To wonder why screens aren’t investigated as a cause of childhood behaviour issues?

[Peony1897]

We now know that screens, and in particular tablets, have really horrific effects on young children and their emotional/social development - in particular speech, regulating anger, sensory issues and how they interact with their peers.

So why is it whenever we see a thread where a small child has some or all of the above issues, and the OP clearly mentions tablet use or ‘all they are interested in is screens’, the answer is nearly always an autism assessment rather than removal of screens?

Genuinely curious as to why such a clear risk factor is never picked up on.

"We now know one causes the other" is not the same as "has been related to".

It is virtually impossible to prove a causal link.

It's not a spurious correlation though, is it?

The research into the effects of screen use on child development is pretty damning. And I think we have all seen with our own eyes (particularly those who work with children) a general decline in children's behaviour and increased incidence of developmental delays which cannot be explained away by other factors.

I think it would be illogical to assume, without any real evidence, that screens are detrimental to NT children but beneficial to ND children.

And I do believe that many parents are now jumping on the neuro diversity bandwagon and self diagnosing their children because they'd rather stick a label on their child and blame their bad behaviour on something innate rather than acknowledge that their own parenting isn't up to scratch.

I'm not saying that is necessarily the case for people on this thread. But I simply don't believe that the huge rise in numbers of ND children can be attributed to better understanding of neuro diversity. If it were the case that in previous generations all these people were just walking around undiagnosed, I think we would be seeing vast improvements in people's ability to cope with everyday life now, as a result of increased diagnosis and treatment. And yet, that really doesn't seem to be the case. People labelled ND seem less able to cope with everyday life now than ever before. So are all these diagnoses genuine, and if they are, are they actually helping?

I have slightly strayed off the topic of screen use here, but seeing children have meltdowns in public, then being given an iPad which they stare mindlessly at for the next hour, only to have another meltdown the moment they are required to put the iPad down - and seeing the parent justify this on the grounds of neuro diversity - looks like an appalling vicious circle to me. Screens are addictive; they are deliberately designed that way. And when people use other things which are known to be addictive in order to regulate their emotions (tobacco, alcohol, painkillers, opiates, betting), it never ends well.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom completely agree with every word.

I often wonder if blaming Covid for SEMH issues is a red herring and actually the cause is the massively increased screen use during the lockdowns.

There's a lot to discuss here, which I won't because I do have my own autistic kids and it's nearly my turn to watch them 😁

"But I simply don't believe that the huge rise in numbers of ND children can be attributed to better understanding of neuro diversity. If it were the case that in previous generations all these people were just walking around undiagnosed"

• Huge numbers of people in previous generations ARE walking around undiagnosed though (or getting very late diagnosis)! I think the fastest growing group of people getting diagnosed is middle aged women.
• I don't think it I'd better understanding alone, I think there are many, many reasons for increased rate of diagnosis, "better understanding" being a part of it. On another thread, a Paediatrician was explaining that there has also been a massive increase in obvious and severe learning disability in children as well as other neurodivergence. There's no way that can just be explained by better understanding / diagnostic criteria being broadened.

I used to work with children (although I am quite young so can't compare multi-generationally) and I genuinely don't think behaviour is getting worse: secondary schools were absolutely wild 20 years ago.

I think it is probably a combination of both.

If COVID had happened in a pre screen age and children had just read books all day, they would still have been damaged by the lack of social interaction and formal schooling. Possibly even more damaged by the lack of schooling because there wouldn't have been any lessons via Zoom.

I actually don't think COVID could have happened in a pre screen age though. The lockdowns were only possible because such a high proportion of the workforce do office jobs which can be done remotely.

If COVID had happened 20 years previously we just wouldn't have been able to lock down to the extent that we did.

But you're absolutely right, trying to figure out whether the effects on children have been caused by the lack of social interaction during COVID or higher than usual screen use or any other factors is impossible because it was all intertwined. (Other than things like children being unable to swim or young adults being unable to drive due to a lack of lessons, which are obviously due to the restrictions themselves and not due to screen use.) There was definitely a lot more screen use during lockdown though, for obvious reasons.

Totally agree with your OP. My child doesn’t have a tablet and does watch some TV but mostly we’re too busy and the TV is off.

A few of my friends had bought their children tablets for Christmas/birthdays however quickly regretted it and ‘they have gone back to the shop’ as they were addicted and behaviour was terrible when trying to take them off them. A lot of parents with children slightly older than my child have said to leave it as long as possible to get her a tablet as they also regret their decision.
We’ve had parents in my daughters class complain that they have some work to do via an app at home and that their kids tablet doesn’t support it and reluctant to do the homework because they want to watch YouTube!

I am sick to death of seeing children in restaurants sitting like a zombie watching their tablets….. yes I judge!!
Recently we were on a family holiday…lots of families with children in the hotel restaurant, my 5 year old was the only one not sitting with a screen. No interaction from their parents as soon as they sat down. The parents were on their phones too!
We were in the bar area having a drink and a chat and my daughter was playing with some figures with us. Other children were sitting with headphones on with tablets.
It makes me feel so sad!

people will say to mind my own business but it’s hard not to notice! Xx

And I literally said in the same post that he uses a screen to regulate after a day of masking at school.

I live in France, where people take food and dining very seriously, and where the official government advice is that children should have no exposure to screens at all (including TV) before the age of 3, and as little exposure as possible after the age of 3. It's very rare to see children using tablets in restaurants here, and when it does happen you can see the disapproving looks all around.

UNICEF seems to think there is a correlation between screen time and poorer outcomes for child development

https://www.unicef.org/parenting/child-development/babies-screen-time

I’ll never forget a comment my SIL made about her kids and screens…she said “it is like a drug”. We had a talk about it, and she admitted it was easier when she wanted the kids out of her hair for a while, but she also limited it quite a bit, and my niece and nephew were in loads of extracurricular/sports. One just graduated university with a decent job, and the other is doing well at university.

There are a lot of variables to show direct correlation, but anecdotally, the huge rise in MH issues I saw as a teacher in HE coincided with more usage of social media. I had to employ a phone’s off policy in my modules, and had to teach the students how to take notes in lectures and seminars, and read actively via annotation. I also had to shorter design interactive activities to get them to participate in seminars a lot more than in the past. It was just increasingly difficult to hold their attention, and learning was more bite-sized. I wasn’t the only instructor experiencing this.

This is a huge, huge problem that is going to have appalling widespread repercussions on this generation of children and future ones, if we don't wise up and get a serious grip on it soon. I am often saddened to see small children being wheeled around in pushchairs with ipads in their hands as soon as they are old enough to hold one and prod away at the screen, while their gormless parents gab away the entire time on their phones, having some pointless, inane conversation at full volume with the phone on loudspeaker. There is so little interaction between the child and parent it's heartbreaking.

I know I am going to be told I am only seeing a 'snapshot' of that parent/child relationship, but I see it so often with so many people I have to reach the conclusion that it's commonplace and counts as normal now.

When my children were small I had a Nokia brick because that's all that existed. It was used for emergencies and important communication only. When we walked with our children in pushchairs our only conversation was with them, about what was going on around us. The trees and animals, the weather, the traffic, the people, the sky, the contents of our sandwich, what we would do when we got to the park/beach/library etc. We made eye contact as we chatted, we had no other insular distractions and neither did they.

When we ate out in restaurants we took colouring books and simple activity games to keep them entertained and quiet while we hung around waiting for food. Those things often required our interaction and involvement, or at the very least the children would interact with one another even if not with us. Now the only interaction is between the individual child and the screen they are holding. And to make it worse, the whole restaurant/train/plane/waiting room often has to listen to whatever they are listening to because the parent doesn't even have the good manners to make the child use headphones, so the child learns no awareness of their obligations to others around them either. It's just all about instant gratification with no wider responsibility at all. It's absolutely fucking tragic.

If my toddlers were strapped into a buggy being dragged around the shops for hours, then of course they had the occasional tantrum due to being bored or fidgety. But the valuable lesson they needed to learn was that they have to be bored or fidgety sometimes and the world won't end over it. Not everything is always about them and grown ups need to get stuff done sometimes. But equally the valuable lesson we had to learn was that children aren't mute little dolls that will be dragged around for hours without a murmur. They have their limitations and perhaps we were unfair if we expect them to tolerate too much for too long without a break. They would eventually need proper rest, or something interesting or stimulating for them to do, because they'd reached the end of their 'sitting still and quiet' rope for that particular trip.

If neither the parent nor the child ever has to go through that realisation because the child has the permanent distraction of a screen 10 inches from their face, then those lessons are never learnt. And the consequences are going to be horrific for everyone.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom I don’t think it’s worse behaviour to previous generations. It’s the same behaviour but better understood and so more likely to lead to a diagnosis.

It’s not the case that ‘worse’ behaviour equals neurodiversity anyway? It’s more complicated than that. An autistic girl sitting quietly might seem like perfect behaviour but it doesn’t mean she’s not struggling inside.

Teachers are seeing more behavioural issues now at least party because children are being pushed into mainstream. There are kids in every class of my son's primary school that would never have been in mainstream even just a few years ago. This has a knock on effect to all the children in the class. There are no longer any classroom TAs that help in general - they all do 1:1 with specific children.

My friend working in a special needs school locally says that the level of extremely complex needs coming through each year is growing. This means there aren't places for other children and they get bumped up to mainstream. Apparently this is becasue more children are surviving at very premature ages or with complex medical conditions that would have died previously.

I don't know what the answer is for this. But I do know it means my son is being kept in a mainstream setting that doesn't meet his needs.

I have an autistic son and a husband with adhd. I am a governor in an semh school and I work in a mainstream school and an autism specialist school

I do understand horrible feeling that people are suggesting poor parenting is causing asd and there are some ignorant posters are giving that vibe and I am generally a huge advocate for increasing understanding of asd. I'm also a ling time campaigner for improving sen education.

But, I still think there is an important discussion to be had about certain types of screen use and our children.

To me, something going on with mobile phone usage, in the non autistic/adhd teen population that is causing anxiety and attention span issues, due to the dopamine hit, always connected, quick reel, and stopping other beneficial activities nature of it.

that anxiety /short attention can mimic some (not all) of asd/adhd behaviour as both those conditions have anxiety as a comorbidity so it seems obvious that anxiety for other reasons would have a tiny overlap.

A large number of pupils at my school self report spending 6-9 hours a day looking at tik tok/social media. The average mumsnetter probably isn't letting thier teen do that and thinks its unusual, but it really isn't.

The school has worked with TJ power a neuroscientist to try reduce this. It has actually had some success. It's quite interesting research and his DOSE concept is useful.

The modern world is very intense for people with neurodivergence affecting their social and sensory needs.

Most of us don't have smaller communities where the majority of people you interact with are known.

Schools are larger, in numbers of classes and class size. The curriculum is restricted and very target driven (potential for lots of self-flagellation for the perfectionists). Little space for creativity, practical subjects and alternative thinking. Playtimes/ breaks have been slashed especially in secondary. Minimal learning time directives means school days are often longer than in the past. Staffing issues mean multiple teachers per subject and inconsistent supply staff.

Special schools only exist for children with severely impaired developmental or physical needs. Children with moderate needs are sent to fail in under-resourced mainstream settings and the disruption that this causes makes the toll of masking harder for "high functioning" children that need calm, orderly environments. The under resourcing of special needs education harms all children.

Public spaces are more intense with input to process. More traffic noise on streets. More dogs barking and dashing around being "friendly". Music blasting in most public buildings (and usually twitchy up-beat pop/ dance music) Changes in light quality from energy efficient and aesthetic lighting. Big screens (sports matches in pubs, advertising in the street) People shouting down phones, speaker phones or playing their own tinny noises out of them.

There's 15 million more people in the UK than there was when I was a young child and that means less space and less quiet.

For some people at the "higher functioning" end, the change in society can be the difference in impaired ability to cope and meeting diagnostic thresholds. There are several older male relatives in our family with very strong autistic traits but are undiagnosed, but managed to find comfortable little niches to live in including continuing to live solo on the family farm with little change and external influence. The younger generation are meeting diagnostic thresholds to help them cope with the pace of modern life.

No wonder when DS gets home from school after a day of masking, fighting back non NT-friendly impluses, the only thing he has mental capacity for is indulging his special intetests on the computer. He's too fried to make his dyslexic brain do more reading. His hypermobile hands are too tired to build and paint warhammer or do Lego. He just needs time to let facts about the universe or construction games put the day's tension aside and at 5pm he's usually recovered enough for some light conversation and to be able to go out for sports. But he's fit for nothing rational before then.
It's not a world away from my dad's need to come in, sit in his chair and be undisturbed behind his newspaper for at least 30mins after work. Just a different media.

And twice in nearly 10 years of schooling have I ever had feedback about his behaviour, once being burned out at the end of his first term in yR, and in y9 having a sibling spat when his sibling transitioned up to the same school.
There is a significant proportion of ND children masking away at being near perfect- they are not badly behaved. The post-restraint collapse can be pretty epic though and that's largely what prompted our referal/ diagnosis, and suddenly all the dots of (pre-tablet/ smartphone/ computer) speech and language delays & intervention, the health issues and sensory preferences from birth all joined up and made sense.

There is a lot of research NOW to show a strong correlation between access to screens in babies and later autism diagnosis.

I agree with this and is similar to DS's early years (he just happened to be autistic and diagnosed at 9 when enough dots joined up)

It's incredibly frustrating when an increased use of screentime by default (especially with low quality media) gets lumped in with seperate, complex issues about children with additional needs (and especially those who are willfully ignorant about autism and ADHD) as one issue. It's not. There can be two seperate things going on with a small degree of overlap. There is also a lot of nuance. Not all screen time is equal in quality.

(Not criticising you, your points were articulately made and not conflating the two issues)

The Covid years brought several factors together. Access to screens for young children was increasing anyway. Restrictions meant that so many ways of filling a child's day became illegal down to interacting with other children the same age and going to play areas. Many activities/ toddler groups reamained closed until summer 2021 when restrictions eased because of social distancing. Parents were put into impossible positions of WFH with no legal form of childcare avaliable, so it's no wonder screen time went up in survival mode.
Even casual social interactions like going to the shops was severely impaired for prolonged periods. Early on children were discouraged from going into many shops. Masks were in prolonged use distorting language and facial expressions. I couldn't wear masks without going into overwhelm, and I found that by winter 2021 when I smiled at babies/ toddlers in the supermarket, they didn't react back. It wasn't normal to them to see a stranger smiling. Babies born since that didn't go through that experience have reverted back to the usual reactions and interacting. Those lockdown babies are the ones in yR now.

In the next year or two it would be interesting to see if there are specific patterns related to specific cohorts according to their development stage in 2020-21, or if trends continue and it is a part of wider parenting and social changes.

On returning to normality, the 7-11yos I worked with did have dented social confidence, but having had decent foundations beforehand pretty much recovered at a cohort level. The longest lasting legacy for us was the break in progression where younger children came back as older children and the rolemodels on far less exprience than usual, something we are still catching up and putting more input than usual into.

It's a complicated issue and many seperate things can be true in co-existance.

A lot of research has already been done which shows a strong correlation between babies being exposed to screens and eventual ASD diagnosis.

There is correlation, but this doesn't mean causation.

I have one diagnosed with numerous neurodevelopmental issues, younger one pending assessment. My older child didn't sleep as a child. Literally not over an hour at a time for several years. Didn't sleep through the night until age 7. I had support from HV, specialist sleep expert, sleep study etc but nothing helped. He had no screens until age 1, very very restricted until age two. He also didn't have capacity for independent play and was very high needs in general. But there came a point that I was so sleep deprived I was constantly ill that I did resort to screens at points for a bit of down time. It would keep him quiet for 30 mins while I took a bit of a break. This then crept up more than I'd have liked, but it did save our sanity.

I'm sure there are lots of high needs kids like mine where screen use is because of autism, not leading to autism.

As an aside, the autistic children I know are the best behaved out of their classes. The problem kids are the ones who are basically ignored by their parents - screen time is only one small element of the issues.

@sunshine244 totally agree. A lot of parents have no idea about the long term sleep deprivation some parents of ASD children go through. I had a permanent pain in my head like someone was drilling a hole in it when my kids was little. I wonder how much time some of those commenting regularly spend with neurodiverse kids. I volunteer with some and find them well behaved

The first youtube video DS watched was age 4. He was playing very repetitively and showing him videos of people doing different things with train sets did inspire him to try some different things. That was an autistic trait (which I hadn't realised at the time) and a youtube video seemed to be a good idea to diversify his development a bit and it worked well.

Unfortunately, everytime I tried to play directly with him it triggered a huge, screaming meltdown tantrum because I did it all wrong and didn't subconciously interpret the correct way that he wanted me to play with him.

Focused, controlled use of screen time can be very helpful for autistic children. The autism is there anyway and often conventional parenting approaches can be more of a hinderence than helpful.

Media formats such as videos can make information much more accessible. DS rarely watches conventional TV because it's not niche enough for his interests. Youtube certainly needs a lot of care, but it's also a gold mine of niche content created by people who love niche content. To meet DS's thirst for knowledge through books would be expensive if he wasn't too dyslexic to find trawling through that density of detailed text a slog. His teachers have always been amazed by his general knowledge, and that was learned from videos.

Hyperfocus can mean autistic children spending longer than is typical on one activity at a time. DVDs got him and me through a difficult sibling pregnancy during a long difficult winter which reduced practical options for getting out. At 2, DS would focus on the whole Thomas DVD. With hindsight, it makes perfect sense that he found it distressing to have the DVD interrupted because his autistic perfectionism likes things to be complete. All I knew at the time was that I had a toddler that was hard work, and it was very difficult to make him go from one thing to another. Again hindsight- transitions are a common difficultly for autistic people.

With hindsight, yet again I can recognise why places like the supermarket were such hard work. Why outings to "fun" places like soft play always concluded in tears. He's now an articulate teenager and some common meltdowns that mystified me at the time have now been explained such as him associating place name A with place B for a logical reason, and I'd be bamboozled why we turned up to a lovely park and he'd be in a foul mood after initial excitement not knowing that he perceived that he was in the "wrong place"

Excessive time spent without communicating and developing language is of course harmful and yes screens can be a symptom of that. But the correlation that families with autism using screen time to improve family life more than average levels is not the same as causation. There is nuance. Parents can use screens as a tool and not neglect other areas of development. I spent my youth ploughing through books which share the social and activity downfalls of screen time. Not all books are worthy and enriching, but I will grant that they tend to be better for stimulating multiple zones of the brain. But society has a fairly crude categorisation that reading on paper is better than reading on a screen than doing other things on a screen.

As a teenager now, he does use screens a lot (as well as maintaining practical hobbies and a couple of sports) because he exceeds his social quota getting through school life. Being autistic, care was needed about chosing a school that would not overwhelm him into school avoidence and the local catchment school was not it, so the friends that he does have are scattered around the city, not local for casual hanging out. He's currently only interested in gaming online as a form of socialising and it frees him up from some of the pressures of in person socialising such as faking eye contact. That lower pressure helps him recharge enough to survive school life, and he needs to do well in school to get a job in a niche autism-friendly profession where he can utilise his strengths.

Autism is often accompanied by other conditions such as dyspraxia, hypermobility, dyslexia and sensory issues that will affect what autistic people find pleasurable. Again, that can increase the appeal of screen time over other activities.

If autism is the real concern here, faster, more proactive pathways to diagnosis with more support than a handful of flyers is the real answer, not insinuating that parents broke their children by trying to cope in harder than average circumstances and scapegoating them.

It would have been impossible to take DS out if we'd relied on that. He would run off unless he was being physically held in place - and run off repeatedly, over and over again, with me or DH chasing him each time to bring him back. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants him to run into somebody carrying a tray of hot food/drinks. Every year it would be lets go out for mothers day/birthdays/whatever, and I'd refuse and invite everyone over to mine which was just as bad really as everyone being over would invariably trigger a meltdown.

We have missed out on family events because DS could not keep still and quiet. Part of it was overstimulation from the noise and too many people - it's still hard to take him anywhere too loud and busy without a very clear plan of where we're going and what we're doing - so we walk into town, go round the charity shops in a certain order, stop off in Costa, bus home, that's what we do every time.

Eating out with family in the evening can be difficult, he uses screens less for that now, but I'll still take him out for a walk if he's struggling - last time he spent most of the time doodling, he'd asked me to buy him a pen and paper earlier in the day and I was proud of him for coming up with that idea.

@EilonwyWithRedGoldHair running off was my experience too. No ability to sit down and concentrate for long (not even on a screen). If you add other younger siblings into the mix and you’re on your own it can even be dangerous trying to go out as you can’t chase them fast enough while holding another child.

Really? First I've heard this.

No, I don't think neuro diversity does necessarily equate to worse behaviour, particularly in girls as you say.

That's a big part of what makes me hugely sceptical when parents explain away their children's bad behaviour on grounds of neuro diversity. I'm sorry to say it but it happens so much more frequently than it used to that now I tend to think, "Is he really though? Or is he just a little shit who needs to be shown some boundaries?"