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Screen Time Changes Structure of Kids' Brains, NIH Study Shows (bloombergquint.com)
schwit1 shared this article from Bloomberg:
Brain scans of adolescents who are heavy users of smartphones, tablets and video games look different from those of less active screen users, preliminary results from an ongoing study funded by the National Institutes of Health show, according to a report on Sunday by "60 Minutes." That's the finding of the first batch of scans of 4,500 nine- to 10-year-olds. Scientists will follow those children and thousands more for a decade to see how childhood experiences, including the use of digital devices, affect their brains, emotional development and mental health.
In the first round of testing, the scans of children who reported daily screen usage of more than seven hours showed premature thinning of the brain cortex, the outermost layer that processes information from the physical world.... Early results from the $300 million study, called Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD), have determined that children who spend more than two hours of daily screen time score lower on thinking and language tests. A major data release is scheduled for early 2019.
The study's director cautions that "It won't be until we follow them over time that we will see if there are outcomes that are associated with the differences that we're seeing in this single snapshot."
The study will ultimately follow over 11,000 nine- to 10-year-olds for a decade.
In the first round of testing, the scans of children who reported daily screen usage of more than seven hours showed premature thinning of the brain cortex, the outermost layer that processes information from the physical world.... Early results from the $300 million study, called Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD), have determined that children who spend more than two hours of daily screen time score lower on thinking and language tests. A major data release is scheduled for early 2019.
The study's director cautions that "It won't be until we follow them over time that we will see if there are outcomes that are associated with the differences that we're seeing in this single snapshot."
The study will ultimately follow over 11,000 nine- to 10-year-olds for a decade.
The entire dataset (~50TB) is open to search and download right now. There will be bi-yearly releases of both MR and psychological testing, a great starter set for those willing to have their hand at Big Data analysis.
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How do they know the changes are detrimental?
"children who spend more than two hours of daily screen time score lower on thinking and language tests."
It was right there ... you didn't even need to read the article.
These studies usually require a control group that represents those who do not have the distinguishing features of those being studied. In this case, young people who aren't exposed to screen time. Where will these people be found? In the Amazon jungles? And how can they objectively used as a control group? If there is a significant difference in the economic / geographical / ethnic / etc status of the control group, the study can't be valid.
...omphaloskepsis often...
They also really need to control for what content is being consumed, are they learning how to program an Arduino, or are they just streaming reality tv.
How do they know the changes are detrimental?
From the study director:
They're not claiming to know one way or the other.
Everything "changes the structure of our brains", or learning would not work.
True, but learning doesn't generally create structural changes so large that they're physically observable in an MRI. A little conservatism is warranted here.
I think they are learning how better to handle a larger flow of information.
Could be. Or it could be that they're learning to accept information by filtering and processing it less, in fact that would be a more obvious interpretation of a thinned cortex. But the real bottom line is that it's such a large difference that it results in gross structural changes, and we don't know what the effect is. That's worrisome.
We're seeing a growing "digital divide" between poor kids whose parents are too busy to supervise them all the time and choose to let screens raise them and rich kids whose parents increasingly keep them away from screens as much as possible. I can tell you that I'm pushing for my grandkids to be the latter group. Maybe this is a bad choice, maybe these rich kids will grow up disadvantaged compared to their screen-drenched peers. We don't know. But based mostly on how addictive screens are to kids, and on the outcomes of most addictive behaviors, I'm betting on lots of screen time being bad for development, until proved otherwise.
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