Too much screentime for young kids will harm their ability to properly learn later, study reveals

Step away from the screens, little ones.Regardless of age, too much screen time is detrimental to one’s health.

Excessive staring at screens can cause eye strain, dry eyes, headaches, and poor sleep quality, not to mention increased stress and anxiety, according to Michigan State University.And the less-than-ideal effects are even more pronounced for children — and require the utmost care to be adequately corrected.A new study reported by News-Medical and conducted by a team of researchers from Inserm and the National University of Singapore, backed up by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Academy of Pediatrics, discovered that high screen time during specific developmental periods for children is connected with lessened academic performance later on, as well as weaker working memory.The study, which was published in the “World of Pediatrics” health journal this past April, found that the diminished effects were most apparent on children who had been exposed to excessive amounts of screen time during infancy and school-entry age.Worsened general academic performance appeared to be an additional result of the study, which followed a group of 502 children from infancy to middle childhood, with the effects researchers saw in participants at the tender age of one being among the most pronounced.“That suggests early infancy may be a window of heightened sensitivity, when the developing brain is particularly vulnerable to the displacement of learning interactions by screentime,” one of the authors of the study shared.The scientists were surprised to learn that screen use for two- and three-year-olds did not show significant links to this decreased performance — however, the correlations “re-emerged” when children reached age six, “when children reach formal schooling.”“So it is not just about early years — screen use later in childhood still matters,” the author continued.An additional study commissioned by the 1,001 Critica...