> 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.