Children play with mobile phones for a long time? Research warns: brain is immature and self-regulation ability is poor

The 7-day Spring Festival holiday has ended. I believe most people have discovered this phenomenon in recent years:

The children at home are obsessed with playing with mobile phones/pads . Except for eating, drinking, defecating, urinating and sleeping, they basically stare at the screen all day, either playing games or watching short videos. They don’t like to eat or communicate with their elders. It seems that younger babies will only stop crying more easily when looking at the mobile phone screen.

What's wrong? They seem to like to immerse themselves in the online world. Why is this so? In addition to some internal reasons, the lack of parental companionship cannot be ignored. For infants and young children, what are the harms of playing with mobile phones for a long time?

Recently, a longitudinal cohort study issued a warning: excessive screen time is associated with cognitive dysfunction in infants and young children, which is obvious even after the age of 8.

It is well known that the level of cognitive function is crucial to the health, academic achievement and future work of infants and young children. Therefore, the research team recommends that parents need to intervene in time during the period of neural plasticity of infants and young children and before the stability of neuronal circuits.

The related research paper, titled “Associations Between Infant Screen Use, Electroencephalography Markers, and Cognitive Outcomes,” has been published in the scientific journal JAMA Pediatrics.

The “overburdened” brain and cognitive deficits

From birth to early childhood, a person's brain develops rapidly. The part of the brain that controls executive function, the prefrontal cortex, takes longer to develop.

Executive function, which includes the ability to maintain attention, process information, and regulate emotional states, plays a vital role in learning and academic performance. People with executive function deficits are often impulsive, emotionally unstable, have difficulty maintaining attention, and are unable to perform well on demanding tasks.

However, the areas of the brain responsible for executive function are highly susceptible to influences from the surrounding environment, which slows down the development of executive function, and excessive screen exposure is one of them.

In this study, Evelyn Law, assistant professor at the National University of Singapore, and her colleagues studied screen time and cognitive function in 506 children who had participated in the Growing Up in Singapore towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) cohort study since birth.

When the children were one year old, parents were asked to record their children's average screen time on weekdays and weekends and divided them into four groups based on the length of time: less than 1 hour, 1-2 hours, 2-4 hours and more than 4 hours ; when the children were 18 months old, the researchers observed brain activity by using electroencephalography (EEG).

EEG data showed that children with more screen time had more "low-frequency" waves (theta waves) and a higher theta/beta ratio , states associated with a lack of cognitive alertness.

Additionally, the children were asked to take various cognitive tests at age 9 to measure their attention span and executive function. They found that the more screen time they had, the greater the changes in brain activity and the more cognitive deficits they experienced.

Previous studies have shown that infants and young children have difficulty processing information on 2D screens. When watching a screen, they are "bombarded" with a series of fast-paced movements, constant flashing lights, and scene changes, which require sufficient cognitive experience to understand and process, causing the brain to be "overwhelmed" and unable to normally improve cognitive skills such as executive function.

The research team said the findings provide evidence for the potential value of EEG in infants and young children in understanding their later executive dysfunction, as well as a means to identify risks and promote early intervention .

However, this study cannot prove a causal relationship between long-term screen exposure and cognitive decline. Replication of the research results and randomized clinical trials are necessary, and there are some limitations .

For example, the screen exposure time of these infants and toddlers after the age of 1 was reported by their parents rather than based on objective measures; the time spent on each electronic device was not collected; and it is unclear whether their screen exposure time changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The research team believes that the length of screen exposure time may represent the quality of a family's measurable living conditions or the quality of parent-child interaction. In the future, the research team needs to do more work to further understand the reasons for excessive screen exposure in infants and young children.

Moderately reduce use

In fact, the negative effects of excessive screen exposure do not only occur in infants and young children, but also in adults.

A previous study showed that nomophobia is very common among young people, especially college students, and this fear can lead to physical and mental health hazards , such as daytime sleepiness and poor sleep quality at night.

In another study, scientists found that a modest reduction in daily smartphone use was associated with reduced anxiety, increased life satisfaction , and decreased symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as nicotine consumption.

Of course, mobile phones, pads and other electronic products are positively helpful for a person to acquire knowledge. Therefore, we should use electronic products appropriately, but there is no need to completely reject them .

For infants and young children, more companionship and timely intervention are important means to ensure their physical and mental health.

What do you think about the phenomenon of infants and young children overusing electronic products?

Reference Links:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2800776

https://www.mdnewsdaily.com/articles/34484/20200829/cant-survive-day-without-phone-suffering-nomophobia.htm

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fxap0000430