Screen Time at Age 1 Year and Communication, Problem-Solving Developmental Delay
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We are adamant that he not watch advertising or make heavy use of recommendation algorithms and have explained why and what they are and what the difference is, but he’s welcome to watch as many pre-downloaded Dr Binocs videos as he likes (for example).
All that said, his daily chores include getting the eggs from the chicken coop, weeding the garden and the heavy “screen time” season is winter when our days are very short and wet.
My son gets a few dozen minutes of Youtube kids as a treat if he has done well. The in-built timer asks you to solve a simple multiplication problem to add more time: he has gotten remarkably well at doing those even though he hasn't had multiplication at school yet. Now I am pretending that I am not seeing him solve those problems!
If anybody here works at Youtube kids: please add division!
Division, bah!
solve the Riemann hypothesis
One advantage: when the iPad "decides" it's time out instead of me or my wife, he is somehow a lot more ready to accept it! With both our kids we only started allowing them to watch TV/use screens at around 2 years of age using roughly the above formula.
I know at least a dozen other people my age that had the same experience in my country. I think what you do with the screentime matters a lot.
(Unfortunately, knowing German hasn't been all that useful outside of hanging out with people online.)
They will make sounds and then show what they're doing. Over time you associate the words with activities.
I think a critical part is "no subtitles" so that your brain has to do the work to try to figure out what's being said.
My comment wasn’t disagreeing with you, it’s entirely dependant on the viewers ability to be passive with the comment.
Engaging is definitely qualifying as other types of content.
It probably was in the 1-2 (maybe 3) age range though based on what my parents have said.
With the right personal, deliberate tuning aligned recommendation engines would be amazing tools!
Edit: Think e.g. Spotify Discover Weekly but for everything and more tuneable
But it turns out video consumption can be made even more passive. Sure, a video plays whether you're paying attention or not, but at least you need to select the next video. Recommendation engines make this more passive by suggesting next videos. TikTok goes even further: you don't even need to select anything, just choose when to watch whatever's next.
In short, I agree with your taxonomy, but would extend it based on passive versus active consumption.
I’m hoping they become hyper aware of advertisements as they grow older because they are going to continue being embedded in everything
A real challenge is the toy based YouTube videos.
Now my six year old daughter trolls me, saying “I love the ads” and refuses to let me press SKIP AD if we are watching a YT video together.
Sigh, why does it always have to be about you? Why can't blanket statements exist for the greater good of the general public people. I can 100% agree that we should never create laws.
It's simple and easy to understand and if individuals choose to do educational things w/ their screens then awesome! But you're the exception and removing the messaging is way more harmful than letting the "blank statement" exist.
I remember that back then schools and TV shows were all pushing this idea that all screen time was harmful for kids and to not let them have more than an hour or two a day.
It may have made some more sense than nowadays since CRTs were more common back then and seemed to strain the eyes more, but the lack of differentiation between actually productive screen time and plain old replaceable entertainment caused a ton of friction in my family as I was growing up.
In comparison, with my currently 5 year old niece and 1 year old nephew (more visible in the niece of course), having access to productive screen time has been pretty impressive for her development, with her having learned the alphabet, developed a decent vocabulary, learned addition enough to even reason about numbers for which she hadn't memorized the answer, and even picking up on some multiplication, all before starting school.
Directed TV/PC time can turbocharge learning: khan academy, scratch, or math maze (put together by another HNer, thx!) https://gogamewise.com/games/math-maze-2/
Assuming responsibility and having boundaries is hard, but admitting you have problems in those areas will set you free.
Maybe you're the ones too set in your opinion to consider anyone else's?
They all sound like rationalisation of behaviour that the person making the argument exhibits. I don't think anyone making these arguments _doesn't_ exhibit the behaviour they're defending.
Think about how emotionally invested someone has to be to say "No this study on _one year old babies_ being negatively effected is nonsense, because it doesn't negatively effect 12 year olds" — of course I'm heavily paraphrasing for effect, but just read some of the comments above.
By default, why are you assuming that screens for under 2-year-olds are good? What is your evidence here? We have a lot of evidence that it's bad, maybe it's not perfect evidence, but since we don't _any_ evidence to the contrary, it seems bad faith to believe otherwise or intellectual laziness.
For older kids there is a lot of nuance. But in the first 12 months the evidence is pretty clear.
The research is largely undifferentiated, and overwhelmingly (maybe even entirely, for good ethical reasons) is observational studies that, even if they were able to distinguish between a differentiated relationship and an undifferentiated one would be unable to distinguish between, in <1 year olds, screen time causing developmental delays and conditions which cause developmental delays also causing behavioral differences which lead parents who respond to how things affect their children's behavior to be less likely to curtail screen time.
In other words, are you saying there are no such evidence as parent asserted?
They are directly opposed: you have to have differentiation in the research to distinguish between a differentiated and undifferentiated effect.
> In other words, are you saying there are no such evidence as parent asserted?
I am stating a basis for my skepticism that there is sufficient basis for what he claims the research clearly shows, in that AFAICT the research is weak on both whether there is a differentiated association and not of the type that would be able to make strong statements about the causality of any association, differentiated by type of screen time or not, that it discovered.
In your examples you're also heavily involved in all his video gaming. I don't know that that's true of every kid playing games.
Obviously, there is a lot of variance here, and Candy Crush or whatever 3 years are playing these days probably doesn't have as much benefit as some story driven game with important text dialogue and battle mechanics. But even playing Candy Crush is probably better than watching Candy Crush.
I was a bit confused reading your comment because I struggled to imagine a 1yo engaging in a meaningful way to BotW or Oregon Trail, let alone learning to read.
Obviously Idiocracy levels or qualities of screentime are demonic to practically any age group, but I don't really think what you present is controversial. If anything, not letting older kids consume at least some media seems pretty weird to the populus.
But for literal babies? My alarms go off.
> It’s like people feel the need to defend their own beliefs
I think so, and not only their beliefs but also their own addictions to screens. It's like every time something comes up about alcohol use. Same thing.
"Oh, am I in that group that's deemed bad? To the rationalisation-mobile!"
The study itself acknowledged this, saying, "a meta-analysis showed that greater screen use was associated with decreased language skills, whereas screen time spent on educational programs was associated with increased language skills," and, "A limitation is that the information we collected did not allow us to separate educational screen time from other types of screen time."
You're right that babies won't be able to engage with games or puzzles for 4+ hours per day, but that is not what others in this thread are suggesting. The criticism I'm seeing is that a parent interested in educating their children shouldn't throw out all screen time just because most other parents use screen time poorly.
Even the AAP allows for screen time after age 2. I’m not sure why people are bringing up irrelevant arguments instead of engaging with the article itself.
As I pointed out, the article itself mentioned that similar studies showed that screen time was bad when they didn't control for the quality of screen time for older ages, which reversed when they did; and the article itself said that it was a problem with this study that it didn't.
> Even the AAP allows for screen time after age 2.
My anecdotes show that this recommendation is wrong. You can successfully use screen-based education before the age of 2.
I presented the anecdotes because they are the only evidence I know of that does control for parental negligence in screen time for very young children.
I’m not sure why you keep bringing up older kids here or citing your own anecdotes (which again aren’t research no matter how hard you dress it up). But I seriously doubt the kids you cited are under 2, and even if they are there’s no way of knowing the other detrimental effects- how good is their socialization? Their eyesight? How do we know they wouldn’t learn how to read anyway with dedicated parents and books? Those questions are what makes something research and not anecdotes.
And again, 1-2 is very different than under 12 months. Can you give any examples of ‘high-quality’ screen time in babies? I know “Ms. Rachel” is popular but I don’t know of any research backing that up. What outcomes are you measuring?
That's not what the study showed. It showed that on average, 4+ hours of screen time for babies is correlated with a negative outcome. Would you also say that on average, ice cream sales has a large effect on shark attacks? Then why do you insist on ignoring the actual causal effect between parental neglect and high screen time and poor educational outcomes?
> How do we know they wouldn’t learn how to read anyway with dedicated parents and books? [etc.]
You're holding my anecdotes to a higher standard than the research you're citing. How do we know these neglected children wouldn't be equally impaired had they not been put in front of a screen?
> Can you give any examples of ‘high-quality’ screen time in babies?
I already did under this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37222954). Children younger than one can start to learn to read from apps that help them learn letter sounds and associate words with pictures and actually read at age 1.
While the title is not incorrect, I believe it's incomplete without that line. Further, the "more than 4 hours" group was unbounded with little insight for how much more than 4 hours was median.
I'd be very curious to see the home environment associated with this study. At some point, this seems to be less about screen time and more about lack of engagement and active involvement with your kids.
If you have a full-time job, you may only have 4 hours of awake time with your kids. With 4+ hours of screen time, that could very well mean little to no involvement with your kids.
My daughter has a fair bit of screen time. Very little of it is entirely passive.
The closest she gets to passive is watching Frozen and Frozen II, her latest favorites. She’s constantly explaining the movie to us, singing, dancing, and otherwise more using it as a launching pad for activities than just passively consuming it.
When she watches other things it usually involves myself or my wife discussing the show with her as it’s going. Asking questions, making observations, etc. She’s practicing and developing understanding and communication skills.
When she’s playing on a tablet, it’s usually stuff like Duo ABC where she’s learning and then demonstrating understanding of letters and words or games where she’s playing with the sort of equivalent of a virtual interactive dollhouse and is exercising her imagination making up stories and social interactions and then relaying the stories to us.
We don’t really pay attention to how _much_ screen time she gets as much as what she’s getting out of it. I definitely think she’s had more than her share of “4+ hours” days. But any study that doesn’t differentiate what we’re doing from a kid being left unattended and ignored with some YouTube recommendations all day seems to be… incomplete if I’m being polite.
> At some point, this seems to be less about screen time and more about lack of engagement and active involvement with your kids.
When we were told, as many parents are, “no screen time / limited screen time for kids” I didn’t accept it at face value but instead went digging for what the justification for this advice was.
From what I found you hit the nail on the head. The damage comes from the lack of interaction. Small children are absolute sponges and need to be around and observing and interacting with older children or adults to have the opportunity to sponge up how to be a human and then practice those skills. Plopping them in front of a TV doesn’t accomplish that. Especially when they’re quite young they’re not even able to comprehend the TV as much more than colors and sounds and get nothing.
for e.g. do you play sesame street, etc type content on the ipad ?
In those tough times: 1) Baby Einsten videos. Young ones love them! 2) the equivalent of Mr. Rogers, but in a foreign language that we speak at home. We mostly allow 10min-45min of screen time, but carefully orchestated around learning. No english TV is allowed unless its directly related to complex learning (as in, physics etc).
Since during sickness the "cat was out of the bag" with respect to what the TV does , then we allowed a bit of YT.
I prefer immersion, for example:At 4yrs old we brought in khan academy (Kids), scratch, or math maze 2 (put together by another HNer, yay!) https://gogamewise.com/games/math-maze-2/
The latter allowed our 5 yr old to do heavy multiplication and fractions. Our 7yr old is already putting together complex multi-sprite projects on scratch. Our go-to has been Chesskid and Khan AcademyKids, but they will be graduating from Khan Kids soon, so we will see.
We don't allow youtube except for a few obscure shows with no violence, plus 3 popular ones: Blippi, PawPatrol, Octonauts. We only allow watching in foreign languages.
We tried cosmos and kurtgesagt but the shows go too deep into existential questions and caused anxiety in children. That was a big mistake.
One question - when u say "allow watching in foreign languages".do u mean watch in ur native non-english language...or any language where the kid cannot understand spoken and just sees the visuals ?
If we spoke only 1, i'd seriously consider putting shows only in a foreign language of your choice. we haven't done that since they are working on native fluency on the 3 that we speak.
I've constantly worried about how to get the kid to learn the non-mainstream language. Now i get it!
Also, don't worry about "speech development" (i.e late talking). Your kids may be slightly behind peers in speech, but they will catch up by age 2-3. Kids are like sponges, they learn everything quickly.
>Covariates > >We selected covariates that may affect the association between children’s screen time and developmental delay based on previous studies.7-18 Children’s sex was garnered from birth records. Information about maternal age at delivery and parity (nulliparous, or primiparous or multiparous) was gathered from medical records. We divided maternal age into 4 categories (<25, 25-29, 30-35, or >35 years). Information on annual household income (<¥4 000 000 [US <$28 400], ¥4 000 000-5 999 999 [US $28 400-$42 599], or ≥¥6 000 000 [US ≥$42 600]) was gathered from the midpregnancy questionnaire. Data on maternal educational attainment (high school graduate or less, junior college or vocational college graduate, university graduate or above, or other), child living with grandparents or other adults (yes or no), and maternal postpartum depression and maternal bonding disorder were gathered using the questionnaire at 1 year post partum. Maternal postpartum depression was assessed using the Japanese version of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS).28-30 In Japan, an EPDS score of 9 or higher is widely used as the cutoff point for screening of postpartum depression, with previous studies reporting sensitivity of 75% and 82% and specificity of 93% and 95% at 1 month post partum.29,30 Maternal bonding disorder was assessed using the Japanese version of the Mother-to-Infant Bonding Scale31-33 (MIBS-J), and the cutoff point was set at 5. A previous study of Japanese mothers with 1-month-old infants showed that an MIBS-J cutoff point of 4 or 5 correctly classified approximately 90% of pathological maternal bonding disorders.33
They found association with >4 hours screen time and development delays and then claim this is a dose response. But arguably it just seems that if kids are spending more than 4 hours away from humans then they actually just have a lot more issues going on in their household.
What am I missing here?
It’s a cheaper babysitter and it’s portable!
It's disappointing--and kinda fishy--when they still get lumped together.
I’ve seen my toddler completely zone out on a show and on the same day, transfer both scientific and socio-emotional concepts from the show to the real world. It really is mind-blowing as a parent.
Now being more aware (and having an M.Ed) I can easily design everyday learning activities based on the handful of shows I’ve (since) vetted.
At the same time, I have great empathy for parents who don’t have the privilege of being present due to work, multiple kids mental health, or otherwise. And I don’t want to judge those parents, understanding that I could be in a similar position with a few different outcomes.
what have you vetted? am a new parent, so trying to learn.
The last place I would want my children to get socio-emotionql concepts is YouTube...
For the USA or EU, I can imagine many confounding factors. Let's pick one example: income. Wealthy families can hire a nanny. Even if the nanny lets the child watch something on screen for the same amount of time as an unattended child, it's different as the nanny can choose more appropriate videos or explain some context.
4 hours is A LOT of screen time
the conflation of "watching cocomelon" with "performing a task or even a simple game" seems too broad to be characterized as one metric.
The study involving 7,097 children examined the relationship between the amount of screen time exposure and developmental outcomes in children at the ages of 2 and 4 years. Here's a breakdown of the key findings:
# Demographics of the Study Participants:
There were 7,097 children in the study. 3,674 (51.8%) were boys and 3,423 (48.2%) were girls.
# Screen Time Exposure:
The study looked at the amount of screen time exposure per day for the children.
* 4,340 children (48.5%) had less than 1 hour of screen time per day.
* 2,095 children (29.5%) had 1 to less than 2 hours of screen time per day.
* 1,272 children (17.9%) had 2 to less than 4 hours of screen time per day.
* 290 children (4.1%) had 4 or more hours of screen time per day.
# Developmental Outcomes at Age 2:
The study found that children's screen time was associated with a higher risk of developmental delay in various domains at the age of 2 years.
* Communication: The odds of developmental delay increased as screen time increased. For example, compared to children with less than 1 hour of screen time, children with 1 to less than 2 hours had an odds ratio of 1.61 for developmental delay.
* Fine Motor: Children with 4 or more hours of screen time had an odds ratio of 1.74 for developmental delay compared to those with less than 1 hour.
* Problem-Solving: Similar trends were observed; longer screen time was associated with higher odds of developmental delay.
* Personal and Social Skills: Children with 4 or more hours of screen time had an odds ratio of 2.10 for developmental delay.
Developmental Outcomes at Age 4:
The study also looked at developmental outcomes at age 4.
* Communication: Children with 2 to less than 4 hours of screen time had an odds ratio of 1.64 for developmental delay compared to those with less than 1 hour. Children with 4 or more hours had an odds ratio of 2.68.
* Problem-Solving: Children with 4 or more hours of screen time had an odds ratio of 1.91 for developmental delay.
In summary, the study suggests that increased screen time in children is associated with a higher risk of developmental delays in various domains such as communication, fine motor skills, problem-solving, and personal and social skills. These findings indicate a potential link between excessive screen time and developmental outcomes in young children.
Who cares about developmental delays at age 2 and 4, without putting it into context for how kids perform as adults.
So what if kids can no longer do well in a government institution designed entirely to babysit and to train factory workers?
Abortion is now illegal, and you don’t get access to any childcare until age ~5, and now you better not dare let kids watch TV or else you will be ridiculed by society.
Good grief.
Well for better or worse, basically our entire society for everyone who doesn't have a trust fund relies on one's ability to both complete that government institution's trainings, along with a subsequent, quite similarly structured public or private institution's trainings directly after, after which we will enter a contract with another entity that in turn is structured similarly in order to earn the right to live.
And we can discuss at length why this is a bad and limiting system that fails to recognize the diversity of the student body that passes through it, however failing to reform the institutions first and shrugging your shoulders like "well that sucks anyway what do we care what it thinks" is akin to telling people in a burning building to make for a rusted out derelict fire escape on the grounds that the last time the place was on fire, it held okay even though that was 20 years ago and several steps have fallen out since then.
I also appreciate the researchers were not focused on identifying every problem children face, and that understanding causal relationships between behavior and outcomes is also important.
However, specific to the issue of screen time, it's my opinion that it is completely overblown, mirroring the issue of my day "violence in media and it's impact on children."
Having two children myself who were developmentally delayed (who did not get any screen time at young ages) what helped was access to early intervention. Research like this just feeds into negativity and judgement parents face from society.
That's right, here you go:
- Children with developmental delays twenty years later: where are they? How are they? (https://doi.org/10.1352/0895-8017(2004)109%3C219:CWDDTY%3E2....) - "Findings documented a broad range of outcomes, with some young adults leading independent and productive lives, whereas the majority were un- or underemployed, living with and financially dependent upon their families, and socially isolated."
- Developmental Delays in Executive Function from 3 to 5 Years of Age Predict Kindergarten Academic Readiness (https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219415619754): "Compared to children who exhibited typical trajectories of executive function, the delayed group exhibited substantial impairments in multiple indicators of academic readiness in kindergarten"
- Developmental delay in early childhood is associated with visual-constructive skills at school age in a Brazilian cohort (https://doi.org/10.1186/S41155-016-0048-2): "Developmentally delayed children showed lower IQs, lower scores, and more errors in copy and memory Benton Visual Retention Test (BVRT) tasks when compared to typically developed children"
- Early Developmental Delays: Neuropsychological Sequelae and Subsequent Diagnoses: (https://doi.org/10.1080/09084282.2011.643963): "The Delay group had a significantly lower Full-Scale IQ (FSIQ), and when controlling for IQ (analysis of covariance), the Delay group had significantly lower scores on measures of immediate and delayed visual memory skills (CMT)."
- Young children with developmental delays as young adults: predicting developmental and personal-social outcomes (https://doi.org/10.1352/0895-8017%282006%29111%5B263%3AYCWDD...): "Developmental status at 6 to 7 was a strong predictor of developmental status in young adulthood"
Feel free to conduct your own research starting from these articles.