
Experts have been imploring parents to reduce their children’s screen time since the 1970s, when a limited number of children’s programs were available for a few hours a day. Concerns grew with each new screen technology--video games, cell phones, and social media--and a number of studies have noted a strong correlation between screen time and the likelihood that a child will develop autism. Of particular note is the finding that children who spent three or more hours daily watching screens had language delays and shorter attention spans. During the pandemic, screen time increased for people of all ages, so if these findings are correct, we can expect to see more children with these difficulties.
Parents who are occupied with screens interact with their children less; as a result, the child vocalizes less and interacts less, slowing both verbal and social skills. Teachers at all levels report that students have smaller vocabularies, weaker writing skills, and shorter attention spans than they did before phones and other screens became ubiquitous.
As an English teacher, I’m especially interested in the correlation between screen time and delayed language ability. Most of my students are not on the autism spectrum (as far as I know), but many of them struggle to make inferences based on what they read, don’t seem able to understand the relationships between ideas, and can’t develop their ideas beyond a sentence or two. They can’t read books that were designated for their age fifty years ago because their vocabularies are too small. I regularly teach middle schoolers books I read in elementary school. One of the College Board’s practice tests for the new digital SAT features a question based on an excerpt from an early twentieth-century novel by children’s author Edith Nesbit Nesbit, whose novels for elementary school children include The Railway Children, The Wouldbegoods, and The Enchanted Castle. Several of my SAT students have been stumped by it.
New research suggests that some autistic behaviors can be remediated, especially if the diagnosis is linked to excessive screen time. Intervention includes reducing screen time to under one hour a day and replacing it with intensive one-on-one interactions, books, and toys that encourage creative, open-ended play.
This is exactly the advice that I give parents who want to know how to improve their children’s English/Language Arts skills. Screen time teaches children to engage with life passively, responding to input rather than initiating activity on their own. Even a well-designed “interactive” game limits the player to pre-selected options, as do educational tools that prompt students to select correct answers from a list of options. Neither approach fosters thinking outside the box or charting an original path to a solution, so students don’t get to practice solving problems without a menu of answers to select from. As a result, they struggle to answer open-ended questions, develop arguments, and write persuasively.
Today’s kids lead much more sheltered lives than children of past generations. They don’t roam their neighborhoods or go places on their own because they spend their non-school hours in aftercare, sports programs, music lessons, tutoring sessions, and camp. They don’t rack up hours interacting with friends or siblings over cards or board games because they’ve been trained to seek entertainment on individual screens instead. As a result, they are socially awkward and anxious as well as academically behind.
So, parents, please: buy your children toys and books instead of electronics! Rescue them from screen-induced passivity by letting them make messes with blocks, Lego, train tracks, and art supplies. Give them decks of cards, a cookbook for kids, balls, bicycles, jump rope, jacks, toy cars, and plastic dinosaurs. Read to them, listen to books on tape with them, talk with them about books. Teach them the songs and nursery rhymes from your own childhood. Let them build a pirate ship out of a cardboard box, design a treasure hunt or obstacle course, or set up a lemonade stand. Your house may be noisier and messier, but your children will be smarter, better adjusted, more interesting, and better prepared to succeed in school and life.
Elizabeth Breau, Ph.D. (she/her), is an award-winning writing coach and private English tutor. Her book, History According to SAT: A Content Guide to SAT Reading and Writing, won a silver medal in the teen category from the Nonfiction Authors Association and was a finalist in American Book Fest’s Best Book Awards. You can reach her at elizabeth.breau@gmail.com.
Yorumlar