Written by: Liberty Miller | Lifestyle Editor

From the introduction of the internet in 1993 to the invention of social media in 1977 with SixDegrees.com, to the early 2000’s, 2010’s and eventually the 2020 pandemic, the internet remains undeterred in its quest to evolve and grow. The average rate of internet growth globally is 3.7% — a whopping 5.3 billion users worldwide. 

Within that scope of reference, there is a growing population of children — mainly Generation Alpha — that use the internet for varying purposes from education to entertainment. The sudden and unexpected growth of the interweb has spiked some concerns among researchers about the effects of technology on human interaction, behavior and development. As the past decade has shocked and drastically changed the world, the United States has experienced the effects of chronic technological dependency in children that has been dubbed the infamous rise of the “iPad kid”. 

The sensitive nature of childhood development means that certain developmental timelines are necessary for proper cognitive growth of the brain. Much like how the consistent use of marijuana and other substances can “kill” neural pathways in the brain due to underuse and lack of brain stimulation, the same can happen with chronic screen time. 

The effects are even more dramatic within children who, for the first eight years of life, form the framework and learning ability of their brain. From ages one to three 1 million new neural connections are formed each second. After these connections are formed, the brain begins to “prune” or sever these connections to increase brain circuit efficiency.

 By the age of five, 90% of the brain has been formed. The formation of brain circuits and developmental landmarks are met with a variety of stimuli — babbling, social interactions, visual experiences, facial expressions, and other means of communication.

If there is a deficit of positive social interaction, the child is more likely to suffer developmental roadblocks. A lack of parental engagement will also negatively affect a child’s development, especially with the mother of the child. Every hour spent looking at a screen, rather than interacting with a family member or other individuals, will affect what neural pathways are being created, stopped or erased. 

From birth to early infancy, the parents of a child will have the most control over whether or not the child will have access to technology, to what extent and what content is allowed to be viewed and interacted with. From ages one to two, children are not advised to engage in any online or screen time at all. 

From then on, limited content is viewed as acceptable to researchers, as long as it is co-watched with a supervising parent, and the content is used as a learning tool rather than entertainment. Regardless of the potential benefits, if the child is not engaging socially, there will be developmental deficits starting when they are born and progressing through the first eight years of life.

Author Sue Palmer hypothesized that increasing screen time would also increase the amount of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — commonly known as ADHD — and dyslexia, among other learning disabilities. This was proven to be true when a study found that with children aged two and below, every hour of daily screen time increased attention deficits by 9% up until the age of seven. The book that Palmer published in 2006 had many fallacies, such as a relationship between rates of autism and screen time, but certain predictions from the book were proven to be true in future scientific studies.

The other side effects of increased screen time include higher rates of obesity, depression, anxiety and disturbances in the natural sleep cycle. Currently, a large hindrance to the American public school system is the widespread phenomenon of social and emotional incompetence, which can be directly correlated to the increasing amounts of screen time in crucial developmental years. 

In an article by the Salem Reporter about the 2023 teacher’s strike, one of the primary concerns of the strike was the inability to control unruly, violent and disruptive students within the classroom, which is a sentiment shared by a large population of teachers across the nation. 

Increased screen time is known to cause emotional dysregulation, lack of attention and social ineptitude, and following the COVID-19 pandemic, screen time rose dramatically. 

Ed Tech magazines also provided some insight by linking studies showing that screen time can cause irreversible damage to the developing brain. Traditional academic standards and teaching methods are suffering, in part, because of the increased amount of screen time nationwide. 

The rise of technology and screen time in children from infancy to eight years old has caused significant developmental ineptitude in young school children, bolstered by the stagnant COVID-19 quarantine period and the continued exponential growth of the interweb.

Contact the author at howllifestyle@wou.edu