Tuesday, December 11, 2018

A Real i-Problem



I think I’ve finally seen some definitive research on a matter of concern for me. It’s the amount of screen time our youngest children get with i-phones, i-pads….computers. I fear that young parents are using electronics as a pacifier….and it is not a healthy decision.

A study reported on by “60 Minutes” on Sunday night looked at 11,000 nine-to-ten-year-olds for a decade to see how childhood experiences impact the brain and affect emotional health. The data suggests that the repeated exposure to tech screens is not a good practice.

Researchers did brain scans of kids who do over seven hours of daily screen time a day. Granted----that’s a big number…but they detected a premature thinning of the brain cortex, the outermost layer that processes information. That’s on the physical side…

On the mental side, here’s the bottom line….early results of this study show kids who spend more than two hours a day score lower on thinking and language tests. No real surprise here. They don’t have to interact with the real world. No conversation with parents, siblings….just totally affixed to a computer.

I admit, back in the day, I used the wind-up baby swing on various occasions as a way of pacifying three loud sons.
More studies will follow. But I think it advisable for parents of young children to pay heed….and limit their kids’ screen time.

Here’s a novel idea. 

Read them a book.

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