Screens, a disaster for children? Neuroscience disagrees.

Researcher Nawal Abboub publishes “The power of babies” (Fayard). In her book, which L’Express was able to read in preview, she deciphers the latest discoveries by neuroscientists on the extraordinary abilities of babies. In the part she devotes to screens, we learn that they are probably not as harmful for toddlers as we have been led to believe. Reassuring.

“No screens for 3 years.” Since 2008, the Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA) has advised against exposing toddlers to screens. A ban taken up in 2018 by the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn. “When a screen lights up, a child goes out,” goes so far as to declare pediatrician Anne-Lise Ducanda. But where do these 36 months come from? Originally, there is a recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1999. It aimed at passive viewing in front of the television, associated with an increase in obesity. Faced with the evolution of tablets and smartphones, the American academy withdrew its injunction in 2016. But in France, the single rule of 3 years remains. According to Nawal Abboub, these “obsolete recommendations” have no scientific basis and make parents feel guilty.

“There have always been fears about the influence of new technologies on the brain, and in particular on that of children who are the most vulnerable,” she explains. At the end of the Second World War, we wondered if the radio did not excite the little ones too much, preventing them from sleeping or affecting their concentration. In 1981, a professor at Carleton University warned that if we didn’t stop the invasion of computers into classrooms, no one would be able to read in ten years. Even the harmless Velcro was, in the American media, accused of disturbing the motor skills of toddlers, who no longer tie their shoelaces… Today, catastrophic discourse focuses on the digital, like the bestseller by Michel Desmurget, The Digital Cretin Factory. The dangers of screens for our children (Threshold, 2019).

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Is a correlation a causation?

In 2018, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health published a study, conducted on children aged 9 and 10, concluding that children who spend more than two hours a day in front of a screen would have on average 4.25 points less IQ. But is a correlation causation? In other words: does the screen cause these effects or, conversely, is it because these children have developmental delays or frailties that they take refuge more in front of screens? For Nawel Abboub, the limit of these publications is thus to make screens the only factors in the drop in IQ: “In 2019, a study by Sheri Madigan in the journal JAMA changed the game, with repeated measurements on children aged 2, 3 and 5 years. It shows that children who are weak and retarded spend more time in front of the television, and not just the reverse. Clearly, other factors, genetic and environmental, are responsible for the delays.”

In 2021, a study by an Inserm team, carried out on a cohort of 1,907 children, revealed a surprising result: 2-year-old children exposed to screens for 30 to 60 minutes had better language scores than those not not looking at the screens at all! In contrast, exposure to TV during family meals is consistently associated with lower verbal IQ scores. “It proves that literature is complex. It’s easy to cast screens as the perfect culprit for everything that’s wrong with our society. But it’s important to see how children move through their environment. If the television is on for meals means that we are not used to discussing with our children. However, language learning is nourished by interactions. The screens here are only an indirect reflection of what is happening in the different families,” said Nawal Abboub.

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The neuroscientist pleads for “enlightened digital parenting” rather than “outdated precautionary principles” or unqualified demonization. “Anyway, your children are going to have screens in their hands very early on. So you have to educate them about that. Obviously, watching television passively is useless for small children. There is no effect of learning. But if at some point in the day you want to share an e-book or other medium, it’s beneficial as long as you interact with them.”