Is it recommended to expose your children to screens from a young age? NO. But is it still dangerous? The answer to this question has been refined over several years and successive elements show the negative impact on its development. Today, a new French study has nuanced the previously binary reading of the situation. The study, published November 29 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, shows that the effects of screens on the brains of children aged two, three and a half and five and a half years old need to be put into perspective depending on various external elements.
Be careful, the screens remain bad
Not only contact with screens, but also the family environment and lifestyle are crucial for the child’s good development. In the Le Monde columns, Jonathan Bernard of the Research Center for Epidemiology and Statistics, who led the study, admits: “The context of screen use would undoubtedly play an important role, probably more than just the time spent in front of screens.” An analysis , which has divided the scientific community since its publication, because if this study does not deny the effects of these screens, it puts them into perspective in the light of other factors.
However, the study is particularly meaningful because it is based on a data sample of 14,000 children. The researchers tracked the development of language at age two, nonverbal thinking, and overall cognitive development at age three and a half. To interpret these results, many factors were introduced. The socioeconomic status of their family, the child’s personal characteristics and daily activities…
Young people exceed recommended limits
When it comes to exposure to screens, the study is clear: time spent there is detrimental to child development. But because there is a “but,” “it appears much weaker when the family living environment is properly taken into account.” According to the results weighted with other factors, “the impact of screens on cognitive development drops by 40 to 80% when weight family factors are taken into account, and by another 10 to 20% when the child’s other activities are taken into account. “The child was also taken into account,” notes Le Monde.
But if we put it in perspective, the impact of screens remains huge. “The 2% and 3% of children who consume four hours of screen time per day at the respective ages of 3 and 5 would see their IQ drop by 2 points,” assures Jonathan Bernard. However, according to the researcher, a two-year-old child in France spends an average of 56 minutes in front of a screen. At three and a half years old he spends 1 hour and 20 minutes, at five and a half years old he spends 1 hour and 34 minutes. The WHO recommends that children under 2 years of age not be exposed to screens and that exposure be limited to one hour per day between the ages of 2 and 5 years.