Digital Media and its Impact on Elementary Years
Co-author: Chloe Shaw
Learn about the impact of “screen time” on development in the elementary school years — its not all bad news!
As anyone who knows a child these days can attest, digital media is among the most powerful forces in a child’s life. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation report published in 2010, 8 to 18-year-olds spend more time with digital media than any other activity—an average of about 7.5 hours a day. If this statistic seems alarming, it should especially be so when considered with the fact that the American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends children have no more than 1 to 2 hours of screen time per day. Clearly, some major discrepancy exists between what doctors and scientists recommend and what children actually do. Understanding the impact of digital media in young people’s lives is essential for those concerned with promoting children’s healthy development. This article will discuss the effects of digital media on the four key areas of middle childhood (defined as ages 6 through 11) development: physical, cognitive, social, and emotional.
Physical
Primarily thanks to significant fine and gross motor developments, the physical growth that takes place during middle childhood enables children to tackle activities that were not previously possible without the help of an adult. With these new physical abilities, a greater capacity and desire for independence emerges. But what happens to physical development when children spend excess time with digital media? One of the most obvious physical impacts of excessive media use is simply that children have less time in the day to move around. As a result, studies have reported a positive correlation between high amounts of media use during childhood and high BMI and adolescent obesity.
Another significant, yet invisible, result of less physical activity involves brain health. By exploring enriching environments during middle childhood, the brain does a lot work forming and refining networks of connections that help mature the brain and make it more efficient. Further, through interacting with these stimulating environments, gray matter volume bulks up and white matter integrity improves in the brain—both signs of healthy brain development. However, when more time is spent in front of a screen and less time spent exploring new environments, studies have reported shrinkage of gray matter in the frontal lobe, which is responsible for functions such as attention, planning, and memory. Moreover, research has also documented that a loss of integrity to the brain’s white matter occurs, which leads to breakdowns in communication within the brain make it less efficient.
Cognitive
The key cognitive development during middle childhood includes advances in children’s attention, memory, and linguistic skills. Taken together, these skills further their capacity and yearning for autonomy. Concerning the impacts of media use on children’s cognitive development, considerable evidence suggests that increased media use is correlated with attentional issues both during middle childhood and later in life. Such issues include increased hyperactivity and difficulty concentrating.
Language development during early childhood has also been found to be adversely impacted by media use. Children’s language learning occurs through live and stimulating interactions with people. As such, when less time is available for these enriching exchanges to take place, children’s linguistic development suffers. For instance, one study showed that toddlers and preschoolers exposed to high frequencies of screen time are approximately six times more likely to develop some sort of language delay. Additionally, other studies have demonstrated that toddlers exposed to high amounts of screen media have lower verbal and communicative abilities than children exposed to less. Further, if no intervention is done to moderate children’s media use, these linguistic delays can persist into middle childhood and beyond.
Finally, academic success has been found to be negatively affected by media use. In one study, reviewed by the Kaiser Family Foundation, youth who spent more time with media reported having lower grades. In the study, children were grouped into categories of heavy, moderate, and light media users. Heavy users included children who consumed more than 16 hours of media content in a typical day (21% of all 8 to 18-year-olds); moderate users were those who consumed 3 to 16 hours of content (63%); and light users were those who consumed less than 3 hours of media in a typical day (17%). Nearly half of all the heavy media users reported that they received either fair or poor grades (mostly C’s or lower), compared to just 23% of light media users.
Social and Emotional
The primary social and emotional developments of middle childhood involve establishing an identity. During these years, identity is closely tied to children’s expanding knowledge about their place in the world in relation to others. Their identity is also formed by their sense of accomplishment in comparison to their peers. The level of success or failure they experience dictates the way they view themselves. Finally, an additional significant social development includes gaining theory of mind (the knowledge that people have perspectives, thoughts, and feelings different from one’s own). Once children have a fully developed theory of mind, by age 6, they are better able to relate to their peers and cultivate strong friendships.
Concerning how media use interacts with these important social and emotional milestones, the Kaiser Family Foundation reviewed a survey that demonstrated that media use may not cause harm to children’s ability to develop social relationships. Regardless of the quantity of digital media usage, a majority of the respondents of the survey indicated that they had lots of friends, got along well with their parents, and were happy at school. On the other hand, other studies have demonstrated that preschoolers exposed to high amounts of television or who had a television in their bedroom had a weaker understanding of other people’s beliefs and desires. In other words, these children had delayed theory of mind development, indicating that digital media does have adverse effects on children’s social development. Regarding emotional development, media has been found to cause damage to children’s general contentedness. The same survey reviewed by the Kaiser Family Foundation reported a relationship between media use and the level of a child’s reported personal happiness. Further, heavy media users were also more likely to say they got into trouble a lot, were often sad, and often bored.
Tips
So what does this all mean? The general conclusion we can draw based on this information is that media use is okay for children’s overall development when it is used occasionally. But what about when it is used in excess? How do high amounts of media usage impact children’s development? In the previous article, it was argued that the key developments of middle childhood include: gaining a strong sense of autonomy and establishing an identity. Based on the research reviewed above describing how children’s development is adversely affected by high amounts of screen time, we can speculate that this may have negative consequences for the development of their autonomy. Specifically, with the high rates of BMI, unhealthy brain development, attentional issues, linguistic delays, and lower academic success that we see in children who spend excess time with digital media, it is plausible that these outcomes may hinder a child’s capacity for autonomy. For instance, imagine a child who is trying to solve a complex problem or task. Perhaps the task requires some physical agility, the ability to concentrate on the task at hand and keep track of its subtasks, while also effectively communicating with others. Children who are exposed to excessive amounts of screen media, may experience difficulty completing such a task, which in turn, could make them feel frustrated and insufficient.
Building off this, it is easy to see how difficulty in developing a healthy sense of autonomy could also impact the establishment of a healthy identity. Since, as we’ve discussed, a child’s sense of self is strongly tied to the success or failure they experience relative to their peers, we can imagine this child attempting to complete such a task with peers and feeling upset or inadequate when a peer can successfully do the task and they cannot. Further, it’s easy to see how such experiences would lead to issues with children’s emotional development like the ones referenced by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which included lower rates of personal contentedness.
In sum, it’s certainly plausible that the key developments of middle childhood—gaining a sense of independence and identity—can be adversely affected by high rates of media usage. It’s further possible that such results could manifest into issues with self-actualization later in life. Based on all of this evidence, children should be encouraged to put down their digital media and explore and engage with stimulating environments and people as much as possible. However, this is not to say that children should never use digital media. In fact, in appropriate settings, media can actually support certain types of learning and it also enables communication with people across the globe, which can help foster empathy and interpersonal skills with people of different cultures. The take home message from all of this should be that digital media is okay for children to engage with in small quantities.
What can you do to help limit your child’s media usage?
Model what you want to see. Research has found that children do what their parents do. This is evolutionarily advantageous when it comes to early learning, however, the downside is that when your child sees you constantly glued to your phone they will glean that this is what they should do as well. Thus, actively try to model the behaviors you want your child to display.
Set a designated family media time each day. Another way to reduce the amount of media usage that takes place in your home is to set a period of time each day in which all family members can use their devices. Maybe this is an hour before or after dinnertime. Regardless, after this media time, all screens go away—including parents’ devices—so everyone can be present and interact with each other.
No television or devices in the bedroom. Many children have access to their own device or television in their bedroom. Another simple way to reduce media usage is to remove these devices from bedrooms and instead have them in common areas in the house. This helps parents monitor children’s time spent in front of these devices.
Encourage other activities. Reading, playing games, developing a hobby, riding bikes, and exploring outside are all just a few of the healthy activities your children can engage in instead of spending hours with a screen.
Steer your children towards forms of media that engage them. Listening to audiobooks is a great media medium that has cognitive benefits. The act of listening to a story practices listening skills and helps children develop the ability to concentrate. Further listening to stories engages children’s imagination.
Create a family screen time contract. See these examples: http://www.screenagersmovie.com/contracts-1/
References:
About the co-author: Chloe Shaw majored in Psycholinguistics at Quest University in Canada. She will be a graduate student in School Counseling at Seattle University in the fall of 2016.