Toddlers exposed to screen time at home are hearing fewer words and making fewer vocalisations, findings from the first longitudinal study to measure the relationship between family screen use and children’s language development have shown.
The research, led by The Kids Research Institute Australia Senior Research Officer Dr Mary Brushe, found that for every minute of screen time, young children engaged in fewer back-and-forth interactions with their parents.
The study – part of Dr Brushe’s PhD with the University of Adelaide – followed 220 Australian families over a two-and-half-year period, using a Fitbit-like device to measure the amount of electronic noise and parent-child talk surrounding children aged between 12 and 36 months. This included noise generated by screens used in the child’s presence, whether the screen was being viewed by the child or parent.
Dr Brushe’s study found that three-year-olds exposed to just under three hours of screen time per day – the average for this age group - could be missing out on more than 1,100 adult words, more than 840 vocalisations and 194 conversational turns per day.
Worn at home by children for 16-hour periods at multiple points in time (when the children were aged 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36 months), the device used LENA speech recognition technology to reveal the number of adult words, child vocalisations and parent-child interactions that occurred during the recorded period.
In all, researchers coded more than 7,000 hours of audio to calculate the amount of screen time children were exposed to as opposed to other electronic noises.
“We wanted to understand how much screen time children were exposed to during the early years and whether that interfered with the amount of language these kids heard and spoke in their home,” Dr Brushe said.
“We know the amount of talk and interaction is critical for children’s early language development – this study highlights that screen time may be getting in the way of that.”
The findings – published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics – showed the more screen time children were exposed to, the less parent-child interaction they experienced during the critical early years.
“Our findings support the notion of ‘technoference’ as a real issue for Australian families, whereby young children’s exposure to screen time is interfering with opportunities to talk and interact in their home environment,” Dr Brushe said.
The results were most profound when children reached three years of age. Just one minute of screen time was associated with seven fewer adult words, five fewer child vocalisations and one less back-and-forth interaction.
Dr Brushe said the findings suggest children whose families follow current World Health Organization screen time guidelines – one hour a day for children aged 36 months – could be missing out on up to 397 adult words, 294 vocalisations, and 68 conversational turns every day.
We know, however – both from our own data and from international estimates – that children on average are exceeding these guidelines,” she said.
“Based on the actual average daily screen time for children in this study at 36 months – 172 minutes, or just under three hours – they could in fact be missing out on up to 1,139 adult words, 843 vocalisations and 194 conversational turns per day.
“What’s also interesting is that the study did not necessarily capture parental use of mobile phones in the presence of their children. The devices only picked up noise associated with screen time – for example TV shows, videos or games.
“If anything, we have probably underestimated how much screen usage – and associated ‘technoference’ – is going on around children because we haven’t been able to capture parents’ screen-related activities like reading emails, texting, or quietly scrolling through websites or social media.”
Tips for parents
- Opt for interactive co-viewing as a way to reduce the burden of screen time
- Encourage children and families to engage in conversation when the screen is on
- Sing along with theme songs, repeat phrases or questions from the screen to encourage interaction
- Use the content of a show to start a conversation after the screen has been turned off