6 ms·

Screen viewing time from age 1 to 8 years and subsequent academic performance

60 points by Markoff 2mo ago

eleventen 1mo ago
I hope to have my first child soon; I am fucking terrified.
- graemep 1mo ago
  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.
  - danparsonson 1mo ago
    > 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
  - jraby3 1mo ago
    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.
    - dzhiurgis 1mo ago
      > 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?
      - gpbeanies 1mo ago
        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.
        dzhiurgis 1mo ago
        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.
        tomrod 1mo ago
        Mine begged for them at that age. We did burner flip phone in 6th grade and, towards end of 8th when they had shown they didn't lose them and didn't treat them as status icons, we would get something more reasonable and open. We never did lifetracker nor GPS tracking for a mix of practical (battery drain) and teaching (teach resilience) reasons. Out kids are spread out in ages. They protested at first but we also remind them that older kids also have more chores and they will get their chance. Working so far.
    - graemep 1mo ago
      That is a real problem, but at least you were able to keep her off one until eight and I think that helps a lot - younger is far worse. My kids are older (so the pressure was less a few years ago), and home education helped a bit (less school pressure, lots of parents with different rules to each other) but eventually I had to allow usage of of some things I was not happy with because that was where her friends were and how they arranged to meet up etc. There are practical advantages to being able to communicate, especially when out alone and needing to be picked up or something. A dumb phone will do that perfectly well, of course. Schools in the UK are banning (and state schools have to) the use of phones during school hours. The problem is that there is increasing need to use phones out of school. My daughter (when she went to sixth form college for A levels) needed a mobile app to use monthly bus tickets which were much cheaper, for example, and this sort of thing is getting worse.
  - Markoff 1mo ago
    > Screen time is not that new a problem. Kids have been put in front of the TV since the 70s or 80s. apples and oranges, kids in 70s and 80s had this TV everywhere they moved? in car, public transprot, in playground, everywhere? completely different thing from screen always available in your pocket
  - red-iron-pine 1mo ago
    > A lot of the issues are parents who cannot put their devices down this has been my experience. lot of parents who reflexively go to the phone -- they need their dopamine hit, and this means the kiddies get one too
- tomrod 1mo ago
  I remember that time. A mix of concerns over financial security, what kind of parent I'd be, and what I would do in the alone times where help isn't available and it all came down to me. We were young college kids in love and scared out of our minds. 19 years later, the adventure continues. Becoming what you think is an adult, what I would say is someone who knows what to do in scary moments as well as someone who can plan ahead and execute that plan, is always a work in progress. No one will ever know your kid during their childhood better than you. Treat advice, including this advice, like its a jacket to try on. Maybe it fits and you like it. Maybe not. You're under no obligation to accept it. You got this!
  - eleventen 1mo ago
    I came back to this thread today. Thank you for the kind words, this was lovely to read.
- basch 1mo ago
  When you do introduce some video, which is easy to slip into around 18 months, there is tons of good stuff. Stillwater, Shape Island, Slumberkins, Interrupting Chicken, Not a Box, Duck and Goose, Frog and Toad, Get Rolling with Otis and Snoopy are all on Apple TV. Tumble Leaf, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Creative Galaxy, Stinky and Dirty, Fireman Sam Classic are on Prime. PBS still exists for now. Caitie's Classroom / Super Simple is on Youtube, Prime, and Spotify.
  - eleventen 1mo ago
    Thanks for taking the time to leave this comment. Bookmarked your message for… much later.
    - basch 1mo ago
      Stillwater you can probably start at birth, if you need something to put you to sleep, which you will. Kiddo can listen without watching.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
Markoff 2mo ago
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.
BartShoot 2mo ago
I guess that's hard to measure, higher screen time could be correlated with less caregiving from parents - screen will not teach them.
- trescenzi 2mo ago
  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.
- hyperpape 2mo ago
  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.
  - red-iron-pine 1mo ago
    > 1. Parents' own socioeconomic status broke tired people who need time to do basic tasks at home end up putting their kids in front of screens -- news at 11 meanwhile bourgeoisie programmer types working at home take kiddo for a walk to the park and then hand them off to the after school programs or Filipina nanny
    - munksbeer 1mo ago
      And then grandstand on hn about how they give their children zero screen time, as is only right.
- dzhiurgis 1mo ago
  Smoking crack could be correlated with not eating a healthy died
phartenfeller 2mo ago
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.
- dzhiurgis 1mo ago
  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.
magicalhippo 2mo ago
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.
- jraines 1mo ago
  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)
  - kakacik 1mo ago
    Have your ever seen the face of a baby when screen, any screen is visible? They lock their sight on it, anything else is irrelevant including mother. Its like watching a heroin junkie with full syringe dangling around. Maybe those kids with such massive exposure are more used to it, never did that experiment with our own kids. I may fail them later in life somehow but I certainly didn't do such basic mistake, screens are toxic to young mind on many levels, active ones quadruple so. I've heard all the excuses from the parents, but in reality it mostly boils down to 'we are tired, we are lazy, I don't care anymore' from people glued to screens themselves. As parents do, so children follow. its hardly ever a 'good' content, cheap dopamine kicks is what works best. I wonder when will society wake up, and starts treating these actors in similar fashion as say pedophiles. Active harm to kids is harm to kids, fucking up our future is one of worst crimes out there.
    - red-iron-pine 1mo ago
      depends on the screen. Bluey or some other brightly, quick-cut, attention getting kid show? like crack. they tune out Mr. Rodgers and BBC News pretty quickly, and it's on to biting daddy or the dog, etc.
    - AndrewDucker 1mo ago
apopapo 1mo ago
"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.
- estearum 1mo ago
  You hypothesize it's an important distinction. For now, what we have evidence for is the correlations of those things bundled together.
  - ninkendo 1mo ago
    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)
    - estearum 1mo ago
      Totally, I didn't say it was illogical to hypothesize. GP made a factual assertion that there is a difference.
    - bawolff 1mo ago
      > 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.
    - sshine 1mo ago
HelloUsername 1mo ago
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"
graemep 1mo ago
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.
- feanaro 1mo ago
  Full text: https://hal.science/hal-05643897 https://hal.science/hal-05643897
  - shymaple 1mo ago
    thanks for sharing full text
- sega_sai 1mo ago
  "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. "
  - graemep 1mo ago
    The big thing missing there are measures of parental behaviour and how much attention the kids get from adults. I would love to see an adjustment for parental screen time, or a study of the impact of parental screen time on academic performance.
porridgeraisin 1mo ago
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.
alexchamberlain 1mo ago
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.)
greatgib 1mo ago
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.
- tietjens 1mo ago
  What is active about touching a smartphone?
  - Tade0 1mo ago
    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.
  - nucleardog 1mo ago
    My daughter's been playing "Hello Kitty Island Adventure"[0]. Besides "dexterity", "hand eye coordination", etc... It's just a lot. There are a couple dozen characters with their own preferences that need to receive gifts to progress in the game. Each has their own preferences. Many items need to be crafted, out of supplies that need to be collected (or received from other characters when giving _them_ gifts). This creates a pretty complicated supply chain to keep track of. There are a number of major quest lines on the go at once to keep track of. Though the game does have a quest log to help, you still need to keep up with short term goals (talk to this person) and long term goals (craft this thing that needs 100 items I need to save up). Sometimes these need to span over multiple days, or require choosing to save and delay gratification by accumulating an item rather than using it for some fun thing today. Many mini games require solving word problems and using your working memory. There's a cafe where characters come and place orders, sometimes communicating three or four different decisions. They may be combined with "and", "or", or some combination there-of. Once it's communicated, you go into a crafting screen where you no longer have access to the order and need to remember and select options (sometimes from lists of several dozen items) to complete the order. It's easy to see the difference in how she interacts with this over "watching TV". Watching TV is passive. If you ask her what happened ten minutes ago, she has no idea. Nor even that ten minutes have passed. She's very engaged with the Hello Kitty game. She's actively engaging with us to discuss, get help thinking through plans and strategies, etc. I'm on the same page with everyone asking "what _kind_ of screen time?". I don't mind my kid spending an hour watching some educational TV, or a couple hours playing Hello Kitty. I don't want her spending 15 minutes watching Cocomelon. [0] https://hellokittyislandadventure.wiki.gg/ https://hellokittyislandadventure.wiki.gg/
shymaple 1mo ago
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.

60 points by Markoff 2mo ago

eleventen 1mo ago

I hope to have my first child soon; I am fucking terrified.

graemep 1mo ago
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.
- danparsonson 1mo ago
  > 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
- jraby3 1mo ago
  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.
  - dzhiurgis 1mo ago
    > 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?
    - gpbeanies 1mo ago
      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.
      - dzhiurgis 1mo ago
        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.
      - tomrod 1mo ago
        Mine begged for them at that age. We did burner flip phone in 6th grade and, towards end of 8th when they had shown they didn't lose them and didn't treat them as status icons, we would get something more reasonable and open. We never did lifetracker nor GPS tracking for a mix of practical (battery drain) and teaching (teach resilience) reasons. Out kids are spread out in ages. They protested at first but we also remind them that older kids also have more chores and they will get their chance. Working so far.
  - graemep 1mo ago
    That is a real problem, but at least you were able to keep her off one until eight and I think that helps a lot - younger is far worse. My kids are older (so the pressure was less a few years ago), and home education helped a bit (less school pressure, lots of parents with different rules to each other) but eventually I had to allow usage of of some things I was not happy with because that was where her friends were and how they arranged to meet up etc. There are practical advantages to being able to communicate, especially when out alone and needing to be picked up or something. A dumb phone will do that perfectly well, of course. Schools in the UK are banning (and state schools have to) the use of phones during school hours. The problem is that there is increasing need to use phones out of school. My daughter (when she went to sixth form college for A levels) needed a mobile app to use monthly bus tickets which were much cheaper, for example, and this sort of thing is getting worse.
- Markoff 1mo ago
  > Screen time is not that new a problem. Kids have been put in front of the TV since the 70s or 80s. apples and oranges, kids in 70s and 80s had this TV everywhere they moved? in car, public transprot, in playground, everywhere? completely different thing from screen always available in your pocket
- red-iron-pine 1mo ago
  > A lot of the issues are parents who cannot put their devices down this has been my experience. lot of parents who reflexively go to the phone -- they need their dopamine hit, and this means the kiddies get one too
tomrod 1mo ago
I remember that time. A mix of concerns over financial security, what kind of parent I'd be, and what I would do in the alone times where help isn't available and it all came down to me. We were young college kids in love and scared out of our minds. 19 years later, the adventure continues. Becoming what you think is an adult, what I would say is someone who knows what to do in scary moments as well as someone who can plan ahead and execute that plan, is always a work in progress. No one will ever know your kid during their childhood better than you. Treat advice, including this advice, like its a jacket to try on. Maybe it fits and you like it. Maybe not. You're under no obligation to accept it. You got this!
- eleventen 1mo ago
  I came back to this thread today. Thank you for the kind words, this was lovely to read.
basch 1mo ago
When you do introduce some video, which is easy to slip into around 18 months, there is tons of good stuff. Stillwater, Shape Island, Slumberkins, Interrupting Chicken, Not a Box, Duck and Goose, Frog and Toad, Get Rolling with Otis and Snoopy are all on Apple TV. Tumble Leaf, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Creative Galaxy, Stinky and Dirty, Fireman Sam Classic are on Prime. PBS still exists for now. Caitie's Classroom / Super Simple is on Youtube, Prime, and Spotify.
- eleventen 1mo ago
  Thanks for taking the time to leave this comment. Bookmarked your message for… much later.
  - basch 1mo ago
    Stillwater you can probably start at birth, if you need something to put you to sleep, which you will. Kiddo can listen without watching.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]

Markoff 2mo ago

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.

BartShoot 2mo ago

I guess that's hard to measure, higher screen time could be correlated with less caregiving from parents - screen will not teach them.

trescenzi 2mo ago
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.
hyperpape 2mo ago
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.
- red-iron-pine 1mo ago
  > 1. Parents' own socioeconomic status broke tired people who need time to do basic tasks at home end up putting their kids in front of screens -- news at 11 meanwhile bourgeoisie programmer types working at home take kiddo for a walk to the park and then hand them off to the after school programs or Filipina nanny
  - munksbeer 1mo ago
    And then grandstand on hn about how they give their children zero screen time, as is only right.
dzhiurgis 1mo ago
Smoking crack could be correlated with not eating a healthy died

phartenfeller 2mo ago

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.

dzhiurgis 1mo ago
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.

magicalhippo 2mo ago

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.

jraines 1mo ago
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)
- kakacik 1mo ago
  Have your ever seen the face of a baby when screen, any screen is visible? They lock their sight on it, anything else is irrelevant including mother. Its like watching a heroin junkie with full syringe dangling around. Maybe those kids with such massive exposure are more used to it, never did that experiment with our own kids. I may fail them later in life somehow but I certainly didn't do such basic mistake, screens are toxic to young mind on many levels, active ones quadruple so. I've heard all the excuses from the parents, but in reality it mostly boils down to 'we are tired, we are lazy, I don't care anymore' from people glued to screens themselves. As parents do, so children follow. its hardly ever a 'good' content, cheap dopamine kicks is what works best. I wonder when will society wake up, and starts treating these actors in similar fashion as say pedophiles. Active harm to kids is harm to kids, fucking up our future is one of worst crimes out there.
  - red-iron-pine 1mo ago
    depends on the screen. Bluey or some other brightly, quick-cut, attention getting kid show? like crack. they tune out Mr. Rodgers and BBC News pretty quickly, and it's on to biting daddy or the dog, etc.
  - AndrewDucker 1mo ago

apopapo 1mo ago

"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.

estearum 1mo ago
You hypothesize it's an important distinction. For now, what we have evidence for is the correlations of those things bundled together.
- ninkendo 1mo ago
  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)
  - estearum 1mo ago
    Totally, I didn't say it was illogical to hypothesize. GP made a factual assertion that there is a difference.
  - bawolff 1mo ago
    > 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.
  - sshine 1mo ago

HelloUsername 1mo ago

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"

graemep 1mo ago

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.

feanaro 1mo ago
Full text: https://hal.science/hal-05643897 https://hal.science/hal-05643897
- shymaple 1mo ago
  thanks for sharing full text
sega_sai 1mo ago
"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. "
- graemep 1mo ago
  The big thing missing there are measures of parental behaviour and how much attention the kids get from adults. I would love to see an adjustment for parental screen time, or a study of the impact of parental screen time on academic performance.

porridgeraisin 1mo ago

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.

alexchamberlain 1mo ago

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.)

greatgib 1mo ago

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.

tietjens 1mo ago
What is active about touching a smartphone?
- Tade0 1mo ago
  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.
- nucleardog 1mo ago
  My daughter's been playing "Hello Kitty Island Adventure"[0]. Besides "dexterity", "hand eye coordination", etc... It's just a lot. There are a couple dozen characters with their own preferences that need to receive gifts to progress in the game. Each has their own preferences. Many items need to be crafted, out of supplies that need to be collected (or received from other characters when giving _them_ gifts). This creates a pretty complicated supply chain to keep track of. There are a number of major quest lines on the go at once to keep track of. Though the game does have a quest log to help, you still need to keep up with short term goals (talk to this person) and long term goals (craft this thing that needs 100 items I need to save up). Sometimes these need to span over multiple days, or require choosing to save and delay gratification by accumulating an item rather than using it for some fun thing today. Many mini games require solving word problems and using your working memory. There's a cafe where characters come and place orders, sometimes communicating three or four different decisions. They may be combined with "and", "or", or some combination there-of. Once it's communicated, you go into a crafting screen where you no longer have access to the order and need to remember and select options (sometimes from lists of several dozen items) to complete the order. It's easy to see the difference in how she interacts with this over "watching TV". Watching TV is passive. If you ask her what happened ten minutes ago, she has no idea. Nor even that ten minutes have passed. She's very engaged with the Hello Kitty game. She's actively engaging with us to discuss, get help thinking through plans and strategies, etc. I'm on the same page with everyone asking "what _kind_ of screen time?". I don't mind my kid spending an hour watching some educational TV, or a couple hours playing Hello Kitty. I don't want her spending 15 minutes watching Cocomelon. [0] https://hellokittyislandadventure.wiki.gg/ https://hellokittyislandadventure.wiki.gg/

shymaple 1mo ago

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.