I was thinking "attention" as in "attention deficit", but this test was "find a red apple amongst blue apples". They're not sure if finding red apples amongst blue apples is beneficial though:
>> “What we need to know next is whether this attention difference is advantageous or detrimental to their everyday life.”
I'm sure that if they found that touchscreen users are worse at this task, they'd have little difficulty declaring this detrimental to their everyday life.
This is just a press release and I haven't read the full paper, but from this top-level summary it seems like it could also be construed as "toddlers who have a higher exposure to touchscreens are better at using touchscreens later on." This feels like it could just be a function of practice, or perhaps familiarity with computers (not sure whether they controlled for computer use - did the "non-touchscreen" kids use computing devices in general as much as the "touchscreen" kids?), not attention necessarily.
For this little gain, at what cost to the future growth of the kid? Attention span? Ability to focus on anything other than small screens? Social ability? This research should really address the pro/con for the kid in the long run rather than just benefit of finding target using their fingers.
That children who don't use tablets have shorter attention spans and worst social skills. The "natural is better" argument is not research based. Society has long preached that things like reading books is great for kids but it's entirely unnatural just like tablets.
Generally research in this area has been extremely biased against electronics. You also have to control for the type of activities they are doing on the tablet.
For example the mental stimulation when playing an educational Daniel Tiger game is completely different than watching a toy sales driven TV show like Transformers. Both can be done on a tablet though.
> Society has long preached that things like reading books is great for kids
Wasn't always the case, Plato felt it would dull your memory.
"They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks."
Plato was probably right. As access to information has become ubiquitous, we increasingly don't need to rely on our memories. Ancient scholars would be able to recite long passages from memory. The printing press made that unnecessary if you could access a book. Now Google has made even books obsolete for some types of information. The internet is the world's memory.
What Plato missed was that our ability to do higher order reasoning and synthesis has grown by leaps with books and now the internet. That's a pretty good trade-off for losing some memory.
'Recite long passages from memory' is still entirely a thing when there's a practical reason (actors in stage plays) or somebody's just really into something (see people who can quote literally everything in several movies from memory). It's just no longer the first step that comes before anything else.
Right, the argument against screens shouldn't be that they aren't natural. It's not "natural" to go to the gym and do repetitive contrived exercises, but this turns out to be a healthy habit.
On the other hand I don't think any great leaps are required to be wary of the effects of screen time. Even as an adult, if I get into the habit of scrolling through newsfeeds, I notice a strong effect of being distracted and seeking stimulus when doing work. My brain has been trained for quick hits of novelty.
In general, there's a night-and-day difference between activities that are easy and tempting vs. challenging but rewarding. I'm sure there are some great educational games on the iPad, but realistically the vast majority of screen time falls into the easy and tempting category.
Does there need to be a cost? From my experience, it's just like most activities you do with your children.
You can use it as babysitter or you can use it as a learning tool by participating and engaging with your child.
Here's how I've done it and he's doing great:
- We mostly use the tablet together, especially when we try a new app.
- I avoid the crack-head apps. The ones with bells, whistles, popups, and other toxic rewards for simple actives. It's fine to rewards like that for something challenging.
- We talk about what he's doing. For example, why he chooses certain colors or why he likes the features. Anything to start a conversation.
- Moderation. 15-30 minutes once every few days.
- Reference what he learned from the app during real-life activities. For example, one app he likes is a virtual dog washing app. He uses soap, a brush, water, etc. When we're playing together, we pretend to clean his stuffed animals just like he did in the app.
Anecdotally, we don't exactly practice moderation with screen time, and we've been constantly surprised at how much our kids learn from even the crappy alphabet/number/animals/shapes videos on YouTube Kids. We're also not big into milestones, but our kids have absolutely flown past every educational milestone for their ages. We are very present, attentive parents with above average education, but we spend (what we think is) an unexceptional amount of time teaching them things, and they have learned an exceptional amount.
What's funny is that everyone just assumes the screen time is bad, and that our kids are naturally very smart (with the implicit suggestion that they'd know more without screen time). That may be true, but it isn't borne out by observation in our case.
We've found a lot of parenting is like that - people are pretty sure about what's good and bad, and the child's behavior/response one way or the other is either expected or a fluke, depending on what confirms assumptions about what's good and bad.
Our oldest is only 7, but we have 4 and we've noticed no ill effects from screen time, the kids are all social, they love to go to the park and play with friends (which we don't get to do nearly enough now...), to go for walks and ride bikes, in short they all seem well within the bounds of "normal" development for their ages.
While we didn't just hand my son a device, the reality is he grabbed our phones at 1 year and played with it. Even in those quick grabs, it was intuitive enough to watch him play with pulling down the notification drawer or tapping on things. I would say that's minimal interaction but certainly a different level then someone who plops a 1 year old in front of an ipad or one that has no electronics in the home.
To elaborate on this, very young human beings have a fascinating aptitude for figuring things out. They aren't very good at it, or at least lack the motor skills to apply what they learn, but you can tell that there is a lot of cerebral activity happening as they try to puzzle things out. So when a puzzle presents itself, such as "why is mom staring at this glowing rectangle so much?" they will will want to try and find out why.
My 1 year old twins have been trying to play with my wife and I's phones since they were old enough to start grabbing stuff. They also make for great little distractions during diaper changes when they'd otherwise try to sit up or flip around. We usually lock the screen before we let them play with the phones, but occasionally I'll let them swipe and tap around just to see what they can figure out.
I imagine (though the full study hasn’t been published yet to check) that they recruited children that already had X amount of touchscreen usage each day. I very much doubt they forced children into different brackets of touchscreen use as part of the study.
Well, maybe that's also a relieving result that use of tablet is not causing harm at this area, if not helped. Which I believed strongly as long as the material is carefully curated for education not just youtube Kids. Even science channel video is better than youtube kids.
I haven’t read the paper. But if the researchers were bringing in children regularly for testing involving eye tracking equipment, why not also test their ability to manipulate physical objects, recognize faces, and track faces? That all seems like low hanging fruit.
> There has been growing concern that toddler touchscreen use may negatively impact their developing attention but this fear is not based on empirical evidence.”
That isn’t surprising to me: there are no inherent properties attached to a touch screen that would affect attention. But there are plenty of fast paced games and videos that could, and those tend to be viewed through touch screens. So I still wonder about that (though it’s not all that different to watching too much TV, something people have discussed for decades now)
Adverts aside, TV shows usually require 10s of minutes of concentration on a connected subject thread (depends a lot on the programmes of course). Touchscreen activities are usually shorter with brief reactive interactions?
A better way to put this is that the causality, if any, is unclear. However, it's very difficult to construct an ethical study on human participants that is designed to show causality. So we're usually left with, at best, a moderately rigorous abductive[1] conclusion.
It's important to understand causation. Engaged parents will still want to spend quality time with their children either way, but they will still want to know the impact. Even engaged parents let young children play with toys on their own from time to time. How are physical toys different than touchscreen "toys"?
"The study followed them over the next 2.5 years, bringing them into the lab at 18 months and 3.5 years. At the 18-month and 3.5-year visits, toddlers took part in a computer task in which they were trained to search for a red apple amongst a varying number of either blue apples (easy search), or blue apples and red apple slices (difficult search). An eye tracker monitored their gaze and visually rewarded the child when they found the red apple, allowing them to perform the task even though they were too young to verbally describe what they were doing."
No discussion as to any other effect of screen use. Why did this need study? Humans who use a thing more often are better at working with thing?
"Greater daily digital usage was associated with lower visual spatial performance.
Spending even small amounts of time daily with integrated technology was associated with
lower WPPSI-IV overall intelligence test scores, and visual spatial scores. Those with the least
amount of resources are at the most risk for lower visual spatial abilities"
In addition there is a key qualitative element: are all uses equal? Is watching Teletubbies or Paw Patrol equal to nature documentaries? Is playing addictive repetitive games different than those solving puzzles or following a story? Is videoconferencing with grandma the same or better or worse as doing a math training game?
The key issue often is the parents' role and guidance. Let your kid aimlessly click through YouTube? Or are you fostering their skills and challenge and motivate them to learn something new?
Exactly what I thought. A few years ago, I was in a hotel where one family gave their kids tablets to watch movies during breakfast. I can hardly imagine that this practice is beneficial for the kids development.
Thats lazy parenting IMO. My 2 yo son was not inteoduced to tablets or phones because there are so many more things they could do. He loves for example snap in puzzles where a lot of faculties develop but almost anything physical is beneficial at this age. There is time for computers and tablets later on, whats the rush?
How about both? I have older children 21 and 22, and I have some new ones, ages 1 and 5. I have always done as much as I can with my children. I also have learned to set them up with an activity and let them go at it without my constant supervision. They don't always look for outside answers, but instead figure it out on their own. I was anti-TV and computer with my older children, but I still allowed it, and they are doing great (one a physics major, the other in medical school). My current children seem to be doing just fine too compared with their peers.
Since you were anti-tv you probably kept an eye on what they were watching. TV or tablets aren’t the concern themselves, but the content pushed on them. I learned quite a bit from TV back in the 90s, luckily back then I didn’t have access to addictive junk.
Yeah this is an important detail that is typically glossed over: the device is just a content delivery platform, and the content is what really matters. As a parent I find that policing content is a much more challenging and stressful task than simply managing screen time.
Yes, I curated their content, but I do believe too much of any one thing is bad. We didn't get a phone until I was a 11 or 12, not because of beliefs, but money. I became a real bookworm to the detriment of getting outside and exercising for a few years. I try to mix everything up a bit. I also believe in a diversity of intelligence. Each one of my children has a different angle on intelligence. It's amazing to see the different manifestations even within the same family. I think what we think is good content evolves every 5 to 10 years; a study comes out refuting a solidly held confidence in a technique or manner of raising children. I think if you keep it diverse, and try and challenge yourself, your kids and you gain tremendously.
As a parent myself who is guilty of this from time to time, I think it’s easy to judge those moments without seeing the full picture. Nowadays parents are expected to attend to kids basically 24/7 and keep them engaged, etc,. Just because you saw that happen at breakfast doesn’t mean it was happening all day, every day. Maybe they were out visiting museums or nature parks for the rest of the day.
There are mornings when you just want a quiet breakfast while you’re on vacation without an embarrassing meltdown happening and, for better or worse, the most effective way to accomplish that is by giving your kid a movie or show to watch on the iPad for 30 minutes while you eat.
People shake their heads when the kids watch a tablet during breakfast, they'd also shake their heads if the child misbehaved and disrupted their own breakfast. Sometimes there's not a third option. Most parents would be delighted if they could simply ask their children to be well-behaved and eat in a crowded public space.
I don’t think people really shake their heads at kids disrupting meals (unless it’s really egregious). If a kid screams or something, people naturally look, but you don’t know what they’re thinking. They could just be wondering what’s going on, or remembering their life when they had kids that age. You have no idea. Mostly I would think that the parents are doing their best and they have enough to deal with without me also passing judgment.
For sure, I think everyone who's had kids understands, and a lot of people who haven't also understand. But I've read plenty of comments like the one above that refer to the disruption rather than the placation, and I think people have different definitions of egregious, as well.
Oh they do. A lot. And they complain about it on the Internet too, a lot.
But also, as a parent, I am kind of inclined to hear and accept that my kid being noisy or something is sewhat disrupting other tables. In all honesty, sometimes it disrupts me.
I am significantly less inclined to accomodate randoms whose issue is completely made up problem with phone or tablet during hotel breakfast. I do not care at all. I use tablet to make hotel meal pleasant as opposed to disciplinary issue, for me and for people around other tables. These people don't have problem or pain, they are making up problems in their heads.
It is just that part that makes this complain particularly dumb. Of course public situation is when you are much more likely to use phone. And of course in grand scheme of things it does not matter at all. It is one of millions situations you solve in one way or the other, nit exactly queen visit.
A third option is to systematically beat the children whenever they deviate from approved behavior. ("Beat the sin out of them.") The guardians will receive lots of undeserved admiration for their obedient children. The children may suffer from life-long emotional problems.
I've seen exactly this with some friends and their kids. If they're at a more adult place to eat the kids are allowed to watch cartoons so they don't get bored and start wanting to leave before the meal's even started. The rest of the time they're limited in their screen time, read books with their parents and go out to all sorts of fun places like nature parks etc.
It's lazy to judge parents just because you see a 30 minute slice of their day
We improved this by always carrying color pens and a minimal playdoh set (couple of colors and tools). First they paint, then they do playdoh, and then, if the meal isn’t over they watch cartoons.
We have almost completely eliminated devices with this tactic because by the time they are done with those two the meal is almost over. And if it isn’t then we also sometimes tell them that they must just wait or engage in conversation with us.
We are lucky that they like painting and playing with playdoh, though.
We made the mistake of letting our first born watch Mother goose club on the tablet during meals, the upside is she always at her food but then we realized that absent the tablet she would throw a tantrum and refuse to eat and if we left the house and didn't have the tablet that was another mess. We made the decision to get rid of the tablet as well as any electronic stimuli during meals, food time is food time with conversation. We invested in books, playdoh, puzzles, crafts, bug catching kit etc and 2 kids later we have no complaints.
I hope you are aware, that this discussion is not about 'destroying children'. It is about the effects of early touch screen usage and if it is beneficial for the development of a child. So the question is if a kid would do better or worse, not if one kid would be destroyed.
That these things have an effect shows the study above. In addition, you have to evaluate the magnitude of an effect. For example, not every high IQ person who wants to have a well-paid job has one even though a high IQ is known to have a positive impact on reaching that goal. Similarly, not every toddler who uses touchscreens regularly will show increased anti-social behavior, even though that might be a related effect.
To elaborate, it completely absurd to fret over hotel breakfast touch screen usage.
First, it is extremely unlikely that sight of touch screen does any harm at all for development of children. The possible small effects are quite unlikely to show up unless the kid is using them a lot, to the exclusion of other activities.
Second, you placed emphasis on during as if hotel meal were the special one place where parent would exclude screen even if the kid is overusing it everywhere else. I hope you are aware, hotel/restaurant is the place where movie is more likely to be used then normal. Restaurant time is not special sacred non-screen time, it is the screen time.
You also wrote:
> I can hardly imagine that this practice is beneficial for the kids development.
I can hardly imagine harm. I can hardly imagine kids to gain on it. In all likelihood, taking in all minuscule effects touch screens have on kids, watching movie during hotel breakfast is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Running around causing total havoc in the hotel's dining room, like we did as kids 30 years ago, might have been beneficial for us, but I'm sure it wasn't helping with my parents' high blood pressure condition. And I'm sure other guests would appreciate more us sitting quietly and looking at the screens if it was possible at that time.
From watching friends and family in the last ten years, I would like to add economical class and education level (maybe what we would call cultural capital) as one factor to this.
It might sound a bit fascist, but factors that is commonly questioned and scorned nowadays such as screen time, sugar intake, lack of outdoors activity and not wearing bike helmets are more common among families with generally lower status. The more upper middle class a family gets, the more important it seems to be to avoid doing harm to our children. Maybe mostly to save face among our peers?
My point is that kids with more screen time may overlap with not being read to as much, not given as much attention to tell their family about their thoughts, not challenged to exercise their ability to focus, and so on. In a very general sense.
Your "better" study is not an experiment and its conclusions are not supported by empirical evidence. If it were true that usage of touchscreens cause lower intelligence test scores, we would have seen this show up as a population-wide reduction in scores as touchscreens became widely available. No such effect can be observed. Instead, the children who were neglected with random household items to play with by themselves or TVs to watch by themselves are now neglected with touchscreens to play with by themselves, and studies such as yours misattribute the effects of childhood neglect to touchscreen usage.
I agree that this study doesn't measure anything useful, but in my circles, I have heard of and seen children younger than 2 years old learn to read by playing touchscreen games and children younger than 3 learn the names of states, capitals, and other trivia from playing touchscreen games. Achieving that is possible without touchscreens, but it would require an incredible amount of work from the caretaker.
Yes, unless I'm greatly misunderstanding the tables, what the study actually measured is that:
* Spatial intelligence is positively correlated with socio-economic status.
* Screen (TV + Digital) time is negatively correlated with socio-economic status.
Concluding from this that spatial intelligence is negatively correlated with screen time is dubious. Similar reasoning is used to promote all kinds of class-correlated fashions, e.g. breast feeding.
> Your "better" study is not an experiment and its conclusions are not supported by empirical evidence.
I think their method does count as a natural experiment and as such does have empirical evidence. From the article:
“Preschoolers from a 2010 study (612 children) were compared to preschoolers from a 2014 study (492 children) because of the digital explosion into everyday life that occurred between the two time periods. Television viewing patterns have remained similar over time, but technological device usage has increased.”
> If it were true that usage of touchscreens cause lower intelligence test scores, we would have seen this show up as a population-wide reduction in scores as touchscreens became widely available.
Exposure in formative years is vastly different than adult exposure. The affected cohort in the study is now only in middle school and population wide effects will have a lagged appearance.
Strictly speaking, the discussed research of toddlers using touchscreens is not an experiment also. In experimental setup researcher must control independant variable (touchscreen use). For this research it would mean to get a group of toddlers, split them randomly into two groups, give touchscreens to one group and some "placebo" to other. Researchers didn't do that, they split toddlers into two groups on the ground of the existing touchscreen use. So what they did is called a "correlational research", not an "experiment".
Correlation doesn't allow to speak about casuality. Maybe children ability to a visual search drive them to use touchscreens. Maybe touchscreens teach them to search. Maybe some other factor (like parenting style, or family income) teach them to love touchscreens and to effectively search for visual stimuli.
To be frank, I do not like this reseach much. It is correlational reseach, and there were no attempts to exclude interfering variables: if toddler used touchscreen more, than he/she would be better at tasks on a screen, wouldn't he/she?
Huh my kids both get tablet almost daily and have since they were toddlers.
As toddlers they also started growing food, hiking, learning counting through dice toss, at kids music groups, putting away their toys, cleaning the house, and playing with way too many building and science-y toys.
Cognitive research has shown for decades hands on depth in a variety of contexts enables people. It’s the market economics narrative enabling economic horders that’s making it so both parents need to work and kids get neglected that’s keeping them stupid.
The same sort of stuff was said about the 80s kids in my cohort because we were "latchkey" kids and watching lots of TV. It was bullshit then and bullshit now.
I don't put much stock in intelligence assessments. There's no real standards around the exams. My school placed you in cohorts based on IQ, and it was pretty obvious that the scoring system was measuring something other than your innate ability. My dad worked in civil service for many years, where promotions and appointments are governed by exams that were a combination of grammar tests and proxies for IQ exams. I didn't see any evidence that those assessments did anything other than reducing patronage and making it harder for non-native speakers to move up the ladder.
You don't know that. The way we think changed a lot in the last 40 years.
Researching the causes and dynamics of these changes are very hard to study and even harder to correlate and then much more to prove causation. We basically don't have the scientific means or theory for this type of long term changes.
It could very much be that kids that grew on TV have some other thought patterns that caused the reality we live in today. It's extremely confounded on so many things. We cant really know for sure anything about it.
The fact that some knowledge and intelligence is not accessible to science (today) doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just that we don't have the tools to study it, yet.
> The way we think changed a lot in the last 40 years.
I doubt it. We reward some behaviors differently in 2020 vs 1980, and have different inputs from an information perspective. But people are wired the same way. The "racist uncle" stereotype of 2020 was "Archie Bunker" in 1980.
God damn it. I've been searching for a way to loaf of my very high IQ my whole life. I wish someone had told me this 30 years ago lol. Join the civil service.
And no, high iq is not particularly useful in other areas, not when I don't have the ability to work hard on anything except what I'm actually interested in. So formal education was painful.
> No discussion as to any other effect of screen use.
That's not what the study is about. The study was about a particular effect, and they published their conclusions. The need for such a study can be debated but there is a difference between "common sense" and a proper peer-reviewed study. And to be published by what looks like a serious journal, I guess it wasn't so obvious to experts.
I am fed up with articles that proves a controversial point and then the reporter has to add a "but...". Maybe useful on prime time TV, so that people who are unfamiliar with scientific work don't get the wrong idea, but this is a university, and people reading this are supposed to be familiar with the scientific process.
Maybe some other group will later use the results of all these study and say something like "even though kids with more screen time are better at video games[citation], there is no significant improvement in related activities, we also noticed a decrease in...". But that's another study.
My interpretation of the summary was that the researchers will follow the same kids later in life and see the impact. They are just reporting the current results. Per the article
"What we need to know next is whether this attention difference is advantageous or detrimental to their everyday life."
A lot of the comments on HN imply that the researches found a negative effect, when they did not conclude that.
Sooo you’re telling me that if I give my toddler a pain brush he’ll be the next davinci? Could you follow up with some more specific direction? I mean if I want to raise a pop-star does the microphone need to be plugged in or does using it like a lightsaber also get them closer to the target?
Sorry for being silly in my reply, but the reason we have studies confirming simple “obvious” to you correlations is that we can’t just rely on random peoples intuition without proof. Even simple things need to be studied and sometimes our expectations are broken and we discover that no, everything isn’t made up of combinations of earth, water, fire and wind, even though that was what was “obvious” to the smartest elders of all the lands.
Thats a black or white fallacy: I think carried to the extreme it would be like me making the claim that kids who use tablets will become software engineers. My argument, is that screen time makes kids better at interacting with screens.
For clarity to your point; I think it would be hard to argue that among kids tested playing piano that those who had an interest and practiced more would sound better statistically. Your toddler may not be davinvi, but they should end up with better fine motor control and maybe learn to enjoy expressing themselves in that medium.
> The study followed them over the next 2.5 years, bringing them into the lab at 18 months and 3.5 years. At the 18-month and 3.5-year visits, toddlers took part in a computer task in which they were trained to search for a red apple amongst a varying number of either blue apples (easy search), or blue apples and red apple slices (difficult search). An eye tracker monitored their gaze and visually rewarded the child when they found the red apple, allowing them to perform the task even though they were too young to verbally describe what they were doing.
First off, this is brilliant use of eye tracking. I could see eye tracking being so useful for learning, such as tracking attention, knowing when to need a break, etc. Eye tracking is super useful in user testing - for example I was watching some user testing at a major corporation and we used eye tracking. We instructed the user to minimize the app and then open it again, and we noticed that when it was in the systray, people really got confused. It was really easy to see because we could see where their eyes were scanning. Using eye tracking for people who can't speak (for any reason, maybe physical or mental injury or disability, and here age / language barrier) could be huge.
The attention differences are certainly interesting, although I wonder how much of it might be training to use touchscreens, or the idea of a screen that it might change at any time, without related motion. This is completely unnatural, as you would normally think something will change when something walks over to it, or moves slightly. Fixed objects tend to fade more into the background of our mental landscape, which is the basis of a lot of sleight of hand. Like removing something when you can't see it. It'd be interesting to compare against something that doesn't change when you interact with it, like television screens. (is it the touch part, or the screen part?)
I also wonder how touchscreens are sometimes differently interpreted by animals, kind of like mirrors are. For example, some cats seem to think that the little toy apps are under them, or inside of them, or are just generally confused. It's really quite fascinating.
'Dr Ana Maria Portugal, main researcher on the project points out “We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention as it may also be that children who are generally more attracted to bright, colourful features seek out touchscreen devices more than those who are not.”'
This is an important confounding factor. My opinion is that toddlers often spend time with media that are brighter and more colorful than the surrounding environment, e.g. animated videos for children or educational apps for young children. A better study would take that into account.
One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of those adverts that's made of a big flatscreen. What confuses them is that some flatscreens aren't touchscreens, eg my macbook, while most of the smaller screens like phones and tablets are.
Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing them to screens. They're all over the place now, if I don't give them one they'll want mine. Plus their friends see them everywhere, too. I'm trying to at least steer the screen time towards useful things like math and coding, but it's not always easy.
I have this scary feeling that how you spent your screen time as a kid of this generation (current children) is going to be one of the major determinants of your life. You can use the relatively new power of having all the world's knowledge at your fingertips, or you can use your time looking at cat pictures. The difference is going to magnify the natural differences that occured in previous generations, as the kids who want to learn about stuff can teach themselves while there's never been a better way to waste time for kids who are inclined that way.
> I noticed my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen.
eh I'm in my 30s and am angry at car dashboards that clearly have GUI buttons on them but can only be used by the corresponding physical button on the side, or in some random other place nearby. Be nice if they did both if use while driving and not looking at that interface is the concern.
I want to sink all of those cars. Like, in the ocean.
Similarly but contrariwise, I want to sink those driving devices which have removed physical buttons and mandated screen taps precisely because they can't be used without taking your eyes off the road.
You can feel physical buttons. If the UI has a consistent menu system and a reset mechanism (e.g. a home button), you can navigate it blind. If it has different input modalities (switches, dials, toggles of different shapes and sizes) for different functions, even better.
The car I have allows both touching the elements on the screen as well as using physical knobs and levers to control the same elements. When it was new, I found myself reaching for the screen, but now that it has some age on it, the physical controls win every time. Which leads me to believe that touch is better for discoverability, but not general use. Which kind of mirrors my experience using computers with physical input devices versus touchscreen tablets/phones.
I feel like a hybrid would be excellent. A big, advanced system built into a touchscreen UI, with a series of physical buttons and knobs around / beneath that can control that UI - with the ability to adjust presets for those physical knobs and buttons to driver-preference
Edit: Of course I think it's been well proven that most car companies tend to write bad UIs so I don't imagine this will work as well as I envision it.
for a while I was traveling quite a bit, which meant a lot of rental cars (I drove so many cars in the fleet that I'd often get duplicates that my phone was already set up in).
the most annoying thing that I ran into was a ford running an early version of Microsoft's car dashboard (I think it was sync?) - when a popup came up in front of the speedometer with an "ok" button to dismiss it. it was on the freeway, and it wasn't until I made it to campus that I was able to get it to go away by powering down and powering up the car (rebooting it). it wasn't a touchscreen, so no idea why anyone thought a dialog box was needed, and it was cut off, so I still don't know what it wanted me to do.
Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad.
Reminds me of the video of a very inebriated old Polish man doing a breathalizer test who mistakenly takes a swig of the device (instead of blowing into it) and then promptly falling over. We are drunk on information.
Early versions of iOS were rife with skeuomorphism. Is it sad that iBooks displayed your books on a wooden shelf and played page-turn animations that look like paper, or is it just an application of existing skills and knowledge to a different technology?
Paper books are obsolete. Some people think that they aren't obsolete because they're using tiny low-res monitors or don't know how to use a document manager or haven't used an Apple Pencil, but digital text is just better. I don't care whether young people know what to do with a paper book, but I do care that they know how to interact effectively with text. I'm far more perturbed that schools waste countless person-hours teaching cursive handwriting, but most don't teach typing.
Best features to paper books are the deep focus that they confer, the durability of the books, ability to scribble on them, make outlines. You can also share paper books with your friends or even sell them. Ebooks aren’t bad at all because of the portability but theres something we loose compared to traditional books.
Despite both achieving roughly the same goals, I would argue that writing on a tangible piece of paper with a pen or a pencil is wholly different from writing on an electronic device with an electronic pen, and I suspect they stimulate different areas of the brain.
I might be biased by growing up with paper, but writing on my iPad with an Apple Pencil makes me feel very different things compared to writing in my notebook. Paper is physical. I can rip paper, I can spread my paper notes on the floor, I can put them away and find them 30 years later etc.
To me comparing writing on paper and writing on an iPad feels like comparing walking to travelling with an electric scooter. Yes, both take you from place A to place B, but they have very different implications and are very different experiences.
I think paper books are not obsolete because I don’t want to live in a future where every copy of a certain piece of information can disappear or be rewritten instantly.
I don't understand why it's sad. Isn't it an attempt at approaching new things with an understanding of previous interactions?
Say you give a child a maraca, and s/he learns that s/he can shake the maraca to make noise. Then you hand a child a block, s/he is going to shake the block to see if it makes noise. The interesting bit and teachable moment is that these things have different features and properties and we interact with them differently, and thus we use them for different things. How does a touchscreen fall outside of that?
I say this as a recent parent who is hesitant to introduce screens and approaching the subject carefully.
Also, that video is hilarious, and it's clearly for the best that he's been pulled over.
This! So many people attribute this "failed attempt" to bad parenting or stunted development and fail to realize it is only the natural progression of development.
Children (and adults) learn from their interactions with items, be it technology or not. Attempting to use "touchscreen behaviors" on something that isn't a touch interface is just another learning moment. They're attempting to use their knowledge and experiences to explore the world around them, as each generation did before us.
We're just more connected than we ever were, so this behavior is now more noticeable due to that connectivity and sharing.
The problem is the prolonged exposure to technology at a young age when they have to learn a myriad of other things. And the danger lies in how addictive these things are - needless to say a lot of things are designed that way. The technology is unevitable, my grandparents wrote on slates in school and our parents used to do caligraphy, etc. Tech changes, thats allright but because of its pace of acceleration some kids fall prey to other’s schemes to make money on their behalf.
Exactly. The counterpart to this is walking up to a touchscreen credit card reader ten years ago and going "uhh..." while looking for physical buttons to push.
This was even true 15 years ago, when I was CTO for a startup that put displays on restaurant tabletops. Even back then (before the iPhone was even released), we saw that most users tried to touch the screen to control it! People reasonably expect all screens (especially any screen displaying information) to be touchscreens they can interact with. We need the hardware to catch up. Fortunately, newer technology now makes it possible to build large (up to 100 inches or more) touchscreens with no compromise.
I read a book I sometimes feel the need to grep it, just to realize that you cannot grep paper. Apparently I grew up on Linux shells instead of smartphones.
I can’t tell you how many time I think the iMac for signing vendors/guests into the building is a touchscreen even though I know iMac isn’t touch sensitive.
Yeah, I occasionally find myself tapping my MacBook's screen even though I was an adult before I ever encountered a touchscreen. It's just so natural it becomes reflex in no time at all.
The problem is that parents are using screen time as a nanny, and are training their kids to rely on them as such.
IMO, kids need to be taught self-control and have the ability to entertain themselves before screens are introduced.
Toddler age is definitely too early, I am in the opinion that as little as necessary until it starts to be required in school.
My 2nd grader knows that screens are useful and has seen limited use, wikipedia, video calls, but he is always accompanied by me. And he has no reliance on them.
The automated nanny of the past was other kids in the neighbourhood, but due to laws and a culture of helicopter parenting that developed during the 80s/90s, kids are basically forbidden from playing by themselves with local kids unless they are literally next door.
Parenting is more work today than it used to be. In the past you sent out your kids to the local neighborhood all day, they came back to fix boo-boos and food and then you tucked them in to sleep. Sometimes you had family game nights or similar or everyone would watch TV / listen to the radio together.
Now they must have adult eyes on them 24/7 lest you get CPS called on you.
This 1000 times. About half the time we consciously choose to let our 8-year-old just open a car door or walk across a parking lot independently, some adult scurries over and "Hey! Your kid just carefully walked behind this parked car! Lucky I found his."
This 1000 times. About half the time we consciously choose to let our 8-year-old just open a car door or walk across a parking lot independently, some adult scurries over and "Hey! Your kid just carefully walked behind this parked car! Lucky I found him."
+1 to this. I saw a fellow parent dump their kid on an iPad whenever he fussed, regularly, for months. Seemed like he learned that he could whine to get what he wanted (the iPad) rather than learning how to play/interact elsewhere. All parents are guilty of something like this, but I remain firmly in the camp of not handing over the device just because my kid wants or whines for it.
A good study would be to compare how these screen-trained toddlers compare with screen-free toddlers (you might have to go rural to find those) in interacting and recognizing things in the real 3D world. My guess is that screenies exhibit a marked bias towards 2D perception and thinking, with weaker 3D.
My oldest (7) is logged into my Google account for Youtube.
He subscribes to Minecraft and Fortnite Youtubers all the time.
Periodically I will unsubscribe him to *most of those video game channels. And in turn, subscribe him to a few Science channels. He's recently gotten into soccer, so I subscribed him to a couple of beginner-howto soccer channels as well.
His Youtube recommendations are now more science oriented and he seems to enjoy them. He doesn't seem to notice, yet.
Kudos for currating their videos. My nephew who was initially very bright and interested in so many things ended up being captured by minecraft youtube videos for years. He eventually stopped but that time was completely wasted. I used to play chess with him but a soon as he got into youtubing he lost interest into everything else
Chess is a game based on simple rules that yields complexity but i can't say it is “better” than Minecraft, it’s just something else. Minecraft is not a bad thing, what is bad is sinking countless hours only in this game! What do you come out of it with?
Chess is a game that has a defined purpose. It has a beginning, a middle game and an endgame. One can learn openings, strategies, concentration etc. That translates to some interesting thinking tools that could be used outside of chess.
Minecraft players usually wonder around and kick blocks and collect trinkets without a specific aim. Sure, some users build stuff which I find as cool. And leisurely playing isn't a bad thing.
I have a problem with sinking too much time into just computer games or even more specifically with only one game and even worse, not playing the game but passively watch others play on youtube or twitch. Kids learn things all the time but if they're stuck in a virtual reality that starts to have diminishing returns fast.
I've spent a lot of time playing computer games, they sparked a love of history, geography, technology, new kinds of music, they've informed my taste and sense of humor, and helped me be more circumspect when it comes to life "strategy". Without the love of history, I never would have gotten into chess, either, but it is something I enjoy. At any given time, it would have looked an awful lot like sinking countless hours into one game.
Currently, jumping on a Discord call and playing with friends is an excellent substitution for social visit.
Everyone has hobbies, and personally, I don't think the specific hobby matters as much as pursuing something with the possibility of intellectual growth.
I suspect that chess will hone your ability to analyze, categorize and prioritize the cases occurring in a complex situation that has many possibilities. Poor case analysis in chess leads to easy defeat.
I think you missed the point here. It is not about the benefits of chess or minecraft, but the fact that he started sinking all of his available time into it, and hence didn’t participate in other activities anymore (such as playing chess). Games and videos are notoriously addictive.
I understand that, I just don't think it's a problem. I've spent my life being obsessed with things. Sometimes the obsession lasts a few years, sometimes it lasts a few days, and the sum of being focused on one thing to the exclusion of all else is being a very well-rounded person.
Presumably the nephew is still a child, and presumably he will move on to other things as he gets older.
I'll eat my words if he ends up a 60 year old who regrets spending his life playing Minecraft. Then again, if he is a 60 year old who was productive and happy and spent his free time playing Minecraft without regret, that would also be fine, no?
who knows? maybe it's not ours to say. children are drawn to it and maybe we should trust whatever instinct they're following that minecraft feels stimulating
A modern MacBook should have a touch screen though. I can't blame the children that Apple hasn't managed to release a MacBook with a touchscreen in the last 10 years.
> One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen.
I had a cat like that once. he had been playing a cat game on the iPad and managed to get pretty good at it. later, I was doing a project that involved several small touch screens. it became difficult to work on the project when he was around, as he saw images on the screen and started pawing them, trying to get them to move and make sound.
The narrative around screen time seems to have been totally overthrown by the coronavirus. A year ago the health authorities were recommending limiting childrens’ screen time. Now at a public school in California our children have mandatory three hours of screen time per day.
It just goes to show that these recommendations are not really based on science. It’s more like they are based on guesses by reasonable people when the science isn’t really that confident one way or the other. My personal suspicion is that some forms of screen time, like video calls with family or educational apps, are good for kids. And some forms, like watching TV, are bad for them.
I don’t think that’s true. As a parent, all my decisions are made by balancing a host of factors. Pre covid I limited screens because they should be talking, reading, playing with other kids, being active, etc. with covid, many of those alternatives were taken away so I’ve had to be flexible in the short term to again balance everything so my kids can interact with other kids and get access to learning opportunities. Post covid, I’ll do my best to limit screens again.
Or the mandatory 3h of lessons are better than no lessons even if it means kids are staring a screens? It's not all black and white.
That said, obviously the recommendations are not fully science based because the science is not clear-cut. One study will tell you about the spatial skills and reaction ability of ego shooters, another of the negative sides such as normalisation of violence, reduced quality of sleep, etc.
The headline is a little misleading - from the article itself.
"Dr Ana Maria Portugal, main researcher on the project points out “We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention as it may also be that children who are generally more attracted to bright, colourful features seek out touchscreen devices more than those who are not.”"
This made me think of studies that correlate growing up playing fast-paced video games, shooters specifically if I recall, with better driving down the road (drumroll).
This correlates with my own experience, especially as I transitioned to defensive driving in my mid 20s. I am always keenly aware of what nearby cars are doing, especially on the highway, and have become great at anticipating driver stupidity. Things like a slight steering wiggle before trying to cut across multiple lanes to make an exist. I've averted countless accidents with this heightened awareness.
And on the other hand, there were multiple kids in high school who would ended up having 2-3 accidents in their first year of driving. Obviously there are tons of factors involved but I like to think that my devotion to CS and TFC weren't a complete waste of time.
Somewhat related, kindergartners cannot sit upright all day and do not have the wrist strength to learn writing anymore. Many 5 year olds cannot grasp a pencil with their thumb and forefingers. They hold it more like a three year old, in a full hand grasp. Also, by mid-day the children cannot sit up any longer and tend to slump over in the chairs, laying against the table. These are not sleep deprived teens, they're usually full of energy at that age. The teachers told us that the first few months of kinder include an exercise regimen of core and wrist strength building just so they can sit up and hold a pencil. For instance, one of the exercises is a modified "cat cow" position (familiar to yogis).
Screen time is leading to more than attention differences, it appears it leads to physiological differences as well.
My daughter has to take this standardized map test in Connecticut. It is all computer based. If you are not comfortable using the computer, you do not do well on the test.
The teacher uses this online problems site IXL to help them get use to answering the questions on the computer. This was also really helpful when everyone had to do school remotely.
IXL is infuriating. My first bookmarklets were written to convince my parents that the website was marking my answers incorrectly so I didn't have to use it any more.
(No comment on IXL's effectiveness; I have absolutely no idea whether it helped or hindered or what.)
I have an 20 month old and am planning to get him a tablet for long car rides, but that's it until he's a little older.
Most content kids consume on tablets is essentially junk food for the brain. Also, humans aren't meant to stare at screens all day long...the unknown impacts of extended screen use aren't worth it in exchange for a few lackluster benefits. Not to mention eliminating boredom from kids lives and therefore possibly cultivating a generation of extreme ADHD.
I notice a common theme in the comments: We're tech people (some even want high engagements for their apps) yet we're concerned of our kids' screen time. I'm in the same boat.
Maybe because we're from generation(s) where screen is unnatural (except TV) and we want our kids to have the same positive, "natural", experience like ours.
But I wonder a few generations forward, maybe the future parents will not have the same aversion like ours since they grew up with screens?
(Regardless of the answer, I'm not letting my kids stare screens all day, even though that's what I do daily and how I earn my living)
I want to limit my child's screen time explicitly because my screen time was limitless, and I blew it doing dumb things and feeling more and more isolated rather than more heavily pursuing real life interests and interpersonal relationships. Excess screen time lost me a decade of guitar playing that I can never get back. I don't want my child to suffer the same crushing self realization at 25 years old.
I personally know kids that don't eat their food unless they are in front of a screen (touch or not), because the only thing that captures their attention are colorful blobs. I find it very detrimental to the kids' mental growth because they don't observe things outside of a screen.
There's already a lot of discussions re: other aspects of screen time here, so I'd just like to touch on exactly what is on this study -- ability to search for things faster after "screen training". (like faster reflexes)
Before anyone takes this study and says "so screen time has positive influence" and gives it to their 1 year-old, I'd like to give an anecdote from my own experience. I grew up in the 80s and my family was one of the earliest to own an NES. According to my parents, I started playing the NES when I was 4 or 5. I have some of the fastest reflexes (when it comes to video games or similar activities) of any friends I know; and I played in fighting games tournaments in college. This is a genre of competitive games where millisecond-reflexes can determine the outcome of the game. (of course, I was a low tier tournament player and there are tons of world class players way better and faster than me)
I'd say my takeaway is that sure, maybe that kind of "screen training" helps with reflexes and attention, but you don't have to start that early. If you start at 5 years old instead of 1 year old, you might just get as much of the benefits, without the down sides of vision problems etc. that comes with having screen time too early.
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[ 58.9 ms ] story [ 2985 ms ] thread>> “What we need to know next is whether this attention difference is advantageous or detrimental to their everyday life.”
That children who don't use tablets have shorter attention spans and worst social skills. The "natural is better" argument is not research based. Society has long preached that things like reading books is great for kids but it's entirely unnatural just like tablets.
Generally research in this area has been extremely biased against electronics. You also have to control for the type of activities they are doing on the tablet.
For example the mental stimulation when playing an educational Daniel Tiger game is completely different than watching a toy sales driven TV show like Transformers. Both can be done on a tablet though.
Wasn't always the case, Plato felt it would dull your memory.
"They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks."
What Plato missed was that our ability to do higher order reasoning and synthesis has grown by leaps with books and now the internet. That's a pretty good trade-off for losing some memory.
On the other hand I don't think any great leaps are required to be wary of the effects of screen time. Even as an adult, if I get into the habit of scrolling through newsfeeds, I notice a strong effect of being distracted and seeking stimulus when doing work. My brain has been trained for quick hits of novelty.
In general, there's a night-and-day difference between activities that are easy and tempting vs. challenging but rewarding. I'm sure there are some great educational games on the iPad, but realistically the vast majority of screen time falls into the easy and tempting category.
Does there need to be a cost? From my experience, it's just like most activities you do with your children.
You can use it as babysitter or you can use it as a learning tool by participating and engaging with your child.
Here's how I've done it and he's doing great:
- We mostly use the tablet together, especially when we try a new app.
- I avoid the crack-head apps. The ones with bells, whistles, popups, and other toxic rewards for simple actives. It's fine to rewards like that for something challenging.
- We talk about what he's doing. For example, why he chooses certain colors or why he likes the features. Anything to start a conversation.
- Moderation. 15-30 minutes once every few days.
- Reference what he learned from the app during real-life activities. For example, one app he likes is a virtual dog washing app. He uses soap, a brush, water, etc. When we're playing together, we pretend to clean his stuffed animals just like he did in the app.
What's funny is that everyone just assumes the screen time is bad, and that our kids are naturally very smart (with the implicit suggestion that they'd know more without screen time). That may be true, but it isn't borne out by observation in our case.
We've found a lot of parenting is like that - people are pretty sure about what's good and bad, and the child's behavior/response one way or the other is either expected or a fluke, depending on what confirms assumptions about what's good and bad.
Our oldest is only 7, but we have 4 and we've noticed no ill effects from screen time, the kids are all social, they love to go to the park and play with friends (which we don't get to do nearly enough now...), to go for walks and ride bikes, in short they all seem well within the bounds of "normal" development for their ages.
Why the fuck would you have infants with 'levels of touchscreen usage' at 12 month?
To quote the article, "...We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention".
Research seems poorly directed, like lots of ad hoc studies without cooperation and planning for how it will be used for the sector overall.
Not a research scientist; probably a very naive view. Maybe there's more higher level cooperation/symbiosis/planning/whatever than I perceive?
I think they should find this out and then give the public a ring. Until then, feels like clickbait.
That isn’t surprising to me: there are no inherent properties attached to a touch screen that would affect attention. But there are plenty of fast paced games and videos that could, and those tend to be viewed through touch screens. So I still wonder about that (though it’s not all that different to watching too much TV, something people have discussed for decades now)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning
"The study followed them over the next 2.5 years, bringing them into the lab at 18 months and 3.5 years. At the 18-month and 3.5-year visits, toddlers took part in a computer task in which they were trained to search for a red apple amongst a varying number of either blue apples (easy search), or blue apples and red apple slices (difficult search). An eye tracker monitored their gaze and visually rewarded the child when they found the red apple, allowing them to perform the task even though they were too young to verbally describe what they were doing."
No discussion as to any other effect of screen use. Why did this need study? Humans who use a thing more often are better at working with thing?
Better studies on kids with screen time focuses on spatial development: https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...
"Greater daily digital usage was associated with lower visual spatial performance. Spending even small amounts of time daily with integrated technology was associated with lower WPPSI-IV overall intelligence test scores, and visual spatial scores. Those with the least amount of resources are at the most risk for lower visual spatial abilities"
The key issue often is the parents' role and guidance. Let your kid aimlessly click through YouTube? Or are you fostering their skills and challenge and motivate them to learn something new?
There are mornings when you just want a quiet breakfast while you’re on vacation without an embarrassing meltdown happening and, for better or worse, the most effective way to accomplish that is by giving your kid a movie or show to watch on the iPad for 30 minutes while you eat.
But also, as a parent, I am kind of inclined to hear and accept that my kid being noisy or something is sewhat disrupting other tables. In all honesty, sometimes it disrupts me.
I am significantly less inclined to accomodate randoms whose issue is completely made up problem with phone or tablet during hotel breakfast. I do not care at all. I use tablet to make hotel meal pleasant as opposed to disciplinary issue, for me and for people around other tables. These people don't have problem or pain, they are making up problems in their heads.
It is just that part that makes this complain particularly dumb. Of course public situation is when you are much more likely to use phone. And of course in grand scheme of things it does not matter at all. It is one of millions situations you solve in one way or the other, nit exactly queen visit.
I do not recommend this option.
It's lazy to judge parents just because you see a 30 minute slice of their day
We have almost completely eliminated devices with this tactic because by the time they are done with those two the meal is almost over. And if it isn’t then we also sometimes tell them that they must just wait or engage in conversation with us.
We are lucky that they like painting and playing with playdoh, though.
The game system was a notepad and pen. The game selection included Hangman, Tic-Tac-Toe, and dots-and-boxes.
This is really just nitpicking parental decisions that basically don't matter.
That these things have an effect shows the study above. In addition, you have to evaluate the magnitude of an effect. For example, not every high IQ person who wants to have a well-paid job has one even though a high IQ is known to have a positive impact on reaching that goal. Similarly, not every toddler who uses touchscreens regularly will show increased anti-social behavior, even though that might be a related effect.
First, it is extremely unlikely that sight of touch screen does any harm at all for development of children. The possible small effects are quite unlikely to show up unless the kid is using them a lot, to the exclusion of other activities.
Second, you placed emphasis on during as if hotel meal were the special one place where parent would exclude screen even if the kid is overusing it everywhere else. I hope you are aware, hotel/restaurant is the place where movie is more likely to be used then normal. Restaurant time is not special sacred non-screen time, it is the screen time.
You also wrote:
> I can hardly imagine that this practice is beneficial for the kids development.
I can hardly imagine harm. I can hardly imagine kids to gain on it. In all likelihood, taking in all minuscule effects touch screens have on kids, watching movie during hotel breakfast is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
It might sound a bit fascist, but factors that is commonly questioned and scorned nowadays such as screen time, sugar intake, lack of outdoors activity and not wearing bike helmets are more common among families with generally lower status. The more upper middle class a family gets, the more important it seems to be to avoid doing harm to our children. Maybe mostly to save face among our peers?
My point is that kids with more screen time may overlap with not being read to as much, not given as much attention to tell their family about their thoughts, not challenged to exercise their ability to focus, and so on. In a very general sense.
I agree that this study doesn't measure anything useful, but in my circles, I have heard of and seen children younger than 2 years old learn to read by playing touchscreen games and children younger than 3 learn the names of states, capitals, and other trivia from playing touchscreen games. Achieving that is possible without touchscreens, but it would require an incredible amount of work from the caretaker.
* Spatial intelligence is positively correlated with socio-economic status.
* Screen (TV + Digital) time is negatively correlated with socio-economic status.
Concluding from this that spatial intelligence is negatively correlated with screen time is dubious. Similar reasoning is used to promote all kinds of class-correlated fashions, e.g. breast feeding.
I think their method does count as a natural experiment and as such does have empirical evidence. From the article:
“Preschoolers from a 2010 study (612 children) were compared to preschoolers from a 2014 study (492 children) because of the digital explosion into everyday life that occurred between the two time periods. Television viewing patterns have remained similar over time, but technological device usage has increased.”
> If it were true that usage of touchscreens cause lower intelligence test scores, we would have seen this show up as a population-wide reduction in scores as touchscreens became widely available.
Exposure in formative years is vastly different than adult exposure. The affected cohort in the study is now only in middle school and population wide effects will have a lagged appearance.
Strictly speaking, the discussed research of toddlers using touchscreens is not an experiment also. In experimental setup researcher must control independant variable (touchscreen use). For this research it would mean to get a group of toddlers, split them randomly into two groups, give touchscreens to one group and some "placebo" to other. Researchers didn't do that, they split toddlers into two groups on the ground of the existing touchscreen use. So what they did is called a "correlational research", not an "experiment".
Correlation doesn't allow to speak about casuality. Maybe children ability to a visual search drive them to use touchscreens. Maybe touchscreens teach them to search. Maybe some other factor (like parenting style, or family income) teach them to love touchscreens and to effectively search for visual stimuli.
To be frank, I do not like this reseach much. It is correlational reseach, and there were no attempts to exclude interfering variables: if toddler used touchscreen more, than he/she would be better at tasks on a screen, wouldn't he/she?
As toddlers they also started growing food, hiking, learning counting through dice toss, at kids music groups, putting away their toys, cleaning the house, and playing with way too many building and science-y toys.
Cognitive research has shown for decades hands on depth in a variety of contexts enables people. It’s the market economics narrative enabling economic horders that’s making it so both parents need to work and kids get neglected that’s keeping them stupid.
I don't put much stock in intelligence assessments. There's no real standards around the exams. My school placed you in cohorts based on IQ, and it was pretty obvious that the scoring system was measuring something other than your innate ability. My dad worked in civil service for many years, where promotions and appointments are governed by exams that were a combination of grammar tests and proxies for IQ exams. I didn't see any evidence that those assessments did anything other than reducing patronage and making it harder for non-native speakers to move up the ladder.
It could very much be that kids that grew on TV have some other thought patterns that caused the reality we live in today. It's extremely confounded on so many things. We cant really know for sure anything about it.
The fact that some knowledge and intelligence is not accessible to science (today) doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just that we don't have the tools to study it, yet.
I doubt it. We reward some behaviors differently in 2020 vs 1980, and have different inputs from an information perspective. But people are wired the same way. The "racist uncle" stereotype of 2020 was "Archie Bunker" in 1980.
And no, high iq is not particularly useful in other areas, not when I don't have the ability to work hard on anything except what I'm actually interested in. So formal education was painful.
That's not what the study is about. The study was about a particular effect, and they published their conclusions. The need for such a study can be debated but there is a difference between "common sense" and a proper peer-reviewed study. And to be published by what looks like a serious journal, I guess it wasn't so obvious to experts.
I am fed up with articles that proves a controversial point and then the reporter has to add a "but...". Maybe useful on prime time TV, so that people who are unfamiliar with scientific work don't get the wrong idea, but this is a university, and people reading this are supposed to be familiar with the scientific process.
Maybe some other group will later use the results of all these study and say something like "even though kids with more screen time are better at video games[citation], there is no significant improvement in related activities, we also noticed a decrease in...". But that's another study.
"What we need to know next is whether this attention difference is advantageous or detrimental to their everyday life."
A lot of the comments on HN imply that the researches found a negative effect, when they did not conclude that.
The answer is probably the usual: money.
Someone got a "use it or lose it" budget.
Sorry for being silly in my reply, but the reason we have studies confirming simple “obvious” to you correlations is that we can’t just rely on random peoples intuition without proof. Even simple things need to be studied and sometimes our expectations are broken and we discover that no, everything isn’t made up of combinations of earth, water, fire and wind, even though that was what was “obvious” to the smartest elders of all the lands.
For clarity to your point; I think it would be hard to argue that among kids tested playing piano that those who had an interest and practiced more would sound better statistically. Your toddler may not be davinvi, but they should end up with better fine motor control and maybe learn to enjoy expressing themselves in that medium.
First off, this is brilliant use of eye tracking. I could see eye tracking being so useful for learning, such as tracking attention, knowing when to need a break, etc. Eye tracking is super useful in user testing - for example I was watching some user testing at a major corporation and we used eye tracking. We instructed the user to minimize the app and then open it again, and we noticed that when it was in the systray, people really got confused. It was really easy to see because we could see where their eyes were scanning. Using eye tracking for people who can't speak (for any reason, maybe physical or mental injury or disability, and here age / language barrier) could be huge.
The attention differences are certainly interesting, although I wonder how much of it might be training to use touchscreens, or the idea of a screen that it might change at any time, without related motion. This is completely unnatural, as you would normally think something will change when something walks over to it, or moves slightly. Fixed objects tend to fade more into the background of our mental landscape, which is the basis of a lot of sleight of hand. Like removing something when you can't see it. It'd be interesting to compare against something that doesn't change when you interact with it, like television screens. (is it the touch part, or the screen part?)
I also wonder how touchscreens are sometimes differently interpreted by animals, kind of like mirrors are. For example, some cats seem to think that the little toy apps are under them, or inside of them, or are just generally confused. It's really quite fascinating.
'Dr Ana Maria Portugal, main researcher on the project points out “We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention as it may also be that children who are generally more attracted to bright, colourful features seek out touchscreen devices more than those who are not.”'
This is an important confounding factor. My opinion is that toddlers often spend time with media that are brighter and more colorful than the surrounding environment, e.g. animated videos for children or educational apps for young children. A better study would take that into account.
Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing them to screens. They're all over the place now, if I don't give them one they'll want mine. Plus their friends see them everywhere, too. I'm trying to at least steer the screen time towards useful things like math and coding, but it's not always easy.
I have this scary feeling that how you spent your screen time as a kid of this generation (current children) is going to be one of the major determinants of your life. You can use the relatively new power of having all the world's knowledge at your fingertips, or you can use your time looking at cat pictures. The difference is going to magnify the natural differences that occured in previous generations, as the kids who want to learn about stuff can teach themselves while there's never been a better way to waste time for kids who are inclined that way.
eh I'm in my 30s and am angry at car dashboards that clearly have GUI buttons on them but can only be used by the corresponding physical button on the side, or in some random other place nearby. Be nice if they did both if use while driving and not looking at that interface is the concern.
I want to sink all of those cars. Like, in the ocean.
You can feel physical buttons. If the UI has a consistent menu system and a reset mechanism (e.g. a home button), you can navigate it blind. If it has different input modalities (switches, dials, toggles of different shapes and sizes) for different functions, even better.
Edit: Of course I think it's been well proven that most car companies tend to write bad UIs so I don't imagine this will work as well as I envision it.
the most annoying thing that I ran into was a ford running an early version of Microsoft's car dashboard (I think it was sync?) - when a popup came up in front of the speedometer with an "ok" button to dismiss it. it was on the freeway, and it wasn't until I made it to campus that I was able to get it to go away by powering down and powering up the car (rebooting it). it wasn't a touchscreen, so no idea why anyone thought a dialog box was needed, and it was cut off, so I still don't know what it wanted me to do.
I've talked to teachers who said that they've started seeing young children with picture books doing the zoom in/out pinching motion on pages.
Early versions of iOS were rife with skeuomorphism. Is it sad that iBooks displayed your books on a wooden shelf and played page-turn animations that look like paper, or is it just an application of existing skills and knowledge to a different technology?
Paper books are obsolete. Some people think that they aren't obsolete because they're using tiny low-res monitors or don't know how to use a document manager or haven't used an Apple Pencil, but digital text is just better. I don't care whether young people know what to do with a paper book, but I do care that they know how to interact effectively with text. I'm far more perturbed that schools waste countless person-hours teaching cursive handwriting, but most don't teach typing.
Restoring/downloading a new copy of a partial damaged digital book takes less time than it took me to type up this reply.
I might be biased by growing up with paper, but writing on my iPad with an Apple Pencil makes me feel very different things compared to writing in my notebook. Paper is physical. I can rip paper, I can spread my paper notes on the floor, I can put them away and find them 30 years later etc.
To me comparing writing on paper and writing on an iPad feels like comparing walking to travelling with an electric scooter. Yes, both take you from place A to place B, but they have very different implications and are very different experiences.
Say you give a child a maraca, and s/he learns that s/he can shake the maraca to make noise. Then you hand a child a block, s/he is going to shake the block to see if it makes noise. The interesting bit and teachable moment is that these things have different features and properties and we interact with them differently, and thus we use them for different things. How does a touchscreen fall outside of that?
I say this as a recent parent who is hesitant to introduce screens and approaching the subject carefully.
Also, that video is hilarious, and it's clearly for the best that he's been pulled over.
Children (and adults) learn from their interactions with items, be it technology or not. Attempting to use "touchscreen behaviors" on something that isn't a touch interface is just another learning moment. They're attempting to use their knowledge and experiences to explore the world around them, as each generation did before us.
We're just more connected than we ever were, so this behavior is now more noticeable due to that connectivity and sharing.
I remember the laugh of a guy in 2008 when I scrolled with my fingers on his blackberry's screen. Now I own a Blackberry KeyOne and it is a reality.
IMO, kids need to be taught self-control and have the ability to entertain themselves before screens are introduced.
Toddler age is definitely too early, I am in the opinion that as little as necessary until it starts to be required in school.
My 2nd grader knows that screens are useful and has seen limited use, wikipedia, video calls, but he is always accompanied by me. And he has no reliance on them.
Parenting is more work today than it used to be. In the past you sent out your kids to the local neighborhood all day, they came back to fix boo-boos and food and then you tucked them in to sleep. Sometimes you had family game nights or similar or everyone would watch TV / listen to the radio together.
Now they must have adult eyes on them 24/7 lest you get CPS called on you.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17309970/
He subscribes to Minecraft and Fortnite Youtubers all the time.
Periodically I will unsubscribe him to *most of those video game channels. And in turn, subscribe him to a few Science channels. He's recently gotten into soccer, so I subscribed him to a couple of beginner-howto soccer channels as well.
His Youtube recommendations are now more science oriented and he seems to enjoy them. He doesn't seem to notice, yet.
You can manage your channel subscriptions here:
https://www.youtube.com/feed/channels
Chess is a game that has a defined purpose. It has a beginning, a middle game and an endgame. One can learn openings, strategies, concentration etc. That translates to some interesting thinking tools that could be used outside of chess.
Minecraft players usually wonder around and kick blocks and collect trinkets without a specific aim. Sure, some users build stuff which I find as cool. And leisurely playing isn't a bad thing.
I have a problem with sinking too much time into just computer games or even more specifically with only one game and even worse, not playing the game but passively watch others play on youtube or twitch. Kids learn things all the time but if they're stuck in a virtual reality that starts to have diminishing returns fast.
I've spent a lot of time playing computer games, they sparked a love of history, geography, technology, new kinds of music, they've informed my taste and sense of humor, and helped me be more circumspect when it comes to life "strategy". Without the love of history, I never would have gotten into chess, either, but it is something I enjoy. At any given time, it would have looked an awful lot like sinking countless hours into one game.
Currently, jumping on a Discord call and playing with friends is an excellent substitution for social visit.
Everyone has hobbies, and personally, I don't think the specific hobby matters as much as pursuing something with the possibility of intellectual growth.
Presumably the nephew is still a child, and presumably he will move on to other things as he gets older.
I'll eat my words if he ends up a 60 year old who regrets spending his life playing Minecraft. Then again, if he is a 60 year old who was productive and happy and spent his free time playing Minecraft without regret, that would also be fine, no?
I had a cat like that once. he had been playing a cat game on the iPad and managed to get pretty good at it. later, I was doing a project that involved several small touch screens. it became difficult to work on the project when he was around, as he saw images on the screen and started pawing them, trying to get them to move and make sound.
not just kids. cats as well.
It just goes to show that these recommendations are not really based on science. It’s more like they are based on guesses by reasonable people when the science isn’t really that confident one way or the other. My personal suspicion is that some forms of screen time, like video calls with family or educational apps, are good for kids. And some forms, like watching TV, are bad for them.
That said, obviously the recommendations are not fully science based because the science is not clear-cut. One study will tell you about the spatial skills and reaction ability of ego shooters, another of the negative sides such as normalisation of violence, reduced quality of sleep, etc.
"Dr Ana Maria Portugal, main researcher on the project points out “We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention as it may also be that children who are generally more attracted to bright, colourful features seek out touchscreen devices more than those who are not.”"
This correlates with my own experience, especially as I transitioned to defensive driving in my mid 20s. I am always keenly aware of what nearby cars are doing, especially on the highway, and have become great at anticipating driver stupidity. Things like a slight steering wiggle before trying to cut across multiple lanes to make an exist. I've averted countless accidents with this heightened awareness.
And on the other hand, there were multiple kids in high school who would ended up having 2-3 accidents in their first year of driving. Obviously there are tons of factors involved but I like to think that my devotion to CS and TFC weren't a complete waste of time.
Screen time is leading to more than attention differences, it appears it leads to physiological differences as well.
My daughter has to take this standardized map test in Connecticut. It is all computer based. If you are not comfortable using the computer, you do not do well on the test.
The teacher uses this online problems site IXL to help them get use to answering the questions on the computer. This was also really helpful when everyone had to do school remotely.
Th
(No comment on IXL's effectiveness; I have absolutely no idea whether it helped or hindered or what.)
There is really no shortcut for learning to read. You have to put in the time with your kids.
Most content kids consume on tablets is essentially junk food for the brain. Also, humans aren't meant to stare at screens all day long...the unknown impacts of extended screen use aren't worth it in exchange for a few lackluster benefits. Not to mention eliminating boredom from kids lives and therefore possibly cultivating a generation of extreme ADHD.
Maybe because we're from generation(s) where screen is unnatural (except TV) and we want our kids to have the same positive, "natural", experience like ours.
But I wonder a few generations forward, maybe the future parents will not have the same aversion like ours since they grew up with screens?
(Regardless of the answer, I'm not letting my kids stare screens all day, even though that's what I do daily and how I earn my living)
What is the effect of touchscreen usage by toddlers on their peripheral vision?
Before anyone takes this study and says "so screen time has positive influence" and gives it to their 1 year-old, I'd like to give an anecdote from my own experience. I grew up in the 80s and my family was one of the earliest to own an NES. According to my parents, I started playing the NES when I was 4 or 5. I have some of the fastest reflexes (when it comes to video games or similar activities) of any friends I know; and I played in fighting games tournaments in college. This is a genre of competitive games where millisecond-reflexes can determine the outcome of the game. (of course, I was a low tier tournament player and there are tons of world class players way better and faster than me)
I'd say my takeaway is that sure, maybe that kind of "screen training" helps with reflexes and attention, but you don't have to start that early. If you start at 5 years old instead of 1 year old, you might just get as much of the benefits, without the down sides of vision problems etc. that comes with having screen time too early.