Meta-studies for Advice on Pediatric Screen Use?

Until we look at all of the downstream effects of feeding the body the wrong kind of light, we will be asking the wrong questions regarding screens from the wrong experts – for both children and ourselves.

We are in the very early stages of the equivalent of the lower-tar-and-nicotine cigarettes misadventure, and incrementalism.

Contradictory Advice?

On August 23, the platform Inc.com published an article by Jessica Stillman Child Development Experts Reviewed More Than 100 Studies on Screens and Kids. Here Are Their 4 Practical Takeaways for Parents | Inc.com Parents are bombarded by contradictory advice on kids and screens. A huge new study cuts through the noise.

Did it cut through ‘the noise’?

Jessica writes, “Why getting definitive advice about kids and screens is so hard” – While a gazillion articles and books with titles like “Have smartphones ruined a generation?” and The Anxious Generation are just a Google away, the experts who write them can’t seem to agree on practical advice for parents.

Should you forbid social media before 16 as suggested by NYU psychologist and Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt? Or listen to the studies and experts who say taking too active a role in managing your kid’s screen time deprives them of the opportunity to learn to manage it themselves?

This confusion is not entirely the experts’ fault. As Emily Oster, an economist known for translating complicated research into practical advice for parents, has explained, it is ethically and logistically impossible to design a study that randomly assigns some kids to eight hours a day of TikTok and YouTube and compares them to kids who are forced to go tech-free.”

Justifying ‘Benefits’ of Early Childhood Screen Use?

Inc.com’s article was referencing the paper published August 5th by JAMA Pediatrics; Early Childhood Screen Use Contexts and Cognitive and Psychosocial Outcomes A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

“Of 7441 records located for screening, 226 full-text articles were reviewed. A final sample of 100 studies comprising 176 742 participants who met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Of these, 64 were included in meta-analyses.”

Hum.