The Impact of Screen Time on Child Development
According to Common Sense Media, “Nearly all (98 percent) children age 8 and under live in a home with some type of mobile device, the same percentage that have a TV in the home (mobile media ownership is up from 75 percent in 2013 and 52 percent in 2011)” (2017). Electronics serve many functions to Americans in the United States. For adults’ electronics, such as smartphones, tablets, televisions, and laptops serve as devices that can be used for entertainment, communication, and work from any location. However, young children “may use media devices for a variety of educational or creative reasons, evidence suggests they are most often consuming media that is developmentally inappropriate or lacking educational content” (Sanders et al., 2016).
Screen time has developed into a significant role in individuals’ lives as devices have become more affordable and portable than ever. As a result, young children are increasingly exposed to electronic screens often because parents need something to entertain the children through everyday tasks and make the day run smoother without interruptions. This paper will discuss the effects of screen time on children’s development from age five and under in the following domains: language, social and emotional, attention maintenance, and executive functioning.
Brain development from birth to age five is a crucial period through many internal and external factors, such as genetic, nurture, and environment. According to Harvard University, these factors produce millions of new neural connections every second to further create the foundation for all future learning, behavior, and health (2018). Therefore, learning from technology cannot further a child’s development because children do not develop a symbolic understanding of their environment until after age two. Many parents believe that technology can increase development, like language and cognition, because many programs and applications advertise their products as educational for children. However, research shows the negative effects on child’s development. Children learn from real life experiences instead of time spent in front of a screen.
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A screened media device includes television, smartphones, tablets, streaming devices, computers, virtual reality devices, e-readers, laptops, game consoles, and toys that could connect to the internet. Most children utilize such devices for all kinds of activities for educational and non-educational purposes. Children can also become exposed to screened medias from background media when others are using devices while they are engaged in other daily activities. Children can be exposed to screens both actively and passively.
Active screen time “involves cognitively or physically engaging in screen-based activities, such as playing video games or completing homework on a computer” (Sweetser et al., 2012). While passive screen time is “sedentary screen-based activities and/or passively receiving screen-based information” (Sweetser et al., 2012). Nevertheless, booth types of screen time can cause negative effects to a developing child’s growth.
According to Henry Robins from Britannica, language is “a system of conventional spoken, manual, or written symbols …as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release” (2018). Language is the connection between communicating and building relationships with other individuals. It includes articulation, voice, and fluency. These characteristics encompass the product of speech. Parents often believe educational media such as DVDs and videos have positive outcomes.
However, researchers conducted a study on the effects of screen time on children’s language development from the age range of zero to three (Duch et al., 2013). In the study, the researchers asked families to complete an ASQ assessment on screen time use, play, and leisure habits of the family to examine the association between media viewing and their language developmental outcomes. The results of the study demonstrated that “children who watched more than 2 hours of television a day had increased odds of low communication scores concurrently and longitudinally” on the developmental questionnaires after accounting for the gender and parent education (Duch et al., 2013).
This data explains that children exposed to child-directed media can cause developmental delays in communication because “young children are not adept at learning words from watching television/ DVDs, making increased exposure a detriment to their language acquisition” (Duch et al., 2013).
Exposure to screen time beyond the age-appropriate recommendations is frequently associated with language delay. The amount of screen time exposure displaces opportunities for communication and engagement with people in the child’s microsystem such as family, peer groups, classroom, neighborhood, and church. The Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Model demonstrates that social interactions between the systems play significant role in the child’s development. The child and their proximal system engage and shape the child’s language. Furthermore, language has a social component that requires for the child to develop language through interactions.
As a result, children often are exposed to media on their own which causes no parent-child engagement for the child to develop language and learn from the media. Parents usually perceive educational media as beneficial to children’s language development because they think since there is langue expose with components such as vocabulary, articulation, and images that their children will absorb the knowledge. However, young children cannot be learned from screen time because children learn language from social interactions, engagement, and opportunities to hear and practice speaking with support from parents or caregivers.
According to the California Department of Education, social and emotional development is the “ability to identify and understand one’s own feelings, to accurately read and comprehend emotional states in others, to manage strong emotions and their expression in a constructive manner, to regulate one’s own behavior, to develop empathy for others, and to establish and maintain relationships” (2017). Young children learn from real life experiences within everyday environments with familiar faces.
However, parents continue to utilize electronics and screen time as a digital babysitter or pacifier, displacing time for opportunities in play with activities and engagement with their children. The effects of these actions cause difficulties for children’s abilities to self- regulate, self-sooth, sleep, and regulate their emotions. According to Radesky, Silverstein, Zuckerman, and Christakis, such difficulties would have increased media viewing due to parents utilizing electronics as a coping mechanism (2014).
Furthermore, the effects of screen time on children’s social and emotional development can be further demonstrated in a study conducted by Radesky, Silverstein, Zuckerman, and Christakis (2014). In this study, the researchers examined a checklist reported by a parent on identification of regulatory problems in infants and toddlers at nine months and two years of age.
The parents were asked to describe how many hours of technology was viewed by their child during the week and weekend at nine months and age two. Once the parents and caregivers answered, the researchers conclude that infants had poor self-regulation skills because they viewed 0.23 hours more media daily at age two. The study proved that infants and toddlers with dysregulation should utilize less screen time if the parents were more aware of the negative outcomes of technology.
Attention maintenance is encompassed with self-regulation. For children to achieve cognitive skills and development, they must be able to focus and control their attention p. This would increase the ability to perceive information, observe, and problem solve. Attention maintenance is the foundation for all executive functioning and developmental learning. Furthermore, executive functioning skill is “the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully… the brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses” (Harvard University, 2018).
Young children are not born with these sets of skills, parents and caregiver need to provide care and support for children to potentially develop the skills. Some ways parents and caregivers can provide opportunities for growth in executive functioning is by “establishing routines, modeling social behavior, and creating and maintaining supportive, reliable relationships” (Harvard University, 2018). Screen time can negatively affect attention maintenance and executive functioning because media disrupts the ability to complete and engage with tasks.
In a study conducted by Lillard and Peterson, it demonstrated children aged four that were placed in three different groups with activities such as fast-paced media, educational media, and drawing with crayons (2011). The three groups participated for nine minutes. The group with fast-paced media were presented with a video that changed scenes every eleven seconds and characters were in constant motion whereas the educational groups video changed scene on an average of 34 seconds.
The last group was given paper and crayons to engage in drawing for nine minutes. After the conditioning period, the children were asked to perform a series of executive functioning and attention maintenance tasks such as singing and motioning “head, toes, knees and shoulders” song. Once the researchers conducted the executive functioning with the children, they found that the children from the fast-paced media group performed significantly poorer than those from in the educational media and drawing groups because the fast-paced media video produced short-term effects on the children’s ability to complete the tasks given to them.
The study showed that there was no significant difference between the educational and drawing group because it was not creating long-term deficits in executive functioning like the fast-paced video was for the children in group one. This study supports the negative effects of long-term exposure of screen time on Attention Maintenance and Executive functioning.
Parents and caregiver perceive screen time to be beneficial to children’s growth at a young age because it familiarizes them with technology that they will be utilizing in the future. However, parents and caregivers play a significant role in the types of media their children view on a day to day basis. Screen time can benefit children’s learning if the children are given age-appropriate and educational applications.
For example, young children can gain knowledge by interacting with apps that encounter text, shapes, symbols, and pictures. Furthermore, teachers also implement technology in the classrooms to promote curriculum in a fun and educational form. Technology in the classroom increases participation because it offers an alternative way of learning for all children including those who are dual language learners or have special needs.
In a research conducted by Huang, Clark, and Wedel demonstrated how iPad can be used to assist preschoolers who are diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (2013). The iPads allowed for the children to become familiar with the alphabet and identify the sounds of each letter. The teachers engaged with the children as they used the applications and it further improved how the children registered the information they were learning from the applications.
The results of the study demonstrated that the children could identify ten alphabet letters and four letter sounds in the beginning. However, by the end of the semester, the children could recognize 26 letters and 24 letter sounds. This study proved that certain media applications can promote benefits to children’s growth and development.
In conclusion, screen time can affect many factors of child’s development and growth because they play significant roles in how the child learns and develops in different environmental settings. Screen time affects language development because it causes delays in communicating and interacting with other individuals. In addition, screen time affects young children’s ability to socially and emotionally express their emotions because screen time disrupts opportunities to spend quality time with their parents and caregivers. Another aspect screen time affect is through Attention Maintenance and Executive functioning.
Screen time creates deficits in children’s ability to complete and execute tasks that are presented to them. Although, there are many ways that screen time affects children’s growth and development, there are some benefits to children being exposed to age-appropriate and educational technology in a classroom setting with teachers who were professionally trained to teach curriculum that promotes learning with educational media. The research conducted in this paper can educate parents and caregivers about the effects of screen time on their children’s development. Also, this paper can provide information about how to help improve screen time to benefit their children’s development and growth.
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The Impact of Screen Time on Child Development. (2023, Feb 11). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/the-impact-of-screen-time-on-child-development/
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