Student Research Guide SPQ25/ Impacts of Screens on Brain Development

How screen exposure is affecting generations of developing children 

 This is a student-created research guide for English 102 & Library 201 Learning community. This guide was completed in conjunction with a research paper on the same topic for English 102.

This guide will address how excessive screen time in young children is physically altering the brain as well as opening doors for a whole new area of medical problems. It seems harmless to turn on the TV, but how harmless is it if it can start altering something as simple as sleep?

The research thesis of this guide is that the heightened exposure to screens in early childhood not only hinders the development of critical thinking and social skills but also contributes to adverse changes in brain structure and function, highlighting the urgent need for both balance and limited technology consumption. 

Some specific research questions on the topic:

1. Is excessive screen time harmful to children's development?
2. What is being harmed in the development process?
3. Is there a safe exposure time?
4. Are there any benefits of screen exposure for children, such as learning opportunities?

The glorification of allowing and accepting the use of electronic devices to raise children, just to ease the stress of parenting, is taking over the minds of our children and drastically altering their development. This guide goes over the way screen time alters the brain, how it can be seen, and the aftereffects of excessive screen time, and what behaviors can come from it. Excessive screen time in children is linked to delayed social skills, increased ADHD tendencies, and a heightened reliance on screen-based dopamine releases. Following this,  “A recent study assessing over 2000 children in the first 2 years of their life revealed that greater screen exposure and less caregiver and child play in this early period of life was associated with ASD symptoms at 2 years when media exposure was as early as 1 year” (Srivastava and Patkar 2023). The first two years quite literally set the foundation for the way children will go on to express themselves. From being able to communicate emotions effectively and respectfully, to being able to communicate how their day was. The body is developing rapidly in these first years. Everything the child is receiving or lacks in receiving, they will remember and continue to consider normal.

Nowadays, children are sitting in front of TVs while parents sit on iPhones and wonder why children are lacking in basic communication skills, in educational standardized testing, and fewer and fewer kids are interested in sports. 

Everything in this world needs room to grow and develop. This is true for children and even more specifically for the brain. If there is no room for this development, how damaging is it for the children? There will be a deeper dive into the development starting in infancy up to elementary age. The best way to prevent damage or harm is to understand what can cause it before it happens. Understanding the importance of protecting this development will help parents prevent the negative side effects of screen addictions before they even start. The heightened exposure to screens in early childhood not only hinders the development of critical thinking and social skills but also contributes to adverse changes in brain structure and function, highlighting the urgent need for both balance and limited technology consumption. 

Excessive screen time in early childhood can lead to significant developmental delays and long-term cognitive and social impairments. As implied, “While children's use of screen-based media is ubiquitous across high-income countries, and seems to have increased since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, growing evidence suggests that exposure in infancy and early childhood is associated with unfavourable developmental outcomes over the short and mid-term” ( Melchior, Maria;Barry, Katharine;Cohen, David;Plancoulaine, Sabine;Bernard, Jonathan Y.;Milcent, Karen;Gassama, Malamine;Gomajee, Ramchandar;Charles, Marie-Aline, 2022). With these important issues also comes altered sleep patterns that can and will throw everything off balance for a growing child. As stated, “Excessive ST, as expected, is also associated with poor quality and duration of sleep, which over the years can have a significant effect on the development and overall behavior of children” (Srivastava and Patkar 2023). If children are not getting enough sleep, their brains are not able to shift into the non-REM and REM stages of sleep, which are responsible for rest, healing, and deep sleep, which is the most restorative. Not reaching these key steps for sleep can open up a whole new set of drawbacks including issues focusing, hyperactivity, and mimicking ADHD symptoms due to exhaustion. Sleep studies have explained the blue lights from smartphones, laptops, iPads, televisions, and computers. Blue lights have shorter wavelengths than other colors like red lights, which have been used for therapeutic purposes, the visible light spectrum and cause more alertness than other light tones. Our bodies are all made up of seven systems that need to work together in harmony. The seven major systems are the skeletal system, the muscular system, the circulatory system, which includes the heart, the respiratory system, the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the digestive system. The brain is basically in charge of everything that happens in these systems because it sends out the neurons that tell everything in the body to do what it needs to do and when to do it. Now if something the brain is thrown off balance it can and will most likely throw off the other systems. One of the big things that gets thrown off for children by excessive screen exposure is the melatonin hormone production. Watching TV and the screen late at night can cause the body to not trigger the natural melatonin to be produced at the appropriate time. This can cause a delay in sleeping, resulting in fewer hours slept and a lower quality of sleep. Without reaching the REM state, the brain will not be able to relax and enter a state of healing, causing children to act out negatively from exhaustion. Having these unhappy side effects can lead to other long-term health problems such as anxiety, depression, and obesity. All three of these illnesses on the lonesome are majorly life-altering conditions to try and adapt to and understand how to grow in life while balancing.