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.
"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.
I've seen hundreds of kids watching screens, none of them were reading an encyclopedia, most of them are consuming some form of low quality youtube brain rot
We’re having this sort of conversation at the school that I work at, which serves remote communities and other disadvantaged students. One of our states is currently making noise about reducing “screen time” for schools without much distinction about what it involves.
And here’s us, an online only school that serves kids that otherwise wouldn’t be able to access education at all or some types of classes at best, left wondering where that might leave us if our state decides to zombie its way into similar policy decisions.
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)
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.)
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)
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
I've seen hundreds of kids watching screens, none of them were reading an encyclopedia, most of them are consuming some form of low quality youtube brain rot
We’re having this sort of conversation at the school that I work at, which serves remote communities and other disadvantaged students. One of our states is currently making noise about reducing “screen time” for schools without much distinction about what it involves.
And here’s us, an online only school that serves kids that otherwise wouldn’t be able to access education at all or some types of classes at best, left wondering where that might leave us if our state decides to zombie its way into similar policy decisions.
You hypothesize it's an important distinction. For now, what we have evidence for is the correlations of those things bundled together.
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)
Totally, I didn't say it was illogical to hypothesize. GP made a factual assertion that there is a difference.
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.)
I guess that's hard to measure, higher screen time could be correlated with less caregiving from parents - screen will not teach them.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
I hope to have my first child soon; I am fucking terrified.
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.
> 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