The more one-year-olds look at TV screens and gadgets, the more difficulty they will have in communicating and solving everyday tasks over the next few years. This conclusion was made by experts from Tohoku University in Japan. To work published in the scientific journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Dr. Taku Obara and colleagues studied 7,097 mother/child pairs from 2013 to 2017. They assessed children’s development in the categories of communication, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, problem solving, and personal and social skills.
Observations showed that the more time children spent in front of a screen, the more markedly their fine motor skills, as well as their communication, task completion, and social interaction skills deteriorated.
Japanese researchers also evaluated the impact of external factors on infants: age of parents, family income, communication with grandparents, as well as presence of maternal postpartum depression and maternal attachment.
It turned out that mothers of children who spend a lot of time in front of the screen are younger, less educated, less wealthy, tend to give birth for the first time, and are more susceptible to postpartum depression.
Additional data showed that developmental disorders caused by screen time generally resolved by age four.
ancient scientists definedWhich cognitive skills of children are affected by gadget use?