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.

How do you explain Autistic adults where we (I'm 36) didn't really have screens? At least not until I remember from 12/13.

I remember that post. Most people were defending the parents saying it’s only a snapshot etc. People have incredibly low expectations of parents tbh.

I don't think you're being entirely unreasonable here. I'm always sceptical when parents use quasi-psychological language like "regulate" in relation to screen use, when what they really mean is "it keeps my difficult child quiet".

All you will get is people bleating that their child 'needs it to regulate!!!'
Aka the screen stops their child having a tantrum ('meltdown') therefore they let them have it more.

Its no different to giving kids a load of chocolate if they scream otherwise, yet people seem to get away with claiming it's benefitting their child.

I find it incredible and think in years to come lots of studies will indicate that excessive screen use is far far more damaging than people realise and a big factor in the rise in kids issues.

Agreed. The word 'regulate' is the biggest con around. They just calm down because they got what they wanted, kids have done this since the dawn of time

I am hugely grateful to 'screens' (I think we're talking technology here more broadly) for the following reasons:

I have one son with profound language impairment. Watching Mr. Tumble on a tv screen together is a cherished memory. We also used an ipad to aid his language development and to support his speech and language therapy throughout his childhood. He was introduced to Mario driving game on the Wii at around age 4 and he was able to enjoy a form of play that had largely eluded him to that point. He is an adult now and relies on his phone for all sorts of assistive technology. His life would have been much less rich without screens and the technology that comes through them.

I have another son with ADHD, but through screens (You Tube) and other specialist music apps, he was able to learn the piano to mastery level, which wouldn't have been possible for him in the traditional way (weekly piano lessons). He eventually secured a music scholarship for a selective sixth form college and is now considering a career in composing.

I have another son with ADHD who loves to use the computer and is developing a You Tube channel. Along the journey he is learning all about audience engagement and communication styles and a range of editing and other IT skills.

My main point being that every child is different, but with engaged parents, screens, and technology, can also be hugely beneficial.

I dont think feeling certain types of screen usage could cause behaviour issues or certain behaviours is the same as saying screens cause asd/adhd.

Those conditions clearly exist and predate the type of screen usage people mean.

But the mobile phone dopamine hit that teens struggle with could/might lead to some symptoms that looks a little like some of the behaviours seen in adhd. Which would be in top of the people who were always going to have adhd and actually does look a little different anyway.

OP, I think it’s parental attention and interaction neglect causing behavioural problems in children, same as it ever as. Screens are just the latest tool that neglectful parents use to avoid spending time interacting with their kids. They use them by looking at screens and ignoring their kids or giving the kid a screen and still ignoring them.

Even the study screen shotted upthread had to include “less time spent by parents” in there to get the high risk with behavioural problems.

Even before the TV or digital screens we saw the same link between parental neglect and behaviour issues.

I find this really interesting as my eldest could very easily had different outcomes if I hadn’t been a teacher and had a number of years of experience of working with ND children. He had a lot of medical trauma from a very young age as he has anaphylaxis and it took a long time to find out what his allergies were, lots of very traumatic A & E trips and taking of bloods etc. He had never been anywhere without me until he started pre-school at three because we didn’t know what all his allergies were and didn’t really trust other people to spot the warning signs. When he did start pre-school he would run around the classroom crying every day. His teacher rang me after the first week and said I should get him on the waiting list to be assessed for autism and ADHD and that in the meantime they would put him in the sensory tent with the iPad when he had a ‘meltdown’. To me it seemed completely obvious that his behaviours aligned with his trauma/attachment but she was very offended when I said I did not want him to be given an iPad at all and that there was nothing in his behaviour to indicate ND but plenty to evidence his personal history. I had to build him up to full days over a period of three months starting with 30 mins a day but now in his second year there he runs in every morning, has loads of friends and there has been no suggestion from the SENCO that he is anything other than NT. If I had trusted her opinion he would have spent the year in a tent on an iPad, he would have had lots of exceptions made for him in school under the guise of being suspected of being ND and by the time he had finally been assessed he would have probably been showing many signs of ND because he wouldn’t have been properly socialised and would have been given a screen whenever he had a ‘meltdown’ I do not believe screens can make children ND but I do believe they can make NT children display behaviour associated with neurodiversity

I'm confused because your original post said why aren't they being investigated? And I pointed out there are lots of studies but they don't really tell us that much about it. That's not me interpreting them differently from the researchers - it's straight from the discussion and conclusions of the studies I have read. I haven't read every single study of course. But pretty much every study says something like - this tells us this small thing about this specific aspect of screen time and it links back to X, Y, Z other research - but more study is needed.

If you mean that newspaper and magazine articles and popular books like to cherry pick studies to fit an agenda or an idea that they have, they do that a lot but it doesn't mean that it's right.

For the Russell Barkley stuff I'm just repeating what he says. He is a scientist and doctor very highly respected in the field, so I trust his interpretation of the data, of course you're free to have any view you like on that. He's retired now so he spends some time making presentations on various topics to view on youtube if you want to see what he says in more detail.

No I am not going to give you details about my own children so you can imply that I have somehow damaged them and caused them to have ADHD or laud me as some kind of exception and thereby do the former for anyone else reading. If you know anything at all about research, you know a sample size of 2 is too small to make any conclusions, anyway. I have ADHD myself which is why I was interested in it originally. The fact two of my children also have it is highly likely to be the genetic link. I can also see symptoms/traits in my own family going back as far as living memory goes. But since it's expressed as a delay in the development of executive functioning of course the environment can help or hinder - that's exactly why things like parent training work and why you're always advised that it's essential for kids with ADHD to have structure and exercise. I think it's quite likely that too much screen time could exacerbate ADHD symptoms, it certainly does for my children, but IME this is a temporary effect, and my understanding of the research is that it's unlikely you could cause a child to develop ADHD by exposing them to screen time specifically.

Bill Gates didn’t let his children have smartphones until they were 14. Make of that what you will.

This is true for my child! Never had a tablet, limited tv now but none before 2. Now aged 7 and showing strong signs of ADHD and ASD, all of which began after he started school.
I think we need to be careful not to assume screens are the cause, although I’m sure detrimental in some cases.

Neglect used to be turfing your 7 year old out of the house to let them run feral with other kids - which involved fresh air, socialising, and social skills they probably didn’t realise at the time. Now it looks very different and is far more isolating and sedentary.

There is a flip side to this in that neglect in the form of turfing your very young child out to fend for themselves opens them up to risk of predatory older children and adults as well as physical risk - getting run over, falling in a river or out of a tree, having an accident on a building site etc. And older children out and about with little supervision tend to end up smoking, into drink/drugs and crime.

And there have always been other forms of neglect like screaming at your child and terrorising them with violence until they learn to leave you alone.

I don't think you can realistically argue any form of neglect is more healthy and beneficial than another. They are all bad.

Yanbu

Everyone is autistic these days all of a sudden... And everyone is on screens

Odd, that

We didn’t suspect anything with ds until he started school. He has never had a tablet, no tv before aged 2, limited now. Very speech delayed despite all our efforts, hours spent reading with him, narrating our days etc etc. But please do continue to make assumptions.

Well since his children were born in 1996, 1999, and 2002 and the first widely commercially available smart phone was sold in 2013”, I would say he didn’t really have a choice? They weren’t a thing until his kids were teens.

It’s a bit like my parents saying they weren’t allowed to watch TV until they were 14 when TVs weren’t widely available for consumers until 1958 (when they turned 13).

“I am referring to the first smartphones sold for personal use and not towards executives, medics, rescue or military for professional use.

And it’s the feral kids that had the high risk for behavioural problems. Like playing with fire, throwing bricks at cars and people, shoplifting, fighting/bullying in the streets, vandalism etc

You've clearly had a bad experience but that is nonsense.

True. And a sobering statistic I worked out on one of these threads a while ago is that the child mortality rate has reduced, which is of course great - and we can put this down to a combination of better safety regulations and supervision leading to fewer accidents, less crime, better treatment and prevention of childhood illnesses/healthcare in general, and better survival rates for premature/low birth weight babies - and as it always has been, children who are the most vulnerable/disadvantaged have always been overrepresented in these categories, and are also more likely today to be children who present with behavioural issues and/or receive an SEN diagnosis.

Exactly. Why go out at all if no one is talking to each other?

I agree, It’s sad the amount of toddlers I see glued to YouTube. I have an adult son and I’m so glad he wasn’t brought up with YouTube and later on social media.

I’m pretty sure trained medical professionals are able to recognise the difference 🙄. An autism or adhd diagnosis is a long process with numerous inputs from different Drs etc.

An hour on Zoom according to pp

But we’re not talking about neglect per se or which is worse - we’re talking about a specific range of symptoms that screen time is heavily linked with. You seem really determined to somehow prove that all the studies are nonsense and screen time is fine, beneficial even, but every study points to the contrary.

No they don’t. The studies tend to list lack of parental attention (neglect) along with excessive screen time increase risk of poor behaviour.

So we know for a fact that parental neglect causes behavioural issues from screen free environments

So when it’s neglect plus screens, is it the screens? Or the neglect? Or both?

They used to do studies on neglect plus sugar, and no surprise found behavioural issues! Cue lots of cherry picking sensationalist crap about too much sugar making kids hyper and poorly behaved…