
Studies Shoot Down Tech’s Harmful Effects on Kids – So Now What? - mhalle
http://nautil.us//blog/studies-shoot-down-techs-harmful-effects-on-kidsso-now-what
======
Waterluvian
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
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.

~~~
surge
Don't feel too bad, part of it is the tools are better, you can make 3d
animations now without having to do as much of it from scratch.

------
coldtea
> _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).

~~~
Recurecur
> 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...

~~~
etiam
As for low-level brain effects I'm reminded of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18385536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18385536)

"Learning to Read in Your 30s Profoundly Transforms the Brain"

------
etiam
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".

~~~
fdggdfsvscvsd
"I'm concerned about interference with learning and development needed to
interact with actual people and the physical world"

Books would cause the same withdrawal from actual people and the physical
world, yet I haven't seen anybody warn of too much reading in quite a while.

~~~
etiam
> Books would cause the same withdrawal from actual people and the physical
> world

No. "Also", but not "the same". And certainly not in the same way.

rimliu made a similar point earlier
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19074971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19074971)

In my opinion the analogy is basically valid, but it's not clear that they are
comparable.

~~~
fdggdfsvscvsd
It doesn't seem fair to compare reading books to the worst possible things you
can do on a screen device. And the argument made was about physical exercise
and engagement with real people.

I think that's a problem of all those studies actually. After all, reading
books is a subset of things you could do on a tablet device.

No question there are harmful apps and movies, optimized to increase
addiction. Few people you should simply hand kids these devices and never
check what they are doing.

And presumably, harmful books also do exist. It probably makes a difference
what kind of books you read.

------
wopwops
"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
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.

------
acjohnson55
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
> 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)

------
JauntyHatAngle
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.

------
RobertRoberts
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
> 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
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.

------
plainOldText
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
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.

~~~
plainOldText
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.

~~~
maigret
This is also the kind of skills that helps again social conflicts and things
like wars. This is worrying indeed.

------
goldcd
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
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
That's actually hilarious! Too much cave wall time

~~~
krapp
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.

------
vnorilo
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
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.

------
ovx99
Well, can't argue with "studies," folks. Wrap it up and proceed with the ipad
babies.

------
WheelsAtLarge
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
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?

------
miki123211
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.

------
superpermutat0r
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.

------
jryan49
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
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'

------
paulcole
Try another study until you get the result you want?

~~~
flukus
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.

~~~
rjf72
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)

~~~
flukus
> This topic is a very good example of the risks inherent in trying to do
> science by consensus.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about doing science but communicating it.
Even just cataloging the various studies and assigning some sort of label for
reliability like you just did would be valuable.

As you acknowledge, there is an awful lot of noise, but as a layman I have no
way of separating the signal from the noise.

~~~
rjf72
Of course, but what you're requesting _is_ science. It's a meta-analysis. A
work that studies other studies and tries to provide aggregate data while
controlling for whatever the meta-analysis creators determine to be relevant.
What I was pointing out here is how studies like this would generally be
considered high-reliability studies for these meta-analyses. It ticks all the
right boxes, probably by design. Yet at the same time when you look at it,
it's something I think few would find worthy of basing their decisions on.

But qualifying exactly which studies you should, or should not, give weight to
is a task that's ultimately going to also involve substantial bias. If I want
to argue that digitech is good for kids, I'm going to be able to create very
reasonable sounding criteria that would include studies such as this. If I
want to argue that digitech is bad for kids, I'm still going to be able to
create very reasonable sounding criteria yet one that would exclude studies
such as this. The same problem inherent in the individual studies also ends up
emerging in the meta-analyses as well.

Aggregating data in some ways takes you even further away from the truth. Here
you can reasonably show that this study is not so great, yet imagine this was
part of hundreds of different studies all packed together with a sample size
aggregate of hundreds of thousands. It may very well be that that meta-
analysis was also loaded with dubious work, such as this, yet it becomes
vastly more tedious to illustrate such. And as the rate of publication
continues to exponentially increase, then going forward into the future we
will eventually be faced with things such as meta-analyses of meta-analyses.
Meta-meta-analysis I suppose?

------
rbongers
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.

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

------
rogerkirkness
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
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
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.

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

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

------
perseusprime11
This study is sponsored by who?

------
xanth
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
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.

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

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

