
Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences - rustoo
https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/toddlers-who-use-touchscreens-show-attention-differences/
======
crmrc114
So, per this page:

"The study followed them over the next 2.5 years, bringing them into the lab
at 18 months and 3.5 years. At the 18-month and 3.5-year visits, toddlers took
part in a computer task in which they were trained to search for a red apple
amongst a varying number of either blue apples (easy search), or blue apples
and red apple slices (difficult search). An eye tracker monitored their gaze
and visually rewarded the child when they found the red apple, allowing them
to perform the task even though they were too young to verbally describe what
they were doing."

No discussion as to any other effect of screen use. Why did this need study?
Humans who use a thing more often are better at working with thing?

Better studies on kids with screen time focuses on spatial development:
[https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...](https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=post_coundfpub)

"Greater daily digital usage was associated with lower visual spatial
performance. Spending even small amounts of time daily with integrated
technology was associated with lower WPPSI-IV overall intelligence test
scores, and visual spatial scores. Those with the least amount of resources
are at the most risk for lower visual spatial abilities"

~~~
lern_too_spel
Your "better" study is not an experiment and its conclusions are not supported
by empirical evidence. If it were true that usage of touchscreens cause lower
intelligence test scores, we would have seen this show up as a population-wide
reduction in scores as touchscreens became widely available. No such effect
can be observed. Instead, the children who were neglected with random
household items to play with by themselves or TVs to watch by themselves are
now neglected with touchscreens to play with by themselves, and studies such
as yours misattribute the effects of childhood neglect to touchscreen usage.

I agree that this study doesn't measure anything useful, but in my circles, I
have heard of and seen children younger than 2 years old learn to read by
playing touchscreen games and children younger than 3 learn the names of
states, capitals, and other trivia from playing touchscreen games. Achieving
that is possible without touchscreens, but it would require an incredible
amount of work from the caretaker.

~~~
acituan
> Your "better" study is not an experiment and its conclusions are not
> supported by empirical evidence.

I think their method does count as a _natural experiment_ and as such does
have empirical evidence. From the article:

“Preschoolers from a 2010 study (612 children) were compared to preschoolers
from a 2014 study (492 children) because of the digital explosion into
everyday life that occurred between the two time periods. Television viewing
patterns have remained similar over time, but technological device usage has
increased.”

> If it were true that usage of touchscreens cause lower intelligence test
> scores, we would have seen this show up as a population-wide reduction in
> scores as touchscreens became widely available.

Exposure in formative years is vastly different than adult exposure. The
affected cohort in the study is now only in middle school and population wide
effects will have a lagged appearance.

------
lordnacho
One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens
think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of
those adverts that's made of a big flatscreen. What confuses them is that some
flatscreens aren't touchscreens, eg my macbook, while most of the smaller
screens like phones and tablets are.

Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing them to
screens. They're all over the place now, if I don't give them one they'll want
mine. Plus their friends see them everywhere, too. I'm trying to at least
steer the screen time towards useful things like math and coding, but it's not
always easy.

I have this scary feeling that how you spent your screen time as a kid of this
generation (current children) is going to be one of the major determinants of
your life. You can use the relatively new power of having all the world's
knowledge at your fingertips, or you can use your time looking at cat
pictures. The difference is going to magnify the natural differences that
occured in previous generations, as the kids who want to learn about stuff can
teach themselves while there's never been a better way to waste time for kids
who are inclined that way.

~~~
dx87
> One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with
> touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen

I've talked to teachers who said that they've started seeing young children
with picture books doing the zoom in/out pinching motion on pages.

~~~
Romanulus
Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Reminds me of the video of a very
inebriated old Polish man doing a breathalizer test who mistakenly takes a
swig of the device (instead of blowing into it) and then promptly falling
over. We are drunk on information.

~~~
jdietrich
_> Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad._

Early versions of iOS were rife with skeuomorphism. Is it sad that iBooks
displayed your books on a wooden shelf and played page-turn animations that
look like paper, or is it just an application of existing skills and knowledge
to a different technology?

Paper books are obsolete. Some people think that they aren't obsolete because
they're using tiny low-res monitors or don't know how to use a document
manager or haven't used an Apple Pencil, but digital text is just better. I
don't care whether young people know what to do with a paper book, but I do
care that they know how to interact effectively with text. I'm far more
perturbed that schools waste countless person-hours teaching cursive
handwriting, but most don't teach typing.

~~~
wizzwizz4
Partial damage to a paper book leaves the rest of it functional. Partial
damage to a digital book leaves it unable to boot.

~~~
WalterSear
Partial damage to a paper book leaves you with a partially damaged book that
costs as much time and money as a new one to replace.

Restoring/downloading a new copy of a partial damaged digital book takes less
time than it took me to type up this reply.

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RYFN
This is a shamefully clickbatey title from the University press office!

To quote the article, "...We are currently unable to conclude that the
touchscreen use caused the differences in attention".

~~~
jewelry
Well, maybe that's also a relieving result that use of tablet is not causing
harm at this area, if not helped. Which I believed strongly as long as the
material is carefully curated for education not just youtube Kids. Even
science channel video is better than youtube kids.

~~~
RYFN
The "not causing harm" being good is a very fair point!

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frereubu
This is just a press release and I haven't read the full paper, but from this
top-level summary it seems like it could also be construed as "toddlers who
have a higher exposure to touchscreens are better at using touchscreens later
on." This feels like it could just be a function of practice, or perhaps
familiarity with computers (not sure whether they controlled for computer use
- did the "non-touchscreen" kids use computing devices in general as much as
the "touchscreen" kids?), not attention necessarily.

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hibby
The headline is a little misleading - from the article itself.

"Dr Ana Maria Portugal, main researcher on the project points out “We are
currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences
in attention as it may also be that children who are generally more attracted
to bright, colourful features seek out touchscreen devices more than those who
are not.”"

------
lymenlee
For this little gain, at what cost to the future growth of the kid? Attention
span? Ability to focus on anything other than small screens? Social ability?
This research should really address the pro/con for the kid in the long run
rather than just benefit of finding target using their fingers.

~~~
the-pigeon
The opposite can argued too.

That children who don't use tablets have shorter attention spans and worst
social skills. The "natural is better" argument is not research based. Society
has long preached that things like reading books is great for kids but it's
entirely unnatural just like tablets.

Generally research in this area has been extremely biased against electronics.
You also have to control for the type of activities they are doing on the
tablet.

For example the mental stimulation when playing an educational Daniel Tiger
game is completely different than watching a toy sales driven TV show like
Transformers. Both can be done on a tablet though.

~~~
PMan74
> Society has long preached that things like reading books is great for kids

Wasn't always the case, Plato felt it would dull your memory.

"They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is
written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but
by means of external marks."

~~~
DevX101
Plato was probably right. As access to information has become ubiquitous, we
increasingly don't need to rely on our memories. Ancient scholars would be
able to recite long passages from memory. The printing press made that
unnecessary if you could access a book. Now Google has made even books
obsolete for some types of information. The internet is the world's memory.

What Plato missed was that our ability to do higher order reasoning and
synthesis has grown by leaps with books and now the internet. That's a pretty
good trade-off for losing some memory.

~~~
crooked-v
'Recite long passages from memory' is still entirely a thing when there's a
practical reason (actors in stage plays) or somebody's just really into
something (see people who can quote literally everything in several movies
from memory). It's just no longer the first step that comes before anything
else.

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natcombs
I was thinking "attention" as in "attention deficit", but this test was "find
a red apple amongst blue apples". They're not sure if finding red apples
amongst blue apples is beneficial though:

>> “What we need to know next is whether this attention difference is
advantageous or detrimental to their everyday life.”

~~~
microtherion
I'm sure that if they found that touchscreen users are _worse_ at this task,
they'd have little difficulty declaring this detrimental to their everyday
life.

------
kahlonel
I personally know kids that don't eat their food unless they are in front of a
screen (touch or not), because the only thing that captures their attention
are colorful blobs. I find it very detrimental to the kids' mental growth
because they don't observe things outside of a screen.

------
Gieskanne
"12-month-old infants who had different levels of touchscreen usage"

Why the fuck would you have infants with 'levels of touchscreen usage' at 12
month?

~~~
securingsincity
While we didn't just hand my son a device, the reality is he grabbed our
phones at 1 year and played with it. Even in those quick grabs, it was
intuitive enough to watch him play with pulling down the notification drawer
or tapping on things. I would say that's minimal interaction but certainly a
different level then someone who plops a 1 year old in front of an ipad or one
that has no electronics in the home.

~~~
User23
To elaborate on this, very young human beings have a fascinating aptitude for
figuring things out. They aren't very good at it, or at least lack the motor
skills to apply what they learn, but you can tell that there is a lot of
cerebral activity happening as they try to puzzle things out. So when a puzzle
presents itself, such as "why is mom staring at this glowing rectangle so
much?" they will will want to try and find out why.

------
dcolkitt
One important thing to keep in mind with any headline like this: twin studies
have consistently shown that family environment contributes a negligible
component to the cross-sectional variation of long-term adult outcomes.

Consider any sort of child-rearing decision. In this case letting your toddler
use an iPad or not. Is it within the realm of normal variation you'd find
between families? In this case, yes: some families let kids have a lot of
screen time, and some families strictly limit screen time.

Well then, it almost certainly will have essentially zero impact on long-term
adult outcomes. It may have a transitory short-term impact. Analogously,
reading to kids may lead to learning to read at an earlier age. But twin
studies tell us that by adulthood, the effect regresses to the mean. I.e.
reading to kids a lot won't give them higher reading comprehension when they
grow up.

------
cbanek
> The study followed them over the next 2.5 years, bringing them into the lab
> at 18 months and 3.5 years. At the 18-month and 3.5-year visits, toddlers
> took part in a computer task in which they were trained to search for a red
> apple amongst a varying number of either blue apples (easy search), or blue
> apples and red apple slices (difficult search). An eye tracker monitored
> their gaze and visually rewarded the child when they found the red apple,
> allowing them to perform the task even though they were too young to
> verbally describe what they were doing.

First off, this is brilliant use of eye tracking. I could see eye tracking
being so useful for learning, such as tracking attention, knowing when to need
a break, etc. Eye tracking is super useful in user testing - for example I was
watching some user testing at a major corporation and we used eye tracking. We
instructed the user to minimize the app and then open it again, and we noticed
that when it was in the systray, people really got confused. It was really
easy to see because we could see where their eyes were scanning. Using eye
tracking for people who can't speak (for any reason, maybe physical or mental
injury or disability, and here age / language barrier) could be huge.

The attention differences are certainly interesting, although I wonder how
much of it might be training to use touchscreens, or the idea of a screen that
it might change at any time, without related motion. This is completely
unnatural, as you would normally think something will change when something
walks over to it, or moves slightly. Fixed objects tend to fade more into the
background of our mental landscape, which is the basis of a lot of sleight of
hand. Like removing something when you can't see it. It'd be interesting to
compare against something that doesn't change when you interact with it, like
television screens. (is it the touch part, or the screen part?)

I also wonder how touchscreens are sometimes differently interpreted by
animals, kind of like mirrors are. For example, some cats seem to think that
the little toy apps are under them, or inside of them, or are just generally
confused. It's really quite fascinating.

~~~
bmh100
As the study notes:

'Dr Ana Maria Portugal, main researcher on the project points out “We are
currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences
in attention as it may also be that children who are generally more attracted
to bright, colourful features seek out touchscreen devices more than those who
are not.”'

This is an important confounding factor. My opinion is that toddlers often
spend time with media that are brighter and more colorful than the surrounding
environment, e.g. animated videos for children or educational apps for young
children. A better study would take that into account.

------
lacker
The narrative around screen time seems to have been totally overthrown by the
coronavirus. A year ago the health authorities were recommending limiting
childrens’ screen time. Now at a public school in California our children have
_mandatory_ three hours of screen time per day.

It just goes to show that these recommendations are not really based on
science. It’s more like they are based on guesses by reasonable people when
the science isn’t really that confident one way or the other. My personal
suspicion is that some forms of screen time, like video calls with family or
educational apps, are good for kids. And some forms, like watching TV, are bad
for them.

~~~
xphilter
I don’t think that’s true. As a parent, all my decisions are made by balancing
a host of factors. Pre covid I limited screens because they should be talking,
reading, playing with other kids, being active, etc. with covid, many of those
alternatives were taken away so I’ve had to be flexible in the short term to
again balance everything so my kids can interact with other kids and get
access to learning opportunities. Post covid, I’ll do my best to limit screens
again.

------
untog
> There has been growing concern that toddler touchscreen use may negatively
> impact their developing attention but this fear is not based on empirical
> evidence.”

That isn’t surprising to me: there are no inherent properties attached to a
touch screen that would affect attention. _But_ there are plenty of fast paced
games and videos that could, and those _tend_ to be viewed through touch
screens. So I still wonder about that (though it’s not all that different to
watching too much TV, something people have discussed for decades now)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Adverts aside, TV shows usually require 10s of minutes of concentration on a
connected subject thread (depends a lot on the programmes of course).
Touchscreen activities are usually shorter with brief reactive interactions?

------
godot
There's already a lot of discussions re: other aspects of screen time here, so
I'd just like to touch on exactly what is on this study -- ability to search
for things faster after "screen training". (like faster reflexes)

Before anyone takes this study and says "so screen time has positive
influence" and gives it to their 1 year-old, I'd like to give an anecdote from
my own experience. I grew up in the 80s and my family was one of the earliest
to own an NES. According to my parents, I started playing the NES when I was 4
or 5. I have some of the fastest reflexes (when it comes to video games or
similar activities) of any friends I know; and I played in fighting games
tournaments in college. This is a genre of competitive games where
millisecond-reflexes can determine the outcome of the game. (of course, I was
a low tier tournament player and there are tons of world class players way
better and faster than me)

I'd say my takeaway is that sure, maybe that kind of "screen training" helps
with reflexes and attention, but you don't have to start _that_ early. If you
start at 5 years old instead of 1 year old, you might just get as much of the
benefits, without the down sides of vision problems etc. that comes with
having screen time too early.

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ryanmarsh
Somewhat related, kindergartners cannot sit upright all day and do not have
the wrist strength to learn writing anymore. Many 5 year olds cannot grasp a
pencil with their thumb and forefingers. They hold it more like a three year
old, in a full hand grasp. Also, by mid-day the children cannot sit up any
longer and tend to slump over in the chairs, laying against the table. These
are not sleep deprived teens, they're usually full of energy at that age. The
teachers told us that the first few months of kinder include an exercise
regimen of core and wrist strength building just so they can sit up and hold a
pencil. For instance, one of the exercises is a modified "cat cow" position
(familiar to yogis).

Screen time is leading to more than attention differences, it appears it leads
to physiological differences as well.

------
cik2e
This made me think of studies that correlate growing up playing fast-paced
video games, shooters specifically if I recall, with better driving down the
road (drumroll).

This correlates with my own experience, especially as I transitioned to
defensive driving in my mid 20s. I am always keenly aware of what nearby cars
are doing, especially on the highway, and have become great at anticipating
driver stupidity. Things like a slight steering wiggle before trying to cut
across multiple lanes to make an exist. I've averted countless accidents with
this heightened awareness.

And on the other hand, there were multiple kids in high school who would ended
up having 2-3 accidents in their first year of driving. Obviously there are
tons of factors involved but I like to think that my devotion to CS and TFC
weren't a complete waste of time.

------
wiradikusuma
I notice a common theme in the comments: We're tech people (some even want
high engagements for _their_ apps) yet we're concerned of our kids' screen
time. I'm in the same boat.

Maybe because we're from generation(s) where screen is unnatural (except TV)
and we want our kids to have the same positive, "natural", experience like
ours.

But I wonder a few generations forward, maybe the future parents will not have
the same aversion like ours since they grew up with screens?

(Regardless of the answer, I'm _not_ letting my kids stare screens all day,
even though that's what I do daily and how I earn my living)

~~~
asdff
I want to limit my child's screen time explicitly because my screen time was
limitless, and I blew it doing dumb things and feeling more and more isolated
rather than more heavily pursuing real life interests and interpersonal
relationships. Excess screen time lost me a decade of guitar playing that I
can never get back. I don't want my child to suffer the same crushing self
realization at 25 years old.

------
Nuzzerino
> "What we need to know next is whether this attention difference is
> advantageous or detrimental to their everyday life."

I think they should find this out and then give the public a ring. Until then,
feels like clickbait.

------
jb775
I have an 20 month old and am planning to get him a tablet for long car rides,
but that's it until he's a little older.

Most content kids consume on tablets is essentially junk food for the brain.
Also, humans aren't meant to stare at screens all day long...the unknown
impacts of extended screen use aren't worth it in exchange for a few
lackluster benefits. Not to mention eliminating boredom from kids lives and
therefore possibly cultivating a generation of extreme ADHD.

------
tmaly
There is an upside for kids 5 and older here.

My daughter has to take this standardized map test in Connecticut. It is all
computer based. If you are not comfortable using the computer, you do not do
well on the test.

The teacher uses this online problems site IXL to help them get use to
answering the questions on the computer. This was also really helpful when
everyone had to do school remotely.

Th

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
How does this work for young kids who can barely or can't read? Seems like
it's a gateway to systemic bias.

~~~
tmaly
For reading, my wife and I read to our daughter and worked on phonics using
regular books.

There is really no shortcut for learning to read. You have to put in the time
with your kids.

------
asymptotic
I haven’t read the paper. But if the researchers were bringing in children
regularly for testing involving eye tracking equipment, why not also test
their ability to manipulate physical objects, recognize faces, and track
faces? That all seems like low hanging fruit.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I often have this thought about research and usually assume that the answer is
cost/resources.

Research seems poorly directed, like lots of ad hoc studies without
cooperation and planning for how it will be used for the sector overall.

Not a research scientist; probably a very naive view. Maybe there's more
higher level cooperation/symbiosis/planning/whatever than I perceive?

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supernova87a
Sorry, I had a lot of trouble focusing enough to read the article.

------
surround
I’m skeptical how insightful this study really is. They seem to have found
that toddlers who have more screen time are better at using screens.

------
rectang
Tangential question:

What is the effect of touchscreen usage by toddlers on their peripheral
vision?

------
zyang
Studies like these are pointless. Parents that give young kids touchscreens
tend to not spend quality time with their kids to begin with.

~~~
bmh100
It's important to understand causation. Engaged parents will still want to
spend quality time with their children either way, but they will still want to
know the impact. Even engaged parents let young children play with toys on
their own from time to time. How are physical toys different than touchscreen
"toys"?

