I already knew this and you already knew this: Screen Time Changes Structure of Kids’ Brains
In brain scans of 4,500 children, daily screen usage of more than seven hours showed premature thinning of the brain cortex, the outermost layer that processes information from the physical world. Though the difference was significant from participants who spent less screen time, NIH study director Gaya Dowling cautioned against drawing a conclusion.
“We don’t know if it’s being caused by the screen time. We don’t know if it’s a bad thing,”
They know it’s a bad thing. Now they just want to figure out how best to exploit it.
“Early results from the study, called Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD), have determined that children who spend more than two hours of daily screen time score lower on thinking and language tests. ”
Future liberals.
I’m betting this is yet another alarmist research paper that ends up being far less dramatic or even completely debunked. I can’t see how reading from a screen for X hours per day would be any different than reading from printed material for X hours per day. I’d think that all forms of reading engage the brain more than passively watching tv (which was also going to turn kid’s brains to mush, according to research). You’d think social media would have more affects in the emotional and reward systems of the brain than the cognitive areas. While some electronic games might even increase certain cognitive abilities – word games, problem solving quests, buying and selling, calculating various game points, forming strategies, etc.
Anyway, parents worry too much about this or that study. The odds of having healthy kids increases with good food, sleep, exercise (sports), taking them/forcing them outdoors, ensuring they’re learning their 3Rs, fair and predictable house rules, having a bit of fun and good communication. Personally, I think having siblings also helps social skills and can serve as an emotional support system, positive a negative feedback (frenemies and allies). All else is a mix of luck and genetics.
“…I can’t see how reading from a screen for X hours per day would be any different than reading from printed material for X hours per day. …”
I wonder why you think “screen time” means they are reading. They play games, look at pictures, and have conversations in text-speak.
Globalists love retarded western children, it helps level the playing field in compulsory government/ liberal regulated schools to help educate future voters.
Give them weed, open borders, and plenty of demented porn and we will shape a nation to our future needs.
Two words : Teachers and Union. Nuff said.
That is the cause of the thinning of the cortex. All controlled by the governments of all levels – FAIL.
Socialism is a mental disorder.
Mystery solved …
https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/features/autism-rise#1
Autism is what used to be called “Student has potential but does not apply himself.” Which in practice meant student was sent to sit on the window ledge by the teacher for “misbehaving” for most of each day.
In previous generations there was the Dunce Cap and the switch. The window ledge was a step up from a daily beating.
These days, all that stuff is recognized as a Diagnosis, capital “D” and called Autism. Now the student gets a special learning plan with extra time on exams, and the school board gets a budget increase for each Autistic kid.
And that is why there is a “surge” of Autism cases.
As to the screen time thing, if you look at that study you will find it has roughly the same design as many gun control studies. There’s no grant money in a negative finding.
On a wider note, there is this thing I keep talking about called brain plasticity. Its what lets people who have had a stroke recover physical function. Screen time causes brain changes? So does listening to classical music, or walking in the forest.
Somebody wake me when they show harmful effects in a double-blind controlled trial, and then replicate it with another trial. If that happens, then I’ll be concerned.
There are actually people with autism. However, they have spread the spectrum so far that anyone can be put on it.
The rise of the autism plague corresponds with the rise of the use of a television as a babysitter for preschool children by lazy mothers who preferred to spend their days getting drunk or cheating on their husbands to minding their own children.
Problem was, TV suitable for children was only available a couple of hours a day.
Now every snowflake has a pocket television, mom is free to spend all day drinking herself to death in peace or work her way through all the black pudding in a 10-mile radius—at least till her husband comes home (if she has a husband!)
What could have possibly gone wrong there?
I have this bridge in Brooklyn I can get you a great deal on. Interested?
I think it is attempting some form of satire by pretending to be a “conservative ” that only exists in the minds and nightmares of woke progressives. A weird NPC that is programmed to reply to all topics with the most bizarre rants. No more point in engaging with it than engaging with a creepy AF pull string toy,
Hey, LC, I’m trying to sell him the Brooklyn Bridge here. Looks like he’s thinking about it. ~:D
It would make a nice conversation piece, but he’ll might have a bit of a problem getting it into his living room.
By all means, carry on. 🙂
Good to see that some SDA’ers agree with me that ‘A Canadian’ is short a few cards in his deck.
my sister utterly REFUSED to let my niece watch telebision. ixnay. nada.
this was oh, 40 years ago?
the rest of my fambly is a bunch of irish drunks and seriously nasty bullies.
“They know it’s a bad thing. Now they just want to figure out how best to exploit it.”
It’s cute when Kate pretends she has any clue what she’s talking about. How you earn a degree of some kind first.
You know what else causes the brain to change? Everything.
re: autism.
I knew I was different very early.
ostracized, bullied, teased, humiliated by teachers, other students, siblings, strangers even . . .
the good news, I was born at just the right moment in history to match up my “significantly above average analytical skills” (an exact quote from the guidance counselor after my very FIRST iq test or whatever they called it) with the arrival of those multi-million dollar gadgets called mainframes !!! hello PDP10, where have you BEEN ?? and Control Data cyber 73 etc.
thus I THRIVED unless ‘people skills’ entered the equation.
officially diagnosed in 2007, the tester complimented me on *diagnosing myself* (I recollect an episode of Law&Order CI featuring Mark Lynn Baker as an autistic accountant . . . hey, *that’s ME* !!!) and a newspaper article before that (hey, *that’s ME* !!!)
so anybody here wanna dismiss and or diss we aspies, feel free to FUCK OFF, it is a REAL condition, we are BORN wired differently, if teachers etc choose to misapply this excuse for THEIR failures do NOT attempt to whitewash the whole situation because if you do, YOU are just as useless and uncaring as them.
p.s., what does unme do when captcha box says ‘Im not a robot’?