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Teach your children to use technology in a healthy, responsible way. Learn what to watch for, how to set limits and stick to them, and when it’s O.K. to embrace screen time.

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Child behavioral expert Dr. Jennifer Cross explains why screen time should be limited for kids and why some screens are better than others.

Consider this: Nearly half of all children 8 and under have their own tablet device and spend an average of about 2.25 hours a day on digital screens, according to Common Sense Media.

What is all this screen time doing to kids' brains?

This week, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics found that screen time may be associated with delayed development in young children. The findings were based on parent reports of screen time use at 1 year and developmental skills at ages 2 and 4 years from a group of nearly 8,000 young children. According to data, using a validated screening tool, 1-year-olds who were exposed to more than four hours of screen time per day showed delays in communication and problem solving at ages 2 and 4. Also, more screen time for 1-year-olds was associated with developmental delays in fine motor and personal and social skills at age 2.

This research supports several previous studies that have shown a correlation between the amount of screen time among young children and the presence of developmental delays particularly in communication and problem-solving skills. A landmark National Institutes of Health (NIH) study that began in 2018, for example, found that children who spent more than two hours a day on screen-time activities scored lower on language and thinking tests, and some children with more than seven hours a day of screen time experienced thinning of the brain's cortex, the area of the brain related to critical thinking and reasoning.

"There is emerging evidence that there may be some structural brain changes associated with greater exposure to screen time as a young child," says Dr. Jennifer F. Cross, attending pediatrician and a developmental and behavioral pediatrics expert at NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children's Hospital. "If young children spend most of their time engaging with an iPad, smartphone, or the television, all of which are highly entertaining, it can be hard to get them engaged in non-electronic activities, such as playing with toys to foster imagination and creativity, exploring outdoors, and playing with other children to develop appropriate social skills."

Health Matters spoke with Dr. Cross, also an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine, about the impact of screen time on kids' developing brains and what parents and caregivers can do.

We know that kids have easy access to screens, now more than ever. But how do screens affect early childhood development?
For young children, especially those under the age of 3, development is happening rapidly. Young children learn by exploring their environment and watching the adults in their lives and then imitating them. Excessive screen time may inhibit a child's ability to observe and experience the typical everyday activities they need to engage with in order to learn about the world, leading to a kind of "tunnel vision," which can be detrimental to overall development.

When I see children walking with a parent or being pushed in a stroller, they are often playing on a smartphone or a tablet and not paying attention to anything else around them. They will not learn about the world around them if all they're doing is looking at a smartphone. This will not just affect their ability to learn new things, but also how they interact with others and how language develops.

How does screen time impact a child's ability to learn?
To a young child everything is new. Children need to explore their environment using all their senses to learn about the world, so it is very important that they can interact with three-dimensional spaces and activities. This provides so much more information than watching a two-dimensional picture on a screen.

Studies have shown that children under 2 learn less from a video than when learning from another person, and it appears that although children will watch the TV screen by 6 months, understanding the content does not generally occur until after age 2. It's not that they won't be captivated by what's on the screen, but they're not learning from it.

A child will not learn to stack blocks by watching it on a screen. They will learn by touching the blocks, feeling the texture and weight of different materials, and using trial and error to get one to balance on another. This is early problem solving. So, in addition to limiting screen time, it is important to encourage a child to get involved in experiential learning through play with toys because that fosters early problem solving and creativity.

Language development expands rapidly between 1½ to 3 years of age, and studies have shown that children learn language best when engaging and interacting with adults who are talking and playing with them. There is also some evidence that children who watch a lot of television during the early elementary school years perform less well on reading tests and may show deficits in attention.

"There is also some evidence that children who watch a lot of television during the early elementary school years perform less well on reading tests and may show deficits in attention."
- Dr. Jennifer Cross

Tell us more about how screen time affects language and communication.
Research shows that talking with children in a reciprocal dialogue is extremely important for language development and social interaction. It's that back-and-forth "conversation," sharing facial expressions and reacting to the other person - in real life, rather than "passive" listening or one-way interaction with a screen - that improves language and communication skills in young children.

What age is appropriate to introduce screens?
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends avoiding screens for children younger than 18 to 24 months, except when video chatting with family. The AAP also recommends limiting screen use for preschool children, ages 2 to 5, to just one hour a day of high-quality programming (think Sesame Street or PBS).

When something needs to get done around the house, it can be helpful to have a young child otherwise engaged and entertained. My advice then to parents is to turn on a short TV show like Sesame Street or Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood - something educational and fun that shows characters interacting and playing cooperatively to model good social skills - rather than giving their child a tablet or a phone. And, if possible, it's best to watch the educational programming with the child so you can actively engage with them about what they're watching and learning.

Suggested Screen Time Use By Age

18 Months and Younger
Avoid use of screen media other than video-chatting.

18 - 24 Months
Parents of children 18 to 24 months of age who want to introduce digital media should choose high-quality programming, and watch it with their children to help them understand what they're seeing.

2 - 5 Years
Limit screen use to 1 hour per day of high-quality programs. Parents should co-view media with children to help them understand what they are seeing and apply it to the world around them.

6 - 12 Years
Place consistent limits on the time spent using media and the types of media, and make sure media does not take the place of adequate sleep, physical activity, and other behaviors essential to health.

12 Years and Older
Designate media-free times together, such as dinner or driving, as well as media-free locations at home, such as bedrooms.

How might screens impact a child's sleep?
As humans, our circadian rhythms and our production of melatonin - the sleep hormone - kicks in when the sun sets. But the blue light from screens inhibits melatonin, which can delay sleep. And watching TV or playing games also keeps our brains and bodies more alert and activated and less ready for sleep. (Tablets and smartphones will suppress the melatonin more than TVs because the screen, and that blue light, is closer to the face.)

According to one study, infants 6 to 12 months old who were exposed to screens in the evening showed significantly shorter nighttime sleep than those who had no evening screen exposure.

For preteens and teenagers, excessive use of screens late at night will affect their sleep, and keeping screens out of the bedroom is advised. Too much time spent on social media as well as lack of sleep can affect behavior and cognitive performance in school and interfere with learning. It has also been shown that excessive screen time and sleep deprivation are linked to obesity, which in turn can affect self-esteem and lead to social isolation and more screen time.

How addictive can digital screens be for young kids?
The problem with mobile devices is that they draw you in, and as we all know it's easy to waste time surfing the internet. They are also so portable and ubiquitous that we cannot manage without them. As adults, we understand some of the drawbacks and make a conscious decision to put the phone down, but for 2- or 3-year-olds, who don't have any understanding of these concerns, if they have been exposed to the phone/tablet since infancy, it becomes their norm and they want to do more of it.

We should also be careful of relying on using screens to distract a child from a problem rather than having them figure it out and learn to resolve it themselves. Using a favorite song to distract a young child who has just fallen and scraped their knee might be OK, but having the parent comfort and cuddle with the child and talk to them is better. Using screen time to distract young children who are having trouble sharing a toy will not help them learn how to share and take turns in the future, although it may be a quick fix in the short term.

Are some screens worse than others?
Television isn't as bad as it was once perceived to be as it can be controlled more easily and stays in one place. Tablets and smartphones are much more accessible because they're portable. You can take them anywhere and use them at any time.

I believe YouTube is generally bad for young children. If left to their own devices, children are often better than their parents at finding their favorite videos that link to other videos and can lead to hours of watching endless clips. The largely unregulated nature of the site allows children to watch almost anything; at best there is little educational value, and at worst it can be violent or inappropriate content. Again, the best course of action is to watch with the child so the parent is engaged in finding content that is appropriate and educational.

What tips do you have for parents to limit screen time for kids?
1. Co-watch whenever possible. If children are going to have screen time, the best thing you can do is to watch the show or game with them to help them understand what they're seeing. Comment on things you notice, ask questions about what is happening, if someone on a show is singing a song, sing along with your child. Engage with them and repeat concepts after the show is over so they're more likely to retain that information.

2. Choose media wisely. Look to organizations like Common Sense Media for reviews about age-appropriate apps, games, and programs to guide you in making the best choices for your children.

3. Keep bedtime, mealtime, and family time screen-free. Don't use screens in the car except for long trips, and consider setting a curfew or an agreed-upon time when your family shuts off all screens. Balancing online and offline time is extremely important.

4. Limit your own phone use. Kids will do what they see their parents doing. At a young age, their parent(s) is the most important person in their life, so they will model whatever behavior they are seeing. If they see that you're behind a screen all day every day, then they'll see that it's acceptable and will want to do the same.

5. Emphasize the big three: sleep, healthy nutrition, and exercise. All three are essential to optimal brain growth and development and health and wellness for children and adults alike. And excessive screen time can impact all three. Children who spend more time in front of screens have been shown to eat more fast food and less fruits and vegetables and get less sleep and exercise. Therefore, it is very important to incorporate healthy lifestyle choices as part of the daily routine, as well as limiting screen time.
Read more on children's health. See tips on how to develop a Family Media Use Plan.

Jennifer F. Cross, M.D., is an attending pediatrician at NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children's Hospital and an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine. An expert in the diagnosis and management of children with developmental disabilities, Dr. Cross is board-certified in developmental and behavioral pediatrics.

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What Does Too Much Screen Time Do to Kids' Brains?

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Dr. Jennifer Cross, developmental and behavioral pediatrics expert, explains the harmful effects of too much screen time on early childhood development.

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This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive a commission, at no additional cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link. Read my disclosure here. What's inside: 5 Reasons Screen Time Is Good For Kids and One App That We Just Love!
"You Have To Limit Your Child's Screen Time!"

We've all heard it so many times. "Don't let your child sit in front of the TV too long", "You have to limit your child's screen time!" and "Screen time is just bad for your kids, it makes them anti-social! ".

But to your child, the iPad is the coolest toy ever. It's shiny, colorful, lights up, moves, and make sounds, plus, it can entertain our kids for hours. It's almost difficult to imagine how we managed before the iPad was introduced in 2010.

Now a day, it's almost uncommon to see a child on the subway or at a restaurant without a tablet in their hands. A study has shown that the average amount of time children spend using mobile devices has tripled, from five minutes a day to 15 minutes a day (among all 0- to 8-year-olds).

This, of course, raises the question if screen-time is a good thing for our kids.

5 Reasons Screen Time Is Good For Kids

Parents are often flooded with information that advises them against allowing their children to use devices more than a certain amount of time. The information implies that it makes their kids anti-social and affects their ability to learn.

Yet studies have found that it depends on the type of content, not the device usage itself that matters.

Related: How To Get Alone Time As A Mom (No, It's Not Selfish, And Here's Why)

1. It Can Be Social

Letting your child watch Daniel Tiger or Dora the Explorer on an iPad can be a great babysitter for HOURS. But I think that we can all agree on that this is not the right way to teach our kids about screen time.

But rather than letting your kids watch the shows alone, you can watch it together! While you're watching you can talk about what you see, the characters behavior and what they think about it.

And the conversation doesn't stop when the show ends. When you've watched something together, you can implement it in your everyday life by doing the same things that the characters did or just by saying things like "Remember when Daniel Tiger and his mom... Now we're doing it too!".

2. It Brings The Family Closer

Wait what? This can't be true.

According to a study by the Journal of Adolescent Research, video game players showed higher levels of family closeness, activity involvement, attachment to school and positive mental health.

By playing video games with your child, you show an interest in what matters to your kids and are sending the message that you approve and support what matters to your child. So instead of telling your child to "Turn of that device!" you really should be saying "Hey, can I join in ?".

3. It's 'Life-Saving' On Trips

I think that all of us have experienced a screaming toddler or a bored preschooler at the doctor's office or on long car rides. You know, all of those situations when you're feeling so stressed out cause your child is screaming as loud as he possibly can, in a public place, that the sweat is pouring down your back.

Have you ever thought about how much easier it would have been if you just had bought a device for your child to watch? All the waiting around would have been much easier for your child to handle and you wouldn't need to sing Itsy bitsy spider as much.

You might think that you're doing just fine without bringing along the iPad all the time. But how much safer would it be for you, your family and your fellow road users if instead of trying to entertain your kids in the car, you could actually focus on your driving a 100%?

Related: 21 Ways To Improve The Relationship With Your Child When You're Feeling Disconnected From Each Other

A lot of electronic games provide tools that allow the players to create new content. According to a paper published in the Review of General Psychology a lot of games teach valuable life skills like financial skills, patience, perseverance, teamwork, creativity, history, math, and English. And we all want our kids to learn these skills, right!?

Even young children with limited fine motor skills can express their creativity (and gain self-esteem) through music, painting, and drawing, in a well-designed game or virtual play space.

5. It Can Be Educational

Electronic devices are not the enemy against learning. You can use the devices your children already love, in so many ways, to help your children learn new things. Language, numbers, letters, shapes, colors, there's a show and app for just about everything.

A lot of early childhood centers use devices as a teaching tool. Some might think that mobile technology is too complex to be a learning tool in preschool classrooms. But the teachers at the Harmony Early Childhood Center have proved that the technology can have a big impact.

The Number One App For Kids

KidloLand has over 1000 nursery rhymes, songs, stories, activities, and games for kids and has been recommended by over 400 mom bloggers. We downloaded the app a few weeks ago and my kids have used it a bunch of times since.

But why would small children need an app like this?

Because it has everything I want them to learn (letters, English, numbers, songs and more) without any ads or opportunities for them to click through to something that they really shouldn't be able to see. This means that the app isn't free, but it's definitely worth its price when you get 1000 activities for your child without any ads.

My daughter is 11 months old and she was immediately drawn to the shapes and colors that come with the nursery rhymes. Every time a new song comes on, she gets so excited and brightens up.

The nursery rhymes weren't my son's favorite feature (all though he loves dancing and singing along to them). He preferred the games and activities. Especially the ones that took place in space.

I was hesitant to this app at first since my kid(s) speak Swedish and my pre-schooler only knows a few words of English. But by using the different features of this app, he's learned a bunch of new words in just a couple of weeks. He repeats after the voices in the games and turns to me to ask what the words mean.

This app has quickly become one of the favorites not just to my kids, but to me as well.

Download the app for IOS, Android, or on Amazon App Store.

Before you leave, make sure to check out the post on How To Teach Your Child Respect: 6 Tips You Can't Live Without!

What are your thoughts on kids screen time?

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Healthy Screen Time: 5 Reasons Screen Time Is Good For Kids

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This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive a commission, at no additional cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link. Read my disclosure here. What's inside: 5 Reasons Screen Time Is Good For Kids and One App That We Just Love!

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Highlights

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More hours of screen time are associated with lower well-being in ages 2 to 17.

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High users show less curiosity, self-control, and emotional stability.

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Twice as many high (vs. low) users of screens had an anxiety or depression diagnosis.

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Non-users and low users did not differ in well-being.

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Associations with well-being were larger for adolescents than for children.

Abstract

Previous research on associations between screen time and psychological well-being among children and adolescents has been conflicting, leading some researchers to question the limits on screen time suggested by physician organizations. We examined a large ( n  = 40,337) national random sample of 2- to 17-year-old children and adolescents in the U.S. in 2016 that included comprehensive measures of screen time (including cell phones, computers, electronic devices, electronic games, and TV) and an array of psychological well-being measures. After 1 h/day of use, more hours of daily screen time were associated with lower psychological well-being, including less curiosity, lower self-control, more distractibility, more difficulty making friends, less emotional stability, being more difficult to care for, and inability to finish tasks. Among 14- to 17-year-olds, high users of screens (7+ h/day vs. low users of 1 h/day) were more than twice as likely to ever have been diagnosed with depression (RR 2.39, 95% CI 1.54, 3.70), ever diagnosed with anxiety (RR 2.26, CI 1.59, 3.22), treated by a mental health professional (RR 2.22, CI 1.62, 3.03) or have taken medication for a psychological or behavioral issue (RR 2.99, CI 1.94, 4.62) in the last 12 months. Moderate use of screens (4 h/day) was also associated with lower psychological well-being. Non-users and low users of screens generally did not differ in well-being. Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being were larger among adolescents than younger children.

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Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study

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More hours of screen time are associated with lower well-being in ages 2 to 17. * High users show less curiosity, self-control, and emotional stability. * Twice as many high (vs. low) users of screens had an anxiety or depression diagnosis. * Non-users and low users did not differ in well-being.

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Today's children have grown up with a vast array of electronic devices at their fingertips. They can't imagine a world without smartphones, tablets, and the internet.

The advances in technology mean today's parents are the first generation who have to figure out how to limit screen time for children. While digital devices can provide endless hours of entertainment and they can offer educational content, unlimited screen time can be harmful.﻿﻿

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends parents place a reasonable limit on entertainment media. Despite those recommendations, children between the ages of 8 and 18 average 7½ hours of entertainment media per day, according to a 2010 study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. But it's not just kids who are getting too much screen time.

Many parents struggle to impose healthy limits on themselves too. The average adult spends over 11 hours per day behind a screen, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

It's important to understand how too much screen time could be harming everyone in the whole family.

The Negative Effects of Too Much Screen Time

Whether you keep the TV on all the time or the whole family sits around staring at their smartphones, too much screen time could be harmful. Here's what some of the research says:

Behavior problems: Elementary school-age children who watch TV or use a computer more than 2 hours per day are more likely to have emotional, social, and attention problems.

Educational problems: Elementary school-age children who have televisions in their bedrooms do worse on academic testing.

Obesity: Too much time engaging in sedentary activity, such as watching TV and playing video games, can be a risk factor for becoming overweight.﻿﻿

Sleep problems: Although many parents use TV to wind down before bed, screen time before bed can backfire. The light emitted from screens interferes with the sleep cycle in the brain and can lead to insomnia.﻿﻿

Violence: Exposure to violent TV shows, movies, music, and video games can cause children to become desensitized to it. Eventually, they may use violence to solve problems and may imitate what they see on TV, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Digital Devices Can Harm Family Relationships

Most of the conversations about the dangers of screen time focus on children. But, it's important to recognize that adults may experience many of the same harmful effects as well, like obesity and sleep problems.

But even if you aren't experiencing any tangible health problems stemming from your digital device use, there's a good chance your electronics could be harming your relationship with your child.

In a 2015 survey by AVG Technologies, one-third of children reported feeling unimportant when their parents looked at their smartphones during meals or when playing together.

Even replying to a quick text message could be sending your child another message-that your phone is more important than he is.

Giving your child interrupted care-by repeatedly checking your smartphone-could also affect his development and his mental health. A 2016 study suggests looking at your digital devices could increase your child's chances of developing mental health problems, like depression.

Establishing Family Rules With Electronics

Telling your child to turn off his video games while you're sitting in front of the TV won't do anyone any good. It's important for you to set healthy limits on your electronics use for your own sake, as well as your child's sake.

Here are a few household rules you might want to establish to curb screen time:

No digital devices during family meals.

No electronics use during family fun nights.

No screen time in the car.

No screens allowed in bedrooms.

In addition, consider an occasional digital detox for the whole family. Create a screen-free night once a week or commit to unplugging one weekend a month. It could be good for everyone's physical and emotional health, as well as your family's relationships.

Additional Reading

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How Too Much Screen Time Can Hurt Kids and Their Families

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Many of the conversations about screen time focus on the dangers toward children. But, too much time on digital devices hurts parents too.

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Panicking About Your Kids’ Phones? New Research Says Don’t (Published 2020)

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A growing number of academics are challenging assumptions about the negative effects of social media and smartphones on children.

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Just about every week new articles warn about the dangers of excessive screen time for childhood development. That can leave parents and educators feeling a sense of anxiety about technology and kids, even as more schools use iPads and Chromebooks and other tech in classrooms.

Today on the podcast we're diving into the issue of screen time with a guest who for years has tracked research about the impact of screen media on children and young people.

That guest is Lisa Guernsey, director of the teaching, learning and tech program at New America, a nonpartisan think tank. She even wrote a book that's called " Screen Time" and a more recent one called " Tap, Click, Read: Growing Readers in a World of Screens."

I have to mention I've known Guernsey for a long time. We both worked together 20 years ago or so as reporters at The Chronicle of Higher Education, back when we were both just starting our careers. And these days we both have kids of our own, so this issue has moved from the abstract to the practical for us.

Interestingly enough, Guernsey actually avoids the words "screen time" these days. She says she now has a better way of thinking about regulating tech, including a model of how educators and librarians can become better mentors for students and parents.

Listen to this week's podcast on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Music or wherever you listen, or use the player below. Or read the partial transcript, which has been lightly edited for clarity.
EdSurge: How do you see the current state of debate when it comes to screen time?
Guernsey: I really get it when it comes to the anxiety because that's why I started working in this line of research in the first place. I was a parent with a lot of questions and a lot of worry, and at the time my kids were really little. They were babies and toddlers, and there were so many headlines about what I was doing wrong essentially [as a parent] about what screen media was going to do to my kids' brains.

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Back then, even before the days of apps and touch screens, there was still just a lot of hand wringing. And honestly some of it was well-founded. So I looked into the research. What do we know from developmental science? What do we know from the science of media and children? What do we know about how children are understanding something that's two-dimensional on a screen versus hands-on learning. And then I've taken that over the years up through the ages. As my kids have grown up, I've been continuing to probe and try to understand what research is telling us.

The one really big kind of takeaway that stayed with me is that this is not really a question about how much time children's eyeballs are looking at a screen. That's how we've been talking about it, but the words "screen time" had a lot of currency in our conversations about this. What people are really concerned about is not screen time. It's mindless time, or it's sedentary time or it's being alone and not having anybody to turn to time. That's what people are really worried about. It's become a frustrating situation because it's hard for the media to get that nuance. And so if parents and educators are only hearing about the headlines and not getting into the nuance, they really don't know where to go and where to turn.
Is there another phrase that you would propose instead of screen time?
I do like to say screen media instead of time. I say that this is a question of the effects of screen media. And then we can start better understanding the effects of media of all kinds.

Whether it's the stories that are our kids and our students are experiencing [or] how they're learning to communicate themselves by what they're seeing communicated through media. We can start having a conversation about learning and about literacy instead of just a question of health and wellbeing, which is still important in this conversation for sure.

The other piece that I've found helpful is to think about what I call the three Cs. So what is the content on the screen? So content is the first C. What is the context of that screen use? Is somebody sitting with the student? Are they working on a project together?

Then, Is this something where they're creating instead of consuming? And then a third C is the child-that individual student. And every student's going to come with their own needs, their own anxieties, their own predilections about how they're using different kinds of media as well as their own-especially when we're talking about little kids. There are developmental delays to take into account. There are huge differences in development by age. So we can't just do a broad-brush statement of banning screen time when we're not taking into account the three Cs.
Have you heard of these videos that have gone viral on YouTube for years now where parents are taking away the kids' XBox or phone and like smashing it with a sledgehammer or throwing them out the window? What do you make of these?
Yeah. Obviously they're a sign of frustration. I think they send a really dangerous signal personally.

But a lot of us are feeling that we don't have control anymore over how we're using all these different devices and how our kids are using them. And we hate the tantrums that arise when we're just snatching them away, and we wish we hadn't snatched them away, but we hate that the tantrum is happening. And we just wish these things were out of our lives entirely.

But we have got to define new paths for thinking about learning, thinking about how children are using media in ways that build their curiosity and their sense of the world and their understanding of where the messages are coming from instead of just demonizing it because that's not going to get us anywhere.
Your daughter wrote an essay a few years ago pushing back about articles saying parents should take away kids' phones, right?
Yeah, it was in Slate. So I sometimes write for Slate, and my editor there asked if I would write about this new data that was coming out that seemed to show that smartphones were ruining a whole generation of kids and causing them to be really depressed and unhappy, which is not exactly what the data shows. Causal relationships are really hard to get out of that data.

But what I did was instead of writing about my take on it, I asked my daughter, who was 15 at the time, if she would write it with me.

My daughter was irritated by this study to no end, and she was like, "Oh my God, we can't win as teenagers. You tell us to do this. You tell us to do that. You tell us we're not allowed to do this. And then you take everything away from us, and then you wonder why we're unhappy and why we're depressed. You put all this stress on us. We have to get into college, and you tell us to do active shooter drills, and you wonder why we're depressed. And then you say it's our smartphones, and the only way we can ever even communicate with our peers to deal with all this stress is through our smartphones. So it was a really interesting piece.
Lately you've been talking about a new role in education that you propose for schools and libraries that you call media mentors. What's that?
A media mentor is somebody who is [working] alongside an educator or a student or a parent mentoring them on the choices they might want to make with screens.

It's mentioned in different things that have come out from the American Academy of Pediatrics, [where it means] a parent who's acting more as a mentor instead of being a strict authoritarian.

But it's also something that in my work I'm seeing in public libraries. Librarians are recognizing that they already have a lot of the skills that are involved in curating and making the choices about different media-finding media that matches interests, searching, understanding sources. And they want to update the way they understand this in a digital context; they want to make sure they're applying that in ways that help the community. And also they want to help teachers because a lot of the teachers are coming to them asking these questions.

So media mentorship programs are coming along in various public library settings. In Maryland, I was part of a program there where we ran book study programs. There's a book out called "Becoming a Media Mentor" that was published by the American Library Association
What does it look like? Can you give an example?
In a public library setting, you may have a parent who goes to the children's librarian and asks, "We're about to go on a road trip. I know that I really shouldn't give certain apps to my kids, but I want to put a couple of apps on my phone so I have something for them to do in the back of the car. And I have one child who's almost reading, and I have another child who loves anything with Scooby Doo. Can you help?" And so the media mentor then can interview in a nonjudgmental way and talk a little bit more to that parent, that family member, "Oh, OK, so this is what you're looking for. Let me see if I can find things like this."

That person also can help that parent or educator think more broadly also about the connections between a print book that they might also bring on their trip and a game that they might put on their phone and a video that they might be able to then play together or watch together as a family and help guide the use of media in a way that leads to more learning and that also is just tuned into what the family wants or what that educator wants.

We'll be starting to help with the development of this in Illinois in the coming year through Chicago Public Library and a couple other library systems out there.

I think school librarians and educators who are instructional technologists or who are in a public school space may already be doing a lot of these things too and may not know the term media mentor, but are in that same space looking for that same guidance, wanting to build up their skills. And the more that we can do to bring people together, learn from each other and then learn from the science of what works and what doesn't, it could be a huge help to parents and educators.

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Why Talking About 'Screen Time' Is the Wrong Conversation - EdSurge News

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Just about every week new articles warn about the dangers of excessive screen time for childhood development. That can leave parents and educators feeling a sense of anxiety about technology and kids, even as more schools use iPads and Chromebooks and other tech in classrooms. Today on the podcast we're diving into the issue of screen time with a guest who for years has tracked research about the impact of screen media on children and young people.

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Children’s Screen Time Has Soared in the Pandemic, Alarming Parents and Researchers (Published 2021)

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“There will be a period of epic withdrawal,” warned one addiction specialist, once schools, activities and social life return to normal.

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Television has become a nearly ubiquitous feature in children's cultural landscape. A review of the research into young children's learning from television indicates that the likelihood that children will learn from screen media is influenced by their developing social relationships with on-screen characters, as much as by their developing perception of the screen and their symbolic understanding and comprehension of information presented on screen. Considering the circumstances in which children under 6 years learn from screen media can inform teachers, parents, and researchers about the important nature of social interaction in early learning and development. The findings reviewed in this article suggest the social nature of learning, even learning from screen media.

Journal Information

As the flagship journal of the Society for Research in Child Development, Child Development has published articles, essays, reviews, and tutorials on various topics in the field of child development since 1930. Spanning many disciplines, the journal provides the latest research, not only for researchers and theoreticians, but also for child psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, psychiatric social workers, specialists in early childhood education, educational psychologists, special education teachers, and other researchers.

Publisher Information

Wiley is a global provider of content and content-enabled workflow solutions in areas of scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly research; professional development; and education. Our core businesses produce scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals, reference works, books, database services, and advertising; professional books, subscription products, certification and training services and online applications; and education content and services including integrated online teaching and learning resources for undergraduate and graduate students and lifelong learners. Founded in 1807, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. has been a valued source of information and understanding for more than 200 years, helping people around the world meet their needs and fulfill their aspirations. Wiley has published the works of more than 450 Nobel laureates in all categories: Literature, Economics, Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Peace. Wiley has partnerships with many of the world's leading societies and publishes over 1,500 peer-reviewed journals and 1,500+ new books annually in print and online, as well as databases, major reference works and laboratory protocols in STMS subjects. With a growing open access offering, Wiley is committed to the widest possible dissemination of and access to the content we publish and supports all sustainable models of access. Our online platform, Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) is one of the world's most extensive multidisciplinary collections of online resources, covering life, health, social and physical sciences, and humanities.

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Media as Social Partners: The Social Nature of Young Children's Learning From Screen Media on JSTOR

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Television has become a nearly ubiquitous feature in children's cultural landscape. A review of the research into young children's learning from television indicates that the likelihood that children will learn from screen media is influenced by their developing social relationships with on-screen characters, as much as by their developing perception of the screen and their symbolic understanding and comprehension of information presented on screen.

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There is not enough evidence to confirm that screen time is in itself harmful to child health at any age, making it impossible to recommend age appropriate time limits, says the first ever guidance on children's screen time to be published in the UK.

Screen time guidance, published today by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), instead suggests parents approach screen time based on the child's developmental age, the individual need and value the family place on positive activities such as socialising, exercise and sleep - when screen time displaces these activities, the evidence suggests there is a risk to child wellbeing.

Dr Max Davie, Officer for Health Promotion for the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) said we need to "let parents be parents" and adjust the amount of time spent on screens by all members of the family, depending on what's important to them and their child. Dr Davie said:

Technology is an integral part of the lives of children and young people. They use it for communication, entertainment, and increasingly in education.

Studies in this area are limited but during our research analysis, we couldn't find any consistent evidence for any specific health or wellbeing benefits of screen time, and although there are negative associations between screen time and poor mental health, sleep and fitness, we cannot be sure that these links are causal, or if other factors are causing both negative health outcomes and higher screen time. To help us develop a better understanding of this issue, I urge both more and better research, particularly on newer uses of digital media, such as social media.

In the guidance, we have published a series of questions which aim to help families make decisions about their screen time use. Questions include:

Is your family's screen time under control?

Does screen use interfere with what your family want to do?

Does screen use interfere with sleep?

Are you able to control snacking during screen time use?

Dr Davie continues:

When it comes to screen time I think it is important to encourage parents to do what is right by their family. However, we know this is a grey area and parents want support and that's why we have produced this guide. We suggest that age appropriate boundaries are established, negotiated by parent and child that everyone in the family understands. When these boundaries are not respected, consequences need to be put in place. It is also important that adults in the family reflect on their own level of screen time in order to have a positive influence on younger members.

In addition to acting as a trusted reference point for healthcare professionals, the guidance also notes evidence to suggest that screen time can have a negative impact on a child's diet which has the potential to lead to overweight or obesity.

Dr Davie says:

We know that watching screens can distract children from feeling full and they are also often exposed to advertising which leads to higher intake of unhealthy foods.

The Government is currently consulting on whether to ban the advertising of food and drink high in salt, sugar and fat as part of its Childhood Obesity Plan. We very much hope this proposal is implemented but push the Government to go one step further giving children the same protection online and when using on-demand services too.

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Build screen time around family activities, not the other way round, parents told

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There is not enough evidence to confirm that screen time is in itself harmful to child health at any age, making it impossible to recommend age appropriate time limits, says the first ever guidance on children's screen time to be published in the UK.

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Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Even a casual follower of the news over the last few years is likely to have encountered stories about research showing that digital technologies like social media and smartphones are harming young people's mental health. Rates of depression and suicide among young people have risen steadily since the mid-2000s, around the time that the first smartphones and social media platforms were being released. These technologies have become ubiquitous, and young people's distress has continued to increase since then.

Many articles in the popular and academic press assert that digital technology is to blame. Some experts, including those recently featured in stories by major news outlets, state that excessive use of digital technology is clearly linked to psychological distress in young people. To deny this connection, according to a prominent proponent of the link, is akin to denying the link between human activity and climate change.

In an effort to protect young people from the harms of digital tech, some politicians have introduced legislation that would, among other things, automatically limit users' time spent on a social media platform to 30 minutes a day. If the evidence is so definitive that digital technology is harming America's youth in such substantial ways, then reducing young people's use of these devices could be one of the most important public health interventions in American history.

There's just one problem: The evidence for a link between time spent using technology and mental health is fatally flawed.
Know thyself-easier said than done
Absent from the discussion about the putative harms of digital tech is the fact that practically all academic studies in this area have used highly flawed self-report measures. These measures typically ask people to give their best guesses about how often they used digital technologies over the past week or month or even year. The problem is that people are terrible at estimating their digital technology use, and there's evidence that people who are psychologically distressed are even worse at it. This is understandable because it's very hard to pay attention to and accurately recall something that you do frequently and habitually.

Researchers have recently begun to expose the discrepancy between self-reported and actual technology use, including for Facebook, smartphones and the internet. My colleagues and I carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis of discrepancies between actual and self-reported digital media use and found that self-reported use is rarely an accurate reflection of actual use.

This has enormous implications. Although measurement isn't a sexy topic, it forms the foundation of scientific research. Simply put, to make conclusions-and subsequent recommendations-about something you're studying, you must ensure you're measuring the thing you're intending to measure. If your measures are defective, then your data is untrustworthy. And if the measures are more inaccurate for certain people-like young people or those with depression-then the data is even more untrustworthy. This is the case for the majority of research into the effects of technology use over the past 15 years.

Imagine that everything known about the COVID-19 pandemic was based on people giving their best guesses about whether they have the virus, instead of highly reliable medical tests. Now imagine that people who actually have the virus are more likely to misdiagnose themselves. The consequences of relying on this unreliable measure would be far-reaching. The health effects of the virus, how it's spreading, how to combat it-practically every bit of information gathered about the virus would be tainted. And the resources expended based on this flawed information would be largely wasted.

The uncomfortable truth is that shoddy measurement, as well as other methodological issues including inconsistent ways of conceiving of different types of digital tech use and research design that falls short of establishing a causal connection, is widespread. This means that the putative link between digital technology and psychological distress remains inconclusive.

In my own research as a doctoral student in social work, I found that the link between digital technology use and mental health was stronger when self-report measures were used than when objective measures were used. An example of an objective measure is Apple's "Screen Time" application, which automatically tracks device use. And when I used these objective measures to track digital technology use among young adults over time, I found that increased use was not associated with increased depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts. In fact, those who used their smartphones more frequently reported lower levels of depression and anxiety.
From believer to skeptic
That the link between digital tech use and psychological distress is inconclusive would have come as a big surprise to me five years ago. I was shocked by the levels of depression and thoughts of suicide among the students I treated when I worked as a mental health therapist at a college counseling center. I, like most people, accepted the conventional narrative that all these smartphones and social media were harming young people.

Wanting to investigate this further, I left clinical practice for a Ph.D. program so I could research why these technologies were harmful and what could be done to prevent these harms. As I dove into the scientific literature and conducted studies of my own, I came to realize that the link between digital technology and well-being was much more convoluted than the typical narrative portrayed by popular media. The scientific literature was a mess of contradiction: Some studies found harmful effects, others found beneficial effects and still others found no effects. The reasons for this inconsistency are many, but flawed measurement is at the top of the list.

This is unfortunate, not just because it represents a huge waste of time and resources, or because the narrative that these technologies are harmful to young people has been widely popularized and it's hard to get the cat back in the bag, but also because it forces me to agree with Mark Zuckerberg.
Getting at the truth
Now, this doesn't mean that any amount or kind of digital technology use is fine. It's fairly clear that certain aspects, such as cyber-victimization and exposure to harmful online content, can be damaging to young people. But simply taking tech away from them may not fix the problem, and some researchers suggest it may actually do more harm than good.

Whether, how and for whom digital tech use is harmful is likely much more complicated than the picture often presented in popular media. However, the reality is likely to remain unclear until more reliable evidence comes in.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Flawed data led to findings of a connection between screen time and mental health problems

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Even a casual follower of the news over the last few years is likely to have encountered stories about research showing that digital technologies like social media and smartphones are harming young people's mental health. Rates of depression and suicide among young people have risen steadily since the mid-2000s, around the time that the first smartphones and social media platforms were being released.

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Studies Show

Credit... Illustration by Ori Toor

The first iPhone was introduced in 2007; just over a decade later, in 2018, a Pew survey found that 95 percent of teenagers had access to a smartphone, and 45 percent said they were online "almost constantly." When researchers began trying to gauge the impact of all this "screen time" on adolescent mental health, some reported alarming results. One widely publicized 2017 study in the journal Clinical Psychological Science found that the longer adolescents were engaged with screens, the greater their likelihood of having symptoms of depression or of attempting suicide. Conversely, the more time they spent on nonscreen activities, like playing sports or hanging out with friends, the less likely they were to experience those problems. These and other similar findings have helped stoke fears of a generation lost to smartphones.

But other researchers began to worry that such dire conclusions were misrepresenting what the existing data really said. Earlier this year, Amy Orben and Andrew K. Przybylski, at Oxford University, applied an especially comprehensive statistical method to some of the same raw data that the 2017 study and others used. Their results, published this year in Nature Human Behavior, found only a tenuous relationship between adolescent well-being and the use of digital technology. How can the same sets of numbers spawn such divergent conclusions? It may be because the answer to the question of whether screen time is bad for kids is "It depends." And that means figuring out "On what?"

The first step in evaluating any behavior is to collect lots of health-related information from large numbers of people who engage in it. Such epidemiological surveys, which often involve conducting phone interviews with thousands of randomly selected people, are useful because they can ask a wider range of questions and enroll far more subjects than clinical trials typically can. Getting answers to dozens of questions about people's daily lives - how often they exercise, how many close friends they have - allows researchers to explore potential relationships between a wide range of habits and health outcomes and how they change over time. Since 1975, for instance, the National Institute on Drug Abuse has been funding a survey called Monitoring the Future (M.T.F.), which asks adolescents about drug and alcohol use as well as other things, including more recently, vaping and digital technology; in 2019, more than 40,000 students from nearly 400 schools responded.

This method of collecting data has drawbacks, though. For starters, people are notoriously bad at self-reporting how often they do something or how they feel. Even if their responses are entirely accurate, that data can't speak to cause and effect. If the most depressed teenagers also use the most digital technology, for example, there's no way to say if the technology use caused their low mood or vice versa, or if other factors were involved.

Gathering data on so many behaviors also means that respondents aren't always asked about topics in detail. This is particularly problematic when studying tech use. In past decades, if researchers asked how much time a person spent with a device - TV, say - they knew basically what happened during that window. But "screen time" today can range from texting friends to using social media to passively watching videos to memorizing notes for class - all very different experiences with potentially very different effects.

Still, those limitations are the same for everyone who accesses the raw data. What makes one study that draws on that data distinct from another is a series of choices researchers make about how to analyze those numbers. For instance, to examine the relationship between digital-technology use and well-being, a researcher has to define "well-being." The M.T.F. survey, as the Nature paper notes, has 13 questions concerning depression, happiness and self-esteem. Any one of those could serve as a measure of well-being, or any combination of two, or all 13.

A researcher must decide on one before running the numbers; testing them all, and then choosing the one that generates the strongest association between depression and screen use, would be bad science. But suppose five ways produce results that are strong enough to be considered meaningful, while five don't. Unconscious bias (or pure luck) could lead a researcher to pick one of the meaningful ways and find a link between screen time and depression without acknowledging the five equally probable outcomes that show no such link. "Even just a couple of years ago, we as researchers still considered statistics kind of like a magnifying glass, something you would hold to the data and you would then see what's inside, and it just helped you extract the truth," Orben, now at the University of Cambridge, says. "We now know that statistics actually can change what you see."

To show how many legitimate outcomes a large data set can generate, Orben and Przybylski used a method called "specification curve analysis" to look for a relationship between digital-technology use and adolescent well-being in three ongoing surveys of adolescents in the United States and the United Kingdom, including the M.T.F. A "specification" is any decision about how to analyze the data - how well-being is defined, for example. Researchers doing specification curve analysis don't test a single choice; they test every possible combination of choices that a careful scientist could reasonably make, generating a range of outcomes. For the M.T.F., Orben and Przybylski identified 40,966 combinations that could be used to calculate the relationship between psychological well-being and the use of digital technology.

Credit... Illustration by Ori Toor

When they averaged them, they found that "digital-technology use has a small negative association with adolescent well-being." But to put that association in context, they used the same method to test the relationship between adolescent well-being and other variables. And in all the data sets, smoking marijuana and being bullied were more closely linked with decreased well-being than tech use was; at the same time, getting enough sleep and regularly eating breakfast were more closely tied to positive feelings than screen time was to negative ones. In fact, the strength of the association screen time had with well-being was similar to neutral factors like wearing glasses or regularly eating potatoes.

Not finding a strong association doesn't mean that screen time is healthy or safe for teenagers. It could come with huge risks that are simply balanced by huge rewards. "The part that people don't appreciate is that digital technology also has significant benefits," says Nick Allen, director of the Center for Digital Mental Health at the University of Oregon. These include helping teenagers connect with others. The real conclusion of the Nature paper is that large surveys may be too blunt an instrument to reveal what those risks and benefits truly are. What's needed are experiments that break "screen time" into its component parts and change one of them in order to see what impact that has and why, says Ronald Dahl, director of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley. A screen-related activity may be beneficial or harmful depending on who is doing it, how much they're doing it, when they're doing it and what they're not doing instead. "If we just respond to emotions or fears about screen time, then we actually could be interfering with our ability to understand some of these deeper questions," he says.

Allen notes a vexation: The behavioral data "is already being quantified" on the granular level researchers need. But tech companies don't routinely share that information with scientists. To deliver the advice the public wants, Orben says, will require "a very difficult ethical conversation on data sharing. I don't think we can shy away from it much longer." Till then, parents struggling with how much screen time is O.K. for their children might benefit from trying, as researchers are, to get a more detailed picture of that behavior. "Ask your kids: 'What are you doing on there? What makes you feel good? What makes you feel bad?' " says Michaeline Jensen, of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She was an author of a study in August showing that on days when teenagers use more technology, they were no more likely to report problems like depressive symptoms or inattention than on days when they used less. "Even an hour a day, that could be particularly problematic - or enriching."

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Is Screen Time Really Bad for Kids? (Published 2019)

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Studies Show The first iPhone was introduced in 2007; just over a decade later, in 2018, a Pew survey found that 95 percent of teenagers had access to a smartphone, and 45 percent said they were online "almost constantly." When researchers began trying to gauge the impact of all this "screen time" on adolescent mental health, some reported alarming results.