for a lot of them this is exactly what they need, if not all they need if there’s a lot of easy to absorb information online.
  - 8y ago
superpermutat0r 8y ago
Just like any tech, business as usual. Like we stopped using coal derived products when the damage gets out of control. Or when we stopped massive animal husbandry when we realized it's a huge black swan of killer germs? We try to regulate the nth order effects, fix holes while new ones pop out. No one has a scientific approach to allowing new inventions anywhere. So many chemicals being used everywhere until sometime in the future the damage is known and visible.
rbongers 8y ago
Smartphone and web apps tend to exploit our habit mechanisms in order to retain users. I severely doubt that forming time consuming non-productive habits early on is beneficial for children, or that they're somehow protected from the effects of reward loops.

119 points by mhalle 8y ago

Well, can't argue with "studies," folks. Wrap it up and proceed with the ipad babies.

People are idealistic about their children. The studies consistently show that passive screen time is bad and active screentime can be good or neutral. It applies for anyone past the age of five where it becomes a net benefit to have active screen time.

headsoup 8y ago
It also depends on what the screen content happens to be... I'd be sure running Horror flicks or Bold and the Beautiful all day for the kids won't give the same outcomes as Sesame Street and Playschool. It's also what are kids missing out on by sitting in the isolated screen environment, not that they feel ok doing so... The point is always simplified for some broad guidance rule while ignoring the required complexity to properly understand and advice on a 'problem.' That and people lie/embellish when interviewed on the phone, so that would have a huge margin of error.
- sjg007 8y ago
  I dunno.. kids raised on the bold and the beautiful would probably have a wide range of interpersonal skills. They may be narcissists and not nice to their neighbors but I'd bet they'd climb the corporate ladder.

djohnston 8y ago

if you're the nyt, you ignore this information as hard as possible

paulcole 8y ago

Try another study until you get the result you want?

msla 8y ago
Better: Say what you're going to say regardless and cite to these studies, knowing that people will agree with what you're saying because Kids These Days and That Newfangled Technology are both evil by definition, so they won't bother to read the studies, and/or will read the studies such that they agree with you.
flukus 8y ago
Are there any web sites that summarize studies by topic like this? It does seem like anyone can cite a study to prove anything but there is no layman equivalent of the meta study. Even better if the studies were weighted by things like sample size and reproducability.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  Not really. Systematic meta-analyses take an enormous amount of effort and aren't particularly exciting, so they're difficult to fund. Lay people are not the primary audience, so there's little incentive to translate the findings into plain English. The Cochrane Collaboration produce meta-analyses and plain-language summaries for important clinical topics, but there's no equivalent for social science. https://www.cochrane.org/evidence https://www.cochrane.org/evidence
- rjf72 8y ago
  This topic is a very good example of the risks inherent in trying to do science by consensus. The study [1] this article references had a huge sample size (19,957) and is also probably very replicable. It's also complete trash. The methodology was to call and survey parents of 2-5 year olds asking questions such as on a (1/never to 5/always) 'How would you rate your child's interest and curiosity in learning new things' or 'How would your child's laughing and smiling tendencies'? They then proceed to massage the data in a bunch of different ways, in no small part because they acknowledge that their variables ended up providing no decent mapping of reliability - in the study's words, "these variables were not combined into a composite well‐being measure because the reliability of these items was relatively low." And after this massaging and subjective "normalizing" they conclude that TV and video games are just awesome for 2-5 year olds. Ultimately on complex topics that cannot be objectively and meaningfully tested you can generally prove whatever you want to prove. To actually have something vaguely resembling meaning here you'd need to take a random sampling of children and then require that one group provide no access to digitech, another provide 1-2 hours of digitech, and the final group 5+ hours or whatever. Do this for years and then compare the children using objective measurements determined by a blind third party or examination. The random factor there is also required. If you just survey households that chose to allow their children e.g. 0 or 5+ hours of digitech per day, then you're going to get some severe environmental and perhaps genetic confounding variables in your results. In any case no study like this is ever going to happen in modern times. And granted even that sort of study would have a million possible flaws, but studies such as the one this article are just jokes. And they are very much the rule rather than the exception. We tend to attribute quality to something with a doctorate or two behind it, but publish or perish alongside let's say 'motivated' research is increasingly distorting science. [1] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdev.13007 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdev.13007

xanth 8y ago

There is a strong correlation between the increased usage of social media by young people and an increase in suicide rate, that being said the US went through an economic depression at the same time so maybe it has more to do with young peoples guardians economic stability.

headsoup 8y ago
While that is somewhat true, it's far more complex than that correlation. We must understand why social media is a negative environment and not just state that it is bad as an idea. Advertising, influencing, addiction, social breakdowns, attachments, medications, wealth, etc, all play a role in what creates a negative environment for young people on the internet.

etiam 8y ago

Tendentious language. Who actually worries about children's "well-being" (in the short term) being impaired by too much iDevices? I'm concerned about interference with learning and development needed to interact with actual people and the physical world. The kids themselves may not be particularly unhappy about losing those skills as long as mummy and daddy earn the money, serve the meals and drive them to daycare, but long term it's a major blow to their lives as independent individuals and the vitality of society, if the risk proves to realize itself to actual problems. Weird stance to effectively advocate unfettered full-scale testing at high stakes just because the "has never been conclusive evidence that screens are a direct cause of harm".

rhizome 8y ago
>but long term it's a major blow to their lives as independent individuals and the vitality of society Is the idea that only the kids being studied will be subject to this deficiency? I'm pretty sure it would be widespread, and that society itself would adapt. I'm not arguing with "tendentious," though. These studies are invariably BS.
crooked-v 8y ago
> I'm concerned about interference with learning and development needed to interact with actual people and the physical world. Correlation is not causation. You're taking it given that tech is a cause of that, but it may well be that other trends are driving kids to be indoors and separated from their peers (see various "mother gets arrested for letting child walk half a mile to a park" news stories), with tech merely filling the gap of lost activities.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  I don't buy that. I know from my own experience that tech is addictive. Just like I know from experience that sugary foods are addictive (in the sense that absent of discipline, people would choose to consume more of them than is good for them). And just like parents need to exercise some level of control over their childrens' diets, they should exercise control over their technology use. At least in a UK context, "mother arrested for letting child walk to park" stories aren't realistic, but kids here still spend an awful lot of time using technology.

JauntyHatAngle 8y ago

I have questions about this article. The stated issues the article lists ("well being") is not the primary concern that most people I have discussed this with - or at least, does not appear to be on the surface. The fear is long term effects of sustained screen time for long periods that supplant all other forms of play may essentially stunt some forms of social or physical development and at a later age have significant negative effects on their ability to cope and/or function in terms of social ability, attention span etc. Well-being is not clearly enough defined for me to take a proper conclusion out of this article, and the studies I clicked through to (albeit, quickly) I could not access. Also, to make a sweeping conclusion about "Tech's harmful effects on kids" from that measurement seems as foolhardy as thinking that technology is also extremely damaging to children - it's just one measurement, and does not apply to a whole range of other potential issues. Not a fan of this title. The article itself appears to mostly be arguing that screens are a useful tool for children to utilise and are not damaging as such compared with other methods of play, which is a fair argument, but the title and the common complaints don't marry up.

wopwops 8y ago

"Well being." This is tobacco industry grade nonsense. haha Try looking at language acquisition or physical development and screen time. Many studies linked here: https://theswaddle.com/effects-of-screen-time-on-children/ https://theswaddle.com/effects-of-screen-time-on-children/

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
Exactly. The methodology of the study solely involved telephone interviews to caregivers about screen time (which itself is likely to be inaccurate) and questions related to children's "well being" (also likely to be inaccurate). At no point was screen time actually measured, nor children's well-being independently assessed. The whole study is bunk.
fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago
I don't find those much more convincing. Mostly they say the negative effect comes from missing out on physical activity (in older children). For babies, I am not sure what to think. Who watches 1 hour of movies with their baby? Were they really able to disentangle that from all other factors (socioeconomic status and so on)?

WheelsAtLarge 8y ago

I can't agree with the primary message that gives tech a pass as virtually harmless towards kids' development. I've yet to see anything that is used in excess that is harmless. The use of tech these days reminds me of television watching in the past. It has been impossible to determine TV's impact on society but it has had an impact but we can't tell if it's been good or bad. I also think that one study can't possibly test the whole impact of tech on kids' development. A generation from now there will be an impact but we won't know whether it's been good or bad. What I do know is that there is an opportunity cost by tech on a whole generation. Time that could have been used on other activities but yet it would have been used on apps. I think it's up to parents to make sure their kids use their time effectively and it's not lost in front of a useless app.

diminoten 8y ago
The definition of "in excess" is that it's harmful, so you're kind of begging the question here. Why must there be a problem with screen use? Why can't you live in a world where screen use is neutral?

bellerose 8y ago

/rant Society has become more of a cluster mess and the more I’ve aged makes me clearly aware of it. Most if not all entities seeking capital, create a type of negative outcome for some unfortunate souls. I don’t think people either have the power, and or even the care to do real action anymore. For example the individuals today who act on suicidal ideation because of a valid reason to them (outside their control) can righteously be blamed on certain entities. But people rather just label the unfortunate person mentally ill for the cognitive dissonance bliss and falling for sloth. It’s like if the economy crashed today. The generation hurt the most would be ostracized and taken advantaged by the other generations who have more resources to ride out the storm with better health.

plainOldText 8y ago

So parents have to make a crucial decision vis-a-vis the environment and the brain development of their children? Good luck making your decision giving too much weight to recent studies, which will probably be validated 20 years from now; if. Children growing up without screen time have stood the test of time (think robustness); I’m not so certain the ones growing up with iPads will.

dorchadas 8y ago
Anecdotally, but I'm already seeing it in high school age kids. These kids haven't really grown up without access to a smartphone, and you can tell the difference in how they interact with each other. There's a lot less social talking, and they don't understand emotions or empathy very well at all. And heaven forbid you try to get them to put down the damn phone and take notes or do something. "Why do I need to learn this when photomath does it for me?" was often heard, or they'd just Google the answers because they're there. They work a lot less hard to try to get stuff, and it hurts their discipline and focus, for sure. And I'm going to stop my rant there, because I could continue on with it forever.
- rubyfox 8y ago
  apropos of nothing, I had not heard of photomath until your comment. I’m 40 and it’s like…magic. I understand how it all works, I even write image processing models...but it’s like having a magic wand that turns your A-Level questions into answers. Astounding. I can see why it’s a problem…
- plainOldText 8y ago
  I think I’ve heard it in an interview with the physician Gabor Maté, that the prefontal cortex is responsible – among other things – for empathy, and he was making the case that in the modern age, the conditions for the proper development of the prefrontal cortex are not sufficiently met, because kids nowadays are exposed too much to social media and too little to physical interactions with other kids and other adults. Thus, the newer generations will most likely be deficient in the empathy department; and empathy is very important as it allows one to see things from another person's perspective and understand other people's emotions, which is crucial for effective communication.

acjohnson55 8y ago

I think that like everything, there's a balance to be struck. I want my kid to develop skills of interacting with the physical world and with physical people. But I also want her prepared to enter a world of technology with full fluency. And there are a lot of things that are actually well learned via screen media. I think about how valuable video games were to my development and how little enthusiasm my parents had for my interest in them. For the past several generations, each generation has encountered entirely new forms of media and technology that revolutionize social and economic processes. Each preceding generation confronts that change with full-scale freak out. Everything in moderation. It'll all probably be okay.

icc97 8y ago
> I want my kid to develop skills of interacting with the physical world and with physical people. I came across a fascinating BBC article on treating ADHD with music [0] > "The ability to time, to synchronise with others underlies all face to face communication," says Khalil. "People imagine that synchronizing is doing something simultaneously. But synchronizing actually means processing time together - perceiving time together in such a way that we have this common understanding of how time is passing." [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21661689 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21661689

jryan49 8y ago

If there are doing useful and constructive things with tech some of the time it's good. I used to play 50% video games, 50% programming and I turned out good enough IMO.

goldcd 8y ago
I mysteriously never got the computer I wanted for Christmas for years. Only eventually turned up when I'd saved up pocket money for over a year to contribute half the cost. Turned out my grandmother "didn't like them" (not that she'd ever used one) - and she'd been a teacher. I think I turned out 'OK'

vnorilo 8y ago

Kids can't resist addiction as well as adults. Screens are easily the thing that get the most compulsive reactions from my 4yo. My feeling is that too much video stimulates him enough that he will end up repeating phrases and songs rather than invent stories and playact. Not sure how any of this would show up in a survey like the one in the article, but I'm pretty convinced that our daily quota of one hour of screen time is a good idea.

crucialfelix 8y ago
Mine is 3 and we do zero screen time. Once every few months I watch something with him and he gets obsessive when it's over. we read books, he knows the stories, he memorizes lots and lots of songs and speaks 3 languages daily. iPad turns him into a whiney addict right away.

nzjrs 8y ago

Let's see if this validates. It's a first salvo against the Haidt et al hypothesis

etiam 8y ago
Haven't been following Haidt on this topic. What's the hypothesis?

goldcd 8y ago

Isn't this just the latest - "Think of the children!" We've had Reefer madness, Elvis' hips, satanic rock and roll played backwards, video-nasties, murder-simulator computer games - and all the rest of it. Every set of parents seems to look at what their children seem to mysteriously like - and determine it's harmful (accompanied by mixed scientific evidence). By no means am I simply saying that this means that there can't be an issue with screen-time - Simply that older generations have a long and ignoble history of "this type of stuff".

goldcd 8y ago
Or to look at it another way. I can't think of an example where we've greeted change with open arms. I presume somewhere back in history there's a parent monitoring their childs harpsichord time, or telling them to stop drawing on the cave walls and get out there to kill a real mammoth.
- diegoperini 8y ago
  That's actually hilarious! Too much cave wall time
  - krapp 8y ago
    Kids these days, with their fire don't know how good they have it. In my day, if it was cold, and it was always cold, you just beat something warm to death with your bare hands and ate your way inside. Built character.
C1sc0cat 8y ago
even going way back people worried about kids reading to many "trashy" novels - of course those novels are now part of the englit cannon
- goldcd 8y ago
  Yep - fiction wasn't what books were for. Books were for men to exchange serious knowledge. Start of the 19th century we had Austen knocking out chick lit, Shelley on a Euro-bender knocking out horror, then Dickens serialized gubbins selling pamphlets on the street etc etc

pelario 8y ago

Relevant Scott Alexander's essay: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-...

coldtea 8y ago

>It looks like grownups can disregard the fear-mongering about the ill effects of digital media on kids. A 2017 study in Child Development found “little or no support for harmful links between digital screen use and young people’s psychological well-being.” Someone might come out of reading this article with the idea: "so, there's no harmful link between digital screen use and young people’s psychological well-being". Whereas the full story is: a) A random 2017 study said that. b) We aren't shown the criticisms from other studies done later on this one (e.g. for its methodology, etc) c) We aren't told that scientific papers have a huge reproducibility crisis d) We aren't told that papers in soft-sciences like psychology have even worse crisis e) We aren't told that what "well being" is fuzzy and depends on one's definition. The article implies that some PhDs doing a study can determine generally, and across cultures and worldviews, what "well being" is. Which would be very convenient, but hardly realistic -- instead they just take their culture's current biases for wellbeing as a universal default (or measure some trivial aspects of it, e.g. the kids don't end up having worse health stats).

sadris 8y ago
It would be shared environment. Which we know basically doesn't matter: for any trait. The shared environmental impact on behavioral and psychological traits is next to zero in every instance ever examined.
BlackFly 8y ago
The reproducibility crisis is largely related to publication bias and the lack of low hanging fruit. That is to say, the only real effects left out there are small size effects that most studies do not have the power to measure anyways and often end publishing the few random Type 1 errors that occur. In fact, when there is a reproducibility issue and you don't suspect ethical issues, the issue is probably due to small effect size. The real take away is that, even if there is an actual effect on well being, digital screen time's effect on well being is likely less than 1% of variation. Which is a mostly meaningless effect.
Recurecur 8y ago
> We aren't told that what "well being" is fuzzy and depends on one's definition. Right. I strongly suspect there's a correlation (and in fact causation) between lots of video watching and lower reading level. I don't know if there are low-level brain effects, but I think once a child realizes that one can watch a movie or read the same book, the easier and more visual option is going to look more attractive. Reading is fairly hard work at first...

RobertRoberts 8y ago

I don't need a scientific study to tell me that focusing purely on your own self interests for extended periods of time (doesn't matter the activity) is _not_ conducive to either long term happiness or a successful life in multiple measures. Any study that says being selfish as a way of life is not "harmful" is flawed in the most fundamental manner.

buboard 8y ago
> Any study that says being selfish as a way of life is not "harmful" is flawed in the most fundamental manner. Ironically, you just disregarded other opinions to focus purely on your own interests
- RobertRoberts 8y ago
  My "own interests" are to be a good example to my kids, so they themselves don't become selfish people. There's a dichotomy here, self interest working side by side with interests for others. You simply cannot help others if you don't do what is right for yourself. The trick is to find the things that are right for both/multiple parties, not _only_ yourself. There's possibly no such things a pure selflessness. Even an act of giving provides a benefit to the giver, even if it's only an emotional one. And, I am allowed to disregard everyone else's opinions, it's a fundamental right of every living being. More importantly, if we only rely (or somehow over value) science instead of common sense, then all it takes is another counter argument from "science" to change our minds. This is being blown around by the wind instead of thinking for yourself.

perseusprime11 8y ago

This study is sponsored by who?

huffmsa 8y ago

"Well being", sure, but how about their cardiac well-being and muscular well-being?

miki123211 8y ago

When talking about such things, we should always remember how resistant some people were to new technologies (like electricity, the bicycle, mass schooling, the radio, the TV, the walkman, mainframes, gaming PCs, chatrooms etc). Most of those fears turned out to be overexaggerated. My favrite is the fear that hearing one sound pattern (multiple times, for example one song played from tape, instead of a live performance, will somehow make us go crazy.

Waterluvian 8y ago

I'm reminded of this South Park quote: "Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but… well, son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored. And it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything." An endless stream of Facebook or Twitch or YouTube probably won't do acute harm, but it fills a void that might have otherwise been filled with something more nurturing. But... I have a cousin who spent an insane amount of time watching YouTube. She loves all the usual personalities. And one day something clicked in her and she wanted to do it too. She spent an incredible amount of her free time bashing her head against creative tools, learning how to animate and draw and make video. She's 13 and can use illustrator and a Wacom and publish animations to YouTube. All self taught. I'm jealous. My parents had the best interests in mind but still did the, "get off the X and go play outside." My cousin has parental figures who noticed and nurtured her passion, even though it looked a whole lot like her YouTube addiction. Buying her a tablet and whatnot. So like all important issues I'm left with "balance" being probably the safest approach.

RobLach 8y ago
I work with kids in tech (including “at-risk youth” with limited means), and their abilities these days are downright frightening. When I was 11 I was riding a skateboard around until I got into coding and by 13 I had Hello World and an OpenGL triangle and felt so empowered. Some of these kids though are pumping out small 3D games about whatever interests them with their own custom shaders and models. Part of that is access to information / better tools, but also I feel part of it is being tuned to absorb, find, and filter information through these mediums. If they are into something they will grasp it at astounding rates. I haven’t come across any education system currently that outright targets exploring the interest space or doing a good job of offering to kids why they should be interested in something that isn’t immediately obviously very cool or fun or feeling attainable. And for a lot of them this is exactly what they need, if not all they need if there’s a lot of easy to absorb information online.
- 8y ago

superpermutat0r 8y ago

Just like any tech, business as usual. Like we stopped using coal derived products when the damage gets out of control. Or when we stopped massive animal husbandry when we realized it's a huge black swan of killer germs? We try to regulate the nth order effects, fix holes while new ones pop out. No one has a scientific approach to allowing new inventions anywhere. So many chemicals being used everywhere until sometime in the future the damage is known and visible.

rbongers 8y ago

Smartphone and web apps tend to exploit our habit mechanisms in order to retain users. I severely doubt that forming time consuming non-productive habits early on is beneficial for children, or that they're somehow protected from the effects of reward loops.