
Screen Use Tied to Children’s Brain Development - tta
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/well/family/screen-use-tied-to-childrens-brain-development.html
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gnicholas
A friend of mine who is a med school professor read the full paper and
informed me that:

" _There was no statistical significant association between ScreenQ and
cognitive score when the analysis accounted for income._ "

I wonder if the journalists didn't read the full paper, or if they read it but
decided to publish these two paragraphs, which give the impression that the
physical results are tied to cognitive performance.

> _After controlling for age, gender and income, the children with higher
> ScreenQ scores had lower measures of structural integrity and myelination,
> especially in tracts involved with language and literacy skills.

The researchers also tested the children cognitively, looking at measures of
language and early literacy. The results of the cognitive tests correlated
well with the children’s screen exposure; the children with higher screen
exposure had poorer expressive language and did worse on tests of language
processing speed, like rapidly naming objects._

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AdamHede
A lot of people are speculating in the comments on all sorts of causal factors
making this connection spurious.

Thank for digging up the article!

The guessing can continue, but the authors and the data in their small study
says it pretty clearly: It's the income, guys!

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ddxxdd
Well the next question is: what is it about income that positively affects
cognitive development? I doubt it's the smell or taste of dollar bills; more
likely that money affords better parenting techniques, including but not
limited to keeping your children's screen time limited.

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gnicholas
Yep, the question these studies raise is: if you're doing things "right" in
general (reading to your kids, taking them to museums/libraries, talking with
them about complex things), does it really matter how much screen time they
have?

There seems to be no proof that it matters that much, although I suspect that
managing screen addiction becomes important at later ages. It's possible that
letting kids have some screen time at younger ages, and teaching them from the
get-go about the dangers of over-consumption/addiction, could end up being a
very valuable parenting technique in the long run.

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murgindrag
The elephant in the room is that there are differences in screentime. If one
child grows up on DragonBox, Scratch, and Logo, and another watches cartoons
and plays Jewel Candy Crush, it's really not the same.

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gnicholas
For sure. I asked my med school professor friend about the differences between
different types of screen time, and unfortunately neither he nor his twin
brother (himself a neurosurgery professor) was able to say with any certitude
which types of activities would be OK, or why certain activities would be more
or less harmful.

Obviously the example you gave makes intuitive sense, but there doesn’t seem
to be any research or other evidence to support it at this time.

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treyfitty
This study had like 45 participants... how does one control for other
variables with such a small population? Keep in mind ScreenQ is just a fancy
name for a survey geared towards screen usage. It’s hard to think that income
has something to do with this.

I grew up in a household where my sister and I were beneficiaries of a high
earning father. My mother stayed home with us and never let us watch TV. Then
my brother came along and when he was 3 and I was 7, my father lost his
business. Almost overnight, our lives changed, and I recall walking home from
school (this was surprisingly common in Queens in 1995) and immediately
plopping down in front of the TV with my brother while both my parents worked.

It wasn’t until I had a child of my own when my mother told us how she
painfully remembers having to make this choice: “we had no money, and we
couldn’t afford a caretaker. On the one hand, we could have lived in worse
conditions, and I would have bored you to death. On the other hand, there was
0% chance of vacations and showing you all various cultures- but with cable
TV, you all had a better chance of acquiring culture.”

Conclusion: I didn’t get much screen time until about 7. My brother got a lot
of it from 3. Let’s just say the data (n=3) shows that there is a positive
correlation in cognitive development for the 1 of us who watched excessive TV
around pre-school age vs. the others. I will never let my kids watch as much
TV as my brother did when I was 3, but this is purely a function of money- I’m
very fortunate to make good money and able to throw $60k a year on daycare +
activities + nanny to provide entertainment away from the TV. By extension,
Money is the causal factor.

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jjeaff
Presumably, watching more television was hot the only thing that changed due
to your parents dramatic income change.

Additionally, I don't understand the resulting outcome. Are you saying more tv
was a negative or positive?

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imtringued
Sounds to me like it was a positive for poor people and a negative for rich
people.

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llarsson
"The median screen time per day was an hour and a half, but the range was from
none to 12 hours."

I think that a parent that just stuffs a tablet into their young child's hands
and then lets them use it for up to twelve hours was not ready to have kids:
either emotionally or in terms of how they prioritize the various things in
their lives. And in such (hopefully) extreme cases, all kinds of developmental
problems would seem like the natural consequence. Kids need their parents. It
is just that simple (and difficult, at times).

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gumby
Did my parents do the same to their kids who kept their noses in books almost
to the exclusion of anything else? I think my parents didn't mind!

I suspect my sister and I averaged close to 6 hours a day reading books up
until the age of 14 or so. I wonder if it screwed us up.

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telesilla
I don't think reading books is damaging to cognitive health, it's not a
passive experience and requires significant energy. I think we'd be hard-
pressed to find anyone who could disagree with the benefits of a child reading
for multiple hours a day?

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ClumsyPilot
I could, if it comes at the cost of socialising.

I spent a lot of time reading as a kid, and very little time with others. Bad
socialisation can cost you dearly.

Also was often reading in poorly lit areas, not great for eyesight.

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shearnie
I wonder if it’s actually the screens themselves, or the disengagement of the
parent where screens fill the void? Did TV do the same thing two decades ago?

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c0nducktr
TV is just another screen though, right?

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shantly
TV was a lot more boring than the Internet. Even most 80s and 90s cable didn’t
have so many channels that you could keep thinking that if you watched the
schedule scroll by one more time you’d find something amazing, let alone OTA
TV. If you wanted a movie you hadn’t already watched ten times, you had to
drive somewhere. That kind of thing.

[edit] actually boring’s not right—it was just easier to know whether there
was anything you wanted to watch on. With the Internet the answer is always
“yes”, you just may not have found it yet.

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ClumsyPilot
I am very concerned when I see research like this.

I feel that unless it is funded to test 》10,000 participants, you wont arrive
at a sensible conclusion because of the amount of variables involved.

I can imagine kids that get a lot of attention, play with other kids, etc, are
going to spend less time in front of a screen. You might really just be
measuring loneliness by proxy.

I also feel the tragedy is not money, its freedom. My parents were free to
roam the whole village from the age of 8, would get into all kinds of trouble,
'borrow' and ride random horses they found in the field, etc. And that was
normal.

These days kids often experience no freedom till late teens, or possibly
university.

This is a well known phenomenon across the western world. You can easily find
tons of research on the subject.

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-
children...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-
lost-right-roam-generations.html)

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colorincorrect
I'm curious if there's any "good" positive correlations with screen time. Any
ideas?

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fyfy18
My wife and I were watching videos by Dr Gabor Maté last night - he has some
strong opinions on child development and addiction (inc. social media
addiction). I'd highly recommend watching them if you are a parent.

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chapium
Everything around a kid changes their brain, thats what makes them amazing.

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pnako
That's why I use tmux

