The time children spend in front of screens is a controversial topic that provokes strong reactions from parents and experts.
Children spend a lot of time in front of screens PHOTO: Archive
Earlier this year, a New York University psychologist published a bestselling book about the alleged dangers of smartphones and social media for children before a certain age. Others responded by saying that screen time isn't so bad — as long as it's in moderation, edition.cnn.com writes.
But what about the guilt parents feel for letting their kids use screens? This is the subject of recent research by Dr. Nathan Walter, associate professor of media psychology at Northwestern University, and two co-authors. Their research focused on parental guilt for letting their children use screens more than developmental psychologists say they should.
The research was published earlier this year in the journal Media Psychology.
Not surprisingly, parents who feel guilty about their children's screen use are more stressed and less likely to report positive relationships with their children, according to the data.
The research also suggested that it is important to look more closely at the science behind claims about the negative impact of screens – as some studies show correlation but not causation.
CNN recently spoke with Walter about his research, how parents can change the way they think about children's screen use, and the impact of screen time guilt on the family system.
“I have two children, and when the eldest of them was born, I followed all the recommendations, without spending time in front of screens until a certain age. When she was a little older, around 2 years old, we would sit with her and watch, explain and comment on everything.
When my son was born a few years later, we were just in a different place, a little busier, a little more tired, and he got a lot more screen time than she did, especially at first. I felt enormously guilty – like I had failed as a parent. I also felt like a hypocrite because, as a communications teacher, I teach classes on the effects of media, and here I was presenting the negative effects of screen use to my students who are 18, 19, and 20 years old. My co-authors had similar experiences.
Because we also study emotions, my coauthors and I were interested in finding out what role guilt plays in the negative effects of screen time. One of the things we discovered: Most of the evidence we have about screen use is correlational. It is only about associations with social problems, obesity and lower academic performance. It's hard to know if using screens is actually causing all of these problems. And the fact that two things are associated could simply mean that there is a third factor involved, such as, say, socio-economic status.
If your parents have three jobs, they don't have much time to spend with you at home, so you're stuck with screens and your academic performance can suffer as well. Covid was a great opportunity to examine the effects of screen time and the idea that emotions might play a bigger role.” says Dr. Nathan Walter:
The doctor argues that associations do not allow researchers to make causal inferences and the literature is so vast that you will be able to find anything you want.
A recent meta-analysis looked at 18 cohort studies with nearly 250,000 participants. They wanted to know the relationship between screen time and depression, which is one of the major concerns we have about screen time.
“They did not find any significant relationship in this regard. Certain subgroups, certain ages, certain screens – there was a connection at some points, but not all the time and not across the board. Another meta-analysis looked at the relationship between screen time and executive functioning skills. She had 7,000 children. There was absolutely no relationship between these cognitive problems and screen use. Every time we looked at this, there was an association, but no causation. Another meta-analysis had 100,000 participants and looked at academic performance. Again, many different ages, many different screens, many different children, and absolutely no relationship between screen time and academic performance in all of these studies. If one isolates video games among certain ages, they are negatively associated with academic performance, but these are not the young children we think of when we think of screen use. So this tells us it's a little bit more complicated.” says Walter.
The doctor also says that some screens can have certain effects on some children at certain times. And it is true that if you want to isolate certain groups, certain environments and specific contents, you can always find these effects.
“It's also true that if we expand a bit more and understand that the use of screens takes place in a certain context, I think the emotional effects are also very important. I don't want to create an atmosphere where the use screens by children to be perceived as uniformly bad and negative. I don't like to see the issue of screen use as a binary matter of acceptable or unacceptable. I'm just advocating for a little more nuance in how we talk about negative associations.”
