Excessive screen time linked to weaker language skills in children

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Children in families who spend lots of time in front of a screen have weaker language skills, according to a new study.

And video games had the biggest negative effect on vocabulary, say scientists.

Screens - whether a telly, laptop, mobile phone, or tablet - have become as much a part of children’s lives as adults.

Scientists in Estonia looked at what effect screen time has on children’s developing brains, especially critical language skills.

They surveyed the parents of more than 400 youngsters about their screen use, their children’s screen use, and their children’s language skills.

The team found that parents who use screens a lot also have children who use screens a lot.

And children’s higher screen time was associated with poorer language skills, according to the findings published in the journal Frontiers in Developmental Psychology.

Study lead author Dr. Tiia Tulviste, of the University of Tartu, said: “Our study reveals that children’s screen use patterns are similar to those of their parents.

“Child language researchers emphasize the importance of everyday interactions with adults in early language development, where children are actively involved.

"At the same time, we know that all family members tend to their screen devices.

"Because time is finite, we need to find out how this fierce competition between face-to-face interaction and screen time affects child language development.”

She said that, in many cultures, most of children’s language development occurs because they talk to adults, and having conversations exposes them to more vocabulary and grammatical structures.

But Dr. Tulviste says the presence of screens can disrupt that, especially if an adult is being interrupted by texts or notifications.

She said that understanding how that affects children’s development requires accounting for the different types of screen children may be using and what they’re using them for, as well as the screens that adults around them use.

The researchers surveyed a representative sample of Estonian families, including 421 children aged between two-and-a-half and four years old.

The survey asked parents to estimate how long each member of the family would spend using different screen devices for different purposes on a typical weekend day.

It also asked how much of that time would be spent using a screen as a family, for example watching a film together.

The parents were asked to fill out a questionnaire evaluating their children’s language ability.

The research team sorted both children and adults into three screen use groups: high, low, and moderate.

They then analyzed the data to see if there was a link between parental screen use and children’s screen use.

The researchers found that parents and children generally belonged to the same groups: parents who used screens a lot had children who also used screens a lot.

Controlling for age, they looked at the language development of these children, and found that children who used screens less scored higher for both grammar and vocabulary.

No form of screen use had a positive effect on children’s language skills, according to the findings.

Dr, Tulviste said: “While reading ebooks and playing some educational games may offer language learning opportunities, especially for older children, research shows that during the first years of life, the most influential factor is everyday dyadic face-to-face parent-child verbal interaction.”

She said using screens for video games had a "notable" negative effect on children’s language skills, regardless of whether parents or children were gaming.

Dr. Tulviste says cultural factors could be involved in this result.

She said: “For Estonian children, few developmentally appropriate computer games exist for this age group.

"Games in a foreign language with limited interactivity or visual-only content likely do not provide rich opportunities for learning oral language and communication skills.”

The team says more research will need to be done to understand how the pandemic has affected the patterns as they originally collected the data in 2019.

It would also be important to learn how whole-family profiles change over time, using studies that follow families as children grow up.

Dr. Tulviste added: “The study has a cross-sectional design - we studied each participant only once and did not follow their developmental trajectory over a longer time period.

“Also, the data were collected before the Covid-19 pandemic.

"It will be interesting to look at future research findings addressing language development and the impact of screen use during the pandemic.”