A friend of mine who is a med school professor read the full paper and informed me that:<p>"<i>There was no statistical significant association between ScreenQ and cognitive score when the analysis accounted for income.</i>"<p>I wonder if the journalists didn't read the full paper, or if they read it but decided to publish these two paragraphs, which give the impression that the physical results are tied to cognitive performance.<p>> <i>After controlling for age, gender and income, the children with higher ScreenQ scores had lower measures of structural integrity and myelination, especially in tracts involved with language and literacy skills.<p>The researchers also tested the children cognitively, looking at measures of language and early literacy. The results of the cognitive tests correlated well with the children’s screen exposure; the children with higher screen exposure had poorer expressive language and did worse on tests of language processing speed, like rapidly naming objects.</i>
This study had like 45 participants... how does one control for other variables with such a small population? Keep in mind ScreenQ is just a fancy name for a survey geared towards screen usage. It’s hard to think that income has something to do with this.<p>I grew up in a household where my sister and I were beneficiaries of a high earning father. My mother stayed home with us and never let us watch TV. Then my brother came along and when he was 3 and I was 7, my father lost his business. Almost overnight, our lives changed, and I recall walking home from school (this was surprisingly common in Queens in 1995) and immediately plopping down in front of the TV with my brother while both my parents worked.<p>It wasn’t until I had a child of my own when my mother told us how she painfully remembers having to make this choice: “we had no money, and we couldn’t afford a caretaker. On the one hand, we could have lived in worse conditions, and I would have bored you to death. On the other hand, there was 0% chance of vacations and showing you all various cultures- but with cable TV, you all had a better chance of acquiring culture.”<p>Conclusion: I didn’t get much screen time until about 7. My brother got a lot of it from 3. Let’s just say the data (n=3) shows that there is a positive correlation in cognitive development for the 1 of us who watched excessive TV around pre-school age vs. the others. I will never let my kids watch as much TV as my brother did when I was 3, but this is purely a function of money- I’m very fortunate to make good money and able to throw $60k a year on daycare + activities + nanny to provide entertainment away from the TV. By extension, Money is the causal factor.
"The median screen time per day was an hour and a half, but the range was from none to 12 hours."<p>I think that a parent that just stuffs a tablet into their young child's hands and then lets them use it for up to twelve hours was not ready to have kids: either emotionally or in terms of how they prioritize the various things in their lives. And in such (hopefully) extreme cases, all kinds of developmental problems would seem like the natural consequence. Kids need their parents. It is just that simple (and difficult, at times).
I wonder if it’s actually the screens themselves, or the disengagement of the parent where screens fill the void?
Did TV do the same thing two decades ago?
I am very concerned when I see research like this.<p>I feel that unless it is funded to test 》10,000 participants, you wont arrive at a sensible conclusion because of the amount of variables involved.<p>I can imagine kids that get a lot of attention, play with other kids, etc, are going to spend less time in front of a screen. You might really just be measuring loneliness by proxy.<p>I also feel the tragedy is not money, its freedom. My parents were free to roam the whole village from the age of 8, would get into all kinds of trouble, 'borrow' and ride random horses they found in the field, etc. And that was normal.<p>These days kids often experience no freedom till late teens, or possibly university.<p>This is a well known phenomenon across the western world. You can easily find tons of research on the subject.<p><a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children...</a>
My wife and I were watching videos by Dr Gabor Maté last night - he has some strong opinions on child development and addiction (inc. social media addiction). I'd highly recommend watching them if you are a parent.