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Study Links Restricting Screen Time For Kids To Higher Mental Performance (washingtonpost.com)
Parents who possess the resolve to separate their children from their smartphones may be helping their kids' brainpower, a new study suggests. A report adds: Children who use smartphones and other devices in their free time for fewer than two hours a day performed better on cognitive tests assessing their thinking, language, and memory, according to a study published this week in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. The study assessed the behavior of 4,500 children, ages 8 to 11, by looking at their sleep schedules, how much time they spent on screens and their amount of exercise, and analyzed how those factors impacted the children's mental abilities. The researchers compared the results with national guidelines for children's health. The guidelines recommend that children in that age group, get at least an hour of physical activity, no more than two hours of recreational screen time and nine to 11 hours of sleep per night. The researchers found that only 5 percent of children met all three recommendations. Sixty-three percent of children spent more than two hours a day staring at screens, failing to meet the screen-time limit.
All we've done is created developmentally delayed individuals who are only starting to grow into adults when they go to college and get the hell away from their overprotective parents.
If you trap kids inside all day, it shouldn't be any surprise that they turn to screens to give them something to do. Allow kids the opportunity to play outside and I suspect that many of them will naturally use screens a lot less frequently.
I doubt it's entirely the parents' fault. I imagine parents are keeping their kids indoors in order to keep them away from Child Overprotective Services.