Childhood, Past versus Present

        We all know how integral technology to our lives. Even little kids, who don’t need to communicate with colleagues and peers in urgent academic or professional ways, use technology for entertainment all the time. While I’m not discrediting Cocomelon or anything like that- there were lots of great shows I watched as a kid that shaped who I am now- I grew up with many other ways to entertain myself as well, things that I’m very grateful to have had access to. This essay isn’t a ploy to say “screens = bad! Outside = good!”: I’m a part of Gen Z, for god’s sake. I spend a good chunk of my time online, too. But for kids who still don’t know who they are, don’t know what they like, and haven’t had a chance to find their most fitting form of expression (I’ll get to this later), I wonder how their method of entertainment will change their development, personalities, and life experiences down the road. While I’m sure these programs are educational to some extent, most of the content they may see online isn’t. When we give our kids technology to entertain them in their early years, will they grow up to be fundamentally different from us? And, more importantly, will these differences be negative? I looked into some recent studies exploring this to share some information as well as my unsolicited opinion.

        The first thing I wondered about was cognitive development. The young brain is forming new synaptic connections at an explosive rate, and these connections are directly connected to the activities you do and the information you learn. As I suspected, numerous studies have shown that excessive screen time during early childhood can have detrimental effects on cognitive development. Researchers at the University of Calgary conducted a study (Barr et al., 2019) that found a negative correlation between screen time and cognitive development in children aged 2 to 5 years. Excessive screen exposure has been linked to reduced attention spans, impaired executive functioning, and lower language and literacy skills. This comes with a caveat- EVERY generation says that their kids have a lower attention span than them. It’s possible that Gen Alpha is simply adapting to pay attention to what they’re used to, i.e., content in an online format. However, the rest of the evidence is clear.

        The next aspect I wondered about is social and emotional skills. We all experienced the effects of social deprivation during the COVID pandemic. Without the required interaction in schools, workplaces, and public spaces, we all lost some of the social skills we had learned throughout our lives. I can definitely attest to this; as a high school student during the Pandemic, class of 2021, I lost a year and a half of time in high school, as well as my first year of college, to mask wearing and social distancing. Coming out of the pandemic, my own social anxiety was significantly heightened to the point of medication, and many of my friends expressed the same feelings. That’s all anecdotal, though. What does the research say? A longitudinal study published in JAMA Pediatrics (Madigan et al., 2019) demonstrated a positive association between excessive screen time and a decrease in social-emotional competence among preschoolers. Screen time, especially in isolated situations such as COVID, can impede the development of face-to-face communication skills and hinder the ability to read social cues. Social skills are a mental muscle you need to work on in order to keep them, like any other mental or physical skill. Without practice, these skills atrophize. For some kids, they had no chance to be social at all for several years, and instead had to start their social learning process years behind their older counterparts. No doubt, this will have a noticeable effect on their social development, primarily in empathetic and cooperative situations. I hope we get some studies on this in the future, as these are vital skills for healthy interpersonal relationships throughout life.

        The next aspect of this is the least of concern, unless a kid spends 8 hours a day online. We all know that screen time often leads tos sedentary behavior, which is fine in small amounts. However, as a kid grows, they need to use their bodies in a physical setting to some capacity; their bones and muscles are developing, both of which require stimuli to grow properly. A comprehensive review published in the journal Pediatric Exercise Science (LeBlanc et al., 2015) highlighted the negative impact of screen time on physical health parameters such as body composition, cardiovascular fitness, and motor skill development. As long as kids get some time every day to be active, perhaps an hour or so, their development will be stable. The part of this I’m more worried about is how kids will understand the importance of exercise. As a kid, I didn’t like being active, especially if I had the opportunity to play video games. Whenever I had access to an iPad or the like, I’d easily spend the entire day inside. Video games are more enjoyable than exercise; they don’t require any exertion, and the visual and auditory stimuli from games are more immersive than time spent outside. If kids have unlimited access to electronics, they’ll spend less time outside, straight up. This will set them up for a sedentary life later on, which will compound health issues as they age. Although we should NEVER EVER force kids to exercise due to weight concerns, exercise is crucial for gross motor skills, coordination, and overall physical well-being. There simply needs to be a balance.

        The last aspect of screen time I’d like to explore is sleep quality. This is also less important for kids, but will become much more pertinent as they age. Electronics emit blue light, we know this. Blue light disrupts the circadian rhythm in the body, which will negatively affect sleep quality. A meta-analysis of 67 studies conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics (Hale & Guan, 2015) found a strong association between screen time and inadequate sleep duration, delayed sleep onset, and poor sleep quality in children. Kids have greater sleep needs than adults, of course, so a lack of good sleep hygiene will certainly affect how they feel in school and overall. Sleep affects all of the other aspects on this list, too, so perhaps this is the most important thing to address. Establishing screen-free routines before bedtime will help kids sleep, which is essential for optimal cognitive and physical development. Maybe the answer is to take electronics away an hour before bed (which is so annoying, I know, but looking back it seems like the best thing to do). Perhaps it’s to shift the light from the screen to orange, which is a setting offered on most recent device models.

        I want to interject with my own unproven thoughts here, too. As a certified “iPad kid”, I felt somewhat addicted to video games when I was younger. My parents were strictly against screen time, so I could only get small snippets of time with friends, for the most part. Because of this, I think it became even more appealing; it was taboo, and far more interesting than running around in the hot summer sun. However, even though I didn’t like playing group sports, I had other ways to be creative and social.

        Even as an infant, my mom would put storybooks in my crib. She tells me that I’d wake up at some ungodly hour of the day, every day, and “read” for hours. Even if this was simply looking at the pictures and sounding out the alphabet, it was enough to keep me entertained for long periods of time. I also drew quite a lot; my mother is an artist, so she had plenty of materials for me to use. This hobby has persisted throughout my life, as I now sell art commissions. One of my fondest childhood memories, though, is playing with Legos. My older brother had amassed several giant containers of varied pieces, and I’d sit in our basement and build things. Some days, he would join me, showing me designs for realistic spaceships and explaining the shape of real-life plane wings. We’d build our little Lego spaceships for hours, talking and sharing parts. I watched in awe as he’d build these realistic ship models while I’d fumble with more bulky designs. I kept his creations in the basement, even when he didn’t have time to play, and tweaked the designs whenever an idea arose. Perhaps this is why we’ve both ended up in STEM careers today; perhaps we both tended to these interests anyway. In either case, I’m thankful for the time he spent with me without the use of technology.

        I can’t ignore the positive effect of screens in my life, though. Many shows that I watched in childhood, from Wild Kratts to Treehouse Masters, taught me concepts of animal biology and architecture. Mythbusters taught me to be curious and question common knowledge, and How It’s Made allowed me to consider the importance and costs of consumer goods. With the breadth of content online today, I’m sure kids get all this and more. Nevertheless, there are many toxic sides of the Internet that may be useless at best and downright traumatizing at worst (I stumbled across LiveLeak at too young an age…my eyes…), so parental supervision through middle school should be used. However, screens can be great too- I’m sure many would agree on this too- but we need to practice moderation.

        So, looking back at all of this, we might want to consider imposing some screen time rules on our kids. I still don’t think you should FORBID screens from kids- that’s just unrealistic in our world today. HOWEVER: we can see that these studies highlight the negative impact of excessive screen time on various aspects of early childhood development, including cognitive abilities, social-emotional skills, physical health, and sleep quality. Kids need time to play in a freeform, unstructured way because, ultimately, they’ll end up creating something. That’s why so many kids’ toys involve building things; the alphabet blocks, toy houses, mini construction tools, and Legos, to name a few. With these tools, kids can learn creativity and critical thinking in their own way, and perhaps get some movement as well. Even better, sharing these tools of development with other kids also helps them understand social behaviors like cooperation and listening skills. Screen time can certainly be part of a holistic childhood, but it needs a counterbalance of creative play and physical activity.

References:

• Barr, R., Lauricella, A. R., Zack, E., & Calvert, S. L. (2019). Infant and early childhood exposure to adult-directed and child-directed television programming: Relations with cognitive skills at age four. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 65(3), 263-291.

• Hale, L., & Guan, S. (2015). Screen time and sleep among school-aged children and adolescents: A systematic literature review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 21, 50-58.

• LeBlanc, A. G., Chaput, J.-P., & McFarlane, A. (2015). Active video games and health indicators in children and youth: A systematic review. Pediatric Exercise Science, 27(1), 57-65.

• Madigan, S., Browne, D., Racine, N., Mori, C., & Tough, S. (2019). Association between screen time and children’s performance on a developmental screening test. JAMA Pediatrics, 173(3), 244-250.