More screen time is linked to poorer child development, study shows

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There is a link between the amount of time children spend on screens and their development , a new study shows, with poorer outcomes seen in learning, speech and emotional regulation among those who spend longer on them.

Researchers reviewed decades of research on the impact of screen time on child development, which looked at nearly three million children aged 18 and under from 64 countries, senior author Sheri Madigan, a professor of psychology at the University of Calgary, Canada, told CNN on Tuesday.

“We found that overall, greater screen time was associated with poorer outcomes for children across several areas of development, including how they think, learn, speak, behave, and regulate emotions,” she said.

“Most of the associations were relatively small, like most other predictors of child development, but small does not mean meaningless, particularly when we’re talking about an exposure like screen time, which is nearly universal in children’s lives.”

Madigan added that newer studies presented evidence of stronger associations between screen time and child development than older ones.

One possible explanation is that screen time has changed, she said.

“Twenty years ago, a child might have spent an hour watching a television program. Today, devices are everywhere, carried in our hands, and they are also interactive, engaging, and responsive to the individual,” Madigan said.

“We need to better understand not just how children interact with technology, but how technology interacts with children.”

Nonetheless, she said parents shouldn’t conclude that “screens are inherently bad for children” after reading the study but should pay attention to how they are used.

“Technology is a big part of children’s lives and digital technologies can be wonderful tools to support children’s learning, creativity, and connection,” she said.

“However, they can also crowd out what children really need to thrive, such as sleep, physical activity, human connection, learning, and play.”

As a start, rather than getting rid of devices completely, parents could identify an area or time period in which screens get in the way of what children need.

“For many families, a good place to start is having device-free dinners or creating a regular time of day when everyone puts devices aside and connects with one another,” she added.

Parents shouldn’t be left to manage screen time alone, and governments also have a role to play, said Madigan.

“Governments should treat children’s screen use the way they treat other factors that we know are associated with children’s well-being, including through screen-use guidance for families, education, research, and ensuring children are safeguarded from online harms,” she said.

“When governments do this, it helps signal to parents, schools, and technology companies that screen use is something worth taking seriously.”

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Next, Madigan and her fellow researchers will investigate which children are more affected by different digital experiences and why.

“Because our findings are correlational, they don’t prove that screens cause these developmental outcomes. While it’s possible that screen use may contribute to difficulties, it is also possible that children who are struggling turn to screens more,” she said.

“Disentangling the direction of these associations is therefore an important future direction.”

Tatiana Íñiguez Berrozpe, senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, who was not involved in the study, said it was “a methodologically very sound article” that draws on an “extremely large” sample .

In a comment released via the Science Media Centre (SMC), she said that “the main findings confirm what research has been showing for years and which puts the current media and social moral panic surrounding the relationship between young people and screens into perspective: there is an association between screen time and poorer indicators of mental health and academic performance, but it is very small.”

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Esther van Sluijs, professor of behavioral epidemiology at Loughborough University in the UK, who was also not involved in the study, said that “this is a high-quality study,” with some caveats.

“It cannot draw robust conclusions about specific types of screen use, like social media use or gaming, as there was not enough data to study this,” she said in a statement published by SMC.

“We should therefore be cautious in interpreting these results in the context of young people’s current screen use habits.”

The study was published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics .

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一项新的研究表明，儿童使用电子屏幕的时间与其发育之间存在联系，使用电子屏幕时间越长，儿童在学习、语言和情绪调节方面的表现就越差。

加拿大卡尔加里大学心理学教授、资深作者谢里·马迪根周二告诉 CNN，研究人员回顾了数十年来关于屏幕时间对儿童发展影响的研究，这些研究调查了来自 64 个国家的近 300 万名 18 岁及以下的儿童。

“我们发现，总体而言，屏幕时间越长，儿童在多个发展领域（包括思维、学习、说话、行为和情绪调节）的表现就越差，”她说。

“大多数关联性都相对较小，就像其他大多数儿童发展预测因素一样，但小并不意味着没有意义，尤其是在我们谈论像屏幕时间这样的暴露因素时，屏幕时间几乎是儿童生活中普遍存在的。”

马迪根补充说，较新的研究表明，屏幕时间和儿童发展之间的关联性比早期的研究更强。

她表示，一种可能的解释是屏幕使用时间发生了变化。

“二十年前，一个孩子可能只会花一个小时看电视节目。而如今，电子设备无处不在，我们随身携带，而且这些设备还具有互动性、吸引力，并能根据个人需求做出反应，”马迪根说道。

“我们需要更好地了解的不仅是儿童如何与科技互动，还有科技如何与儿童互动。”

不过，她表示，家长在阅读了这项研究后，不应该得出“屏幕本身对孩子有害”的结论，而应该注意屏幕的使用方式。

“科技是儿童生活中非常重要的一部分，数字技术可以成为支持儿童学习、创造力和人际关系的绝佳工具，”她说。

“然而，它们也可能挤占儿童真正需要的成长所需，例如睡眠、体育活动、人际交往、学习和玩耍。”

首先，与其完全禁止孩子使用电子设备，家长可以先找出屏幕会妨碍孩子做自己想做的事情的领域或时间段。

她补充说：“对于许多家庭来说，一个好的开始是进行无电子设备晚餐，或者每天设定一个固定的时间，让每个人都放下电子设备，彼此交流。”

马迪根表示，不应让家长独自管理孩子的屏幕时间，政府也应发挥作用。

她表示：“各国政府应该像对待其他与儿童福祉相关的因素一样对待儿童使用电子屏幕的问题，包括为家庭提供电子屏幕使用指导、开展教育和研究，以及确保儿童免受网络伤害。”

“政府这样做有助于向家长、学校和科技公司发出信号，表明屏幕使用是一个值得认真对待的问题。”

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12岁拥有智能手机的孩子，到14岁时患饮食失调症的可能性更高。

接下来，马迪根和她的研究团队将调查哪些儿童更容易受到不同数字体验的影响以及原因。

“因为我们的研究结果是相关性的，所以并不能证明屏幕会导致这些发育问题。虽然屏幕使用可能导致一些困难，但也有可能是学习有困难的孩子更多地依赖屏幕，”她说道。

“因此，厘清这些关联的方向是未来一个重要的研究方向。”

西班牙萨拉戈萨大学社会学高级讲师塔蒂亚娜·伊尼格斯·贝罗兹佩（Tatiana Íñiguez Berrozpe）并未参与这项研究，但她表示这是一篇“方法论上非常严谨的文章”，并采用了“极其庞大”的样本。

她在通过科学媒体中心 (SMC) 发表的评论中表示，“主要研究结果证实了多年来的研究结果，并使当前媒体和社会对年轻人与屏幕之间关系的道德恐慌有了正确的认识：屏幕时间与心理健康和学业成绩较差的指标之间存在关联，但这种关联非常小。”

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人工智能程序可能会干扰儿童时期的一些重要学习内容。以下是家长可以采取的措施。

英国拉夫堡大学行为流行病学教授埃丝特·范·斯卢伊斯（Esther van Sluijs）也未参与这项研究，她表示“这是一项高质量的研究”，但也有一些需要注意的地方。

“由于没有足够的数据进行研究，因此无法就特定类型的屏幕使用（如社交媒体使用或游戏）得出可靠的结论，”她在SMC发布的一份声明中表示。

“因此，我们在解读这些结果时，应该考虑到年轻人目前的屏幕使用习惯。”

该研究发表在《美国医学会杂志·儿科学》上。