Using EEG to try to say something about executive function has about as much legitimacy as a horoscope does about how my day will go. It's amazing this passed JAMA's review to be published.
What? They've changed massively. The displays are different sizes, they're made of different materials, they're more portable, they're more interactive, the colors are brighter, the resolution is better. Our current generation of screens are ubiquitous in a way that TV was not, and they are qualitatively different. Surely the effect on our brains could be different. Not saying that this particular study is great but I don't understand how anyone can dismiss this line of thinking as nothing more than the same moral panic Socrates once had about books, or whatever. Have you not noticed changes in your own attention span, memory, and thought processes since the advent of smartphones and tablets?
It’s a long stretch to say they are equivalent for sure.
If nothing else they deserve to be studied for effects rather than dismiss it as “yet another moral panick”
I have never owned a smart phone or tablet. I use a dumb phone (Nokia 6030) and desktop (or laptop) computers. Smartphones and tablets are terrible computers, not because they have magic screen powers to influence your brain but because they have limited volume for heat dissipation/energy storage, limited network capability due to radio power constraints and random round trip time, terrible IO, locked down software, and generally are ankle bracelet like tracking devices with no way to remove the battery.
What? From TFA:
> EEG data over the midfrontal and parietal regions have been used to delineate potential neural mechanisms of attention and executive function
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1087054717718263
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-95848-9_...
They didn't just look at EEG results either
> Objective executive function assessments were administered using the Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment, second edition (NEPSY-II)
...whereas there are no scientific studies that have shown support for the accuracy of horoscopes. Any specific criticisms besides the generic "moral panic" that gets posted on every article like this?
I do think there's been a substantial change in child-targeted media over the years. In the days of broadcast only tv, you couldn't turn the tv on at any time of day and expect to find children's programming. The advent of cable and home video players changed that, but not everybody had cable and not everybody chose to buy kids show recordings. Parents could make those decisions occaisionally and then be stuck with them, rather than having to fight a continuous battle of self-control.
Other big changes occurred with the rise of children's programming on youtube and the invention of smartphones. Basically in less than 100 years we've gone from no childrens screen media exising at all to an unlimited quantity available for free in every adult's pocket 24 hours a day.
Even into the late '90s, I recall people being disgusted and scandalized at rumors that so-and-so spends all day playing computer games. Now that everyone has their own personalized screen wherever they go, attitudes are somewhat different.
I wonder why I was required to sit 1.5 meters away from the screen a generation after TV entered the home. Do modern kids sit this far away from tablets?
Kids in the 12-18 month range don't stay in the crib or a lap all day.
[0] https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/child-growth/c...
Did I just miss the other analyses?
Assuming I didn't, is it too cynical of me to infer that they ran the numbers for the other data points but found no relationship? Suggesting that screen use after age 20 months or so is substanitially less harmful?
[0] Quoting from the paper: "When their child was aged 12 months, parents were asked to report the amount of time on average that the child spent on screens ... . Parents were asked the same question on their child’s screen time at 5 time points between ages 12 months and 54 months."
A lot of the programming for kids is extremely low value - nothing of educational value, poor dialog, poor social skills/manners or violence, etc. There are even problems with the pacing a lot of times where it seems like the show is so fast compared to real life. No wonder you can't pay attention in a slow paced classroom when you're conditioned to have a 10 second attention span. I can even see some of this with my wife. She can't stand any sort of slow burn or intellectual movies, documentaries, etc. She just can't focus for that long if it's not fast paced. You can even see the general difference in pace from older movies or TV shows (like black and white old) and today.
- screen time was reported by parents at 12 months
- television was the only screen time experienced by the vast majority of subjects (they explain that this was around 2010, before handheld devices were ubiquitous)
- they found that at 9 years old, the children who had had more screen time at 12 months had worse attention and executive functioning at 9 years
- EEG correlates at 18 months explained some of those differences at 9 years
- this is in Singapore btw
What blew me away was that in this cohort, the average (average!) reported TV time for the 12-month-olds time was 2 hours a day!
I wouldn't be surprised that ADHD parents would give their ADHD children access to screen earlier (as screens are hypnotic and thus have some calming effect, so, eh, life's experience?).
I'd probably change HN title: study says it's associated, but title suggest there's causation.
And man. Screens. Addiction and disability were never the goal. :(
She and her peers from that life were pretty set (since the mid-70's) that putting children younger than 12 or so in front of 'screen media' had negative affects on social and cognitive development.
The rationale, as far as I understood it, is that young kids are voracious learners and screen media at it's best is a shallow and hyper focused projection of the day-to-day reality experienced by humans.
Thus, any time spent on screen media equates to lost training time/data which is always a negative if you are trying to build a general purpose human being.
Books which required effort to comprehend were fine, but interaction with peers, older humans and the outside world was preferable to all else.
EEG readings to prove things about executive function may suck, but the conclusion still seems somewhat intuitive.
I have to wonder if they don't have the correlation reversed, ie, parents who park their kids in front of screens at a younger age (because of disinterest) read less to them and provide a less stimulating and engaging environment for their children.
