Babies, Screen Time, and Developmental Delays | Psychology Today

In 1976, I had been designing research on the effects of television on children’s imaginative play, and cognitive, emotional, and prosocial behaviors. My 3-year-old son sometimes joined me in watching the tapes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Sesame Street that we were using in our nursery school experiment. He recognized Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog, so when The Muppet Show was set to premiere, he asked if we could watch it together.

In the initial episode, a sketch called “Veterinary Hospital” showed Doctor Bob (a Dog) and Nurses Piggy and Janice getting high, joking, and increasingly dysfunctional while their patient was being anesthetized. Danny began to giggle along with the episode's laugh track. Concerned, I announced, “This isn’t funny.” Later I explained why not.

The following week, as soon as the operating room set appeared on the show, my son turned to me and asked, “This isn’t funny, is it, Mom?”

Parental input regarding media is powerful. Albert Bandura, the founder of social learning theory, was spot on: Modeling and mediating content are major means of teaching. They can be effective when media distorts lessons you do or don’t want learned.

Parents need to know what messages their children are ingesting. Across the past five decades, our understanding of biological as well as environmental influences on children’s growth has taken quantum leaps. Ecological models (see Bronfenbrenner, below) offered a systems theory approach, within which individual characteristics both influence and interact with those of a child and their environment.

And so it was with screens: The impact depended not only on universal truths, such as sequential aspects of maturation in the child or established mechanisms for attracting attention, but also on group variables like caregiver attachment and involvement; qualities in the home, neighborhood, community; and alternative rewards or resources available.

Concerning child characteristics, we knew by the 1970s that each comes with unique cognitive and temperamental qualities and potential. Given the fulfillment of basic needs, they are intrinsically motivated toward exploration and mastery of themselves and their environment.

But while curiosity can emerge as naturally as speech and mobility, it can also be inhibited if the safety or needs of the child are not met. So we also began identifying what motivated children to view screens and alternate ways in which they used their content. Two children might view the same program, one using it to distract from or avoid anxiety, and the other to actively learn about the world.

Today, computers and smaller gadgets like tablets and cell phones make internet content available almost everywhere. Babies and children now can have constant access to moving images, compelling stimuli that are only surpassed in their power of attraction by living, warm beings. A puppy, sibling, or adult nuzzling or playing with a child can still engage more senses of the baby than the flashing visuals and evocative sounds designed to grab their attention.

On August 21, 2023, JAMA Pediatrics published a longitudinal study by Taku Obara, Ippei Takahashi, and their colleagues. The researchers studied 7,097 Japanese mother/child dyads recruited between 2013 and 2017. Moms’ reports of their babies’ time use of screens (television, video games, internet) at one year were used to predict five outcomes when the baby was two and then four years of age: communication, gross motor skills, fine motor abilities, problem-solving, and personal and social skills.

Heavier screen use was associated with poorer communication and fine motor skills at both two and four years. Delays in problem-solving and personal/social skills were found at one and two years but no longer at four.

Recognizing much that had been learned about development, the Japanese study also collected data on several environmental variables that could influence individual differences in a child’s development: maternal age; whether the child was the first; mother’s education; family income; whether the child lived with grandparents or other adults; and if the mother had postpartum depression or a maternal bonding disorder. Thus the study's authors could examine and rule out alternative explanations for their findings that could be related to these aspects of the baby’s environment.

Mothers of high screen time babies were younger, less educated, less wealthy, tended to be first-time mothers, and were more likely to have post-partum depression. Results were significant even after adjusting for these variables or after excluding 19 children with diagnosed cerebral palsy or autism. Additional data suggested that the negative impact of screens may be related to longer screen time at one year in those children with developmental delays in personal and social skills at age one, the delays persisting through age two, but then resolving by age four.

Longitudinal data on the impact of screen time on babies are rare. The size and scope of this study, along with its inclusion of environmental variables that could otherwise explain the data, make it especially valuable.

Evidence from this Japanese study begs parents to manage the digital environment of their children. Ask yourself how you can amplify your power through positive attachment.

Are you willing to invest the time it takes to develop and maintain it? Are you willing to note how much time you yourself spend involved with various screens and the messages that your involvement sends to your child about their own relative importance? Your personal responses help your baby develop its mirror neurons, the source of empathy, compassion, and the ability to relate to the emotions of others.

Are you aware that material you bring into your home through screens teaches? Do you choose content that will help your children learn positive skills for problem-solving and interacting with others rather than behaviors fueled by rage, fear, and impulse? And are you ready to teach them the role that commercial culture plays in producing the material that appears on screens in the first place? Remember that screen relationships are not equivalent to live-contact ones.

Copyright 2023 Roni Beth Tower.

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