I came across an interesting study out of Singapore that tracked children’s screen time from age one to eight, then measured their academic performance and working memory years later. Two things stood out:
- Even after adjusting for other factors, screen time at age one, at eighteen months, and at age six was still linked to weaker academic performance years later.
- Total screen time across childhood was consistently tied to lower academic performance, and the earliest exposure, in infancy, showed the strongest effect of all.
This is an observational study (vs. a causal study). And, before we draw definite conclusions, you want many studies pointing the same direction. But directionally, it’s intuitive.
I was at a restaurant recently and watched a family having lunch with their one-year-old, a loud YouTube show blasting the whole time. My first thought was, this is wild. My second was, how does this become acceptable?
My guess is that, in time, we’ll look back on this one the way we look back on smoking on airplanes.
