This Is Your Kid On Tech: The Impact of Screen Time on Kids and Teens

Our kids are using screens all the time. No matter how we as parents feel about it, there’s only so much we can do. After all, when even school requires devices to successfully complete homework, becoming a screen-free household just isn’t an option. (Not that we would want to give up our phones and computers anyway!) But many parents are concerned about the impact of screen time on their kids’ lives and brains. The common narrative is that screen time is bad. But what specifically is it harming? And what can we as parents due to mitigate it?
In this article, we look at some of the ways screen time can impact our kids – and what parents can do to protect them.
The Potentially Deadly Impact of Screen Time
The impact of screen time that has the most potential for sudden, immediate harm is distracted driving. Distracted driving because of phones can have a huge, potentially deadly impact on our teens.
CDC data shows that on average, 39% of teenagers text while driving. And this is a problem that actually gets worse with age. When you break it down by age, only 31% of sixteen-year-olds text while driving. But more than half (51%) of seventeen-year-olds do, and a full 60% of eighteen-year-olds text and drive.
We all know that distracted driving is dangerous. But the impact of this particularly dangerous type of screen time can be deadly. University of Pennsylvania research found that drivers ages sixteen to nineteen are the most likely to die in distracted driving accidents. And driving while holding a phone makes them three to four times more likely to get into one those accidents.
The Risk of Screen Addiction
More and more research keeps coming out about how our devices are specifically designed to keep us coming back for more. Certain activities, such as seeing an entertaining image, reading something interesting, getting a new follower, or people interacting with things you posted, provide a spike of dopamine. But those dopamine rewards vary. Unlocking your device or opening an app may provide a lot of those dopamine spikes, or it may give you none. The rewards are unpredictable. It’s the same principle slot machines use to keep people playing for hours or days at a time. But in this case, it wants us to stare at our screens.
All this means that one of the potential impacts of screen time is device addiction. For kids and teens, this addiction can be devastating to their school performance and social life. It can even harm brain development, which has impacts through their whole life. And children are much more vulnerable to this addiction than adults.
Between the ages of ten and twelve, the brain starts to make social rewards feel much more satisfying. This is an important factor in their social development. But at that age, their prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that will help them regulate those feelings from social rewards and moderate the dopamine spikes that screen time could give them. What you end up with is a brain that makes the variable rewards from screens much more pleasurable and that lacks the mechanisms to moderate and manage that pleasure. It’s a recipe with strong potential for addiction.
The Impact of Screen Time on Brain Development
Staring at screens from a young age can actually change the physical structure of the brain. Research has found physical differences in the prefrontal cortex, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, and occipital lobe of the brain in children who spend a lot of time interacting with screens. Young children who often used tablets were worse at problem-solving tasks. And intensive screen use of any kind impacts visual processing.
An analysis of multiple studies found other impacts of screen time on brain development, too. More internet use was associated with decreased verbal intelligence and smaller brains overall. Using screens for long periods can interrupt neural system development. If the media kids consume include messages about sexualization, it can negatively impact their body image. And screen time before bed can cause them to sleep less and have less REM sleep, which impacts both brain development and memory.
We’ve actually written an entire article looking at what science says about technology and childhood brain development. If you’re interested in learning more about how screen time impacts brain development, you can read our in-depth research here.
The Positive Impact of Screen Time
After all that doom and gloom, it’s important to recognize that not all impacts of screen time are negative. In fact, some of the things technology can do for our kids are downright beneficial!
Using screens for limited amounts (less than 30 minutes a day) can benefit preschool kids’ cognitive and social development. Certain educational TV shows can help young children build school-ready skills. For depressed kids, online socialization around common interests can help meet their friendship needs. And playing some types of video games for a reasonable amount of time can help develop visual-spacial skills and even help girls overcome the gender skill gap in that area.
For teenagers, banning screens could actually do more harm than good. Friendships with peers are essential for social development, and most teens socialize and connect at least partly through devices and online activities. If a teen isn’t able to participate in the same digital spaces as their friends, they may be abandoned for being “uncool” or their relationships may be weaker because they can’t participate in the same bonding activities and conversations as the rest of their friend group.
When it comes to devices, we don’t want to start a moral panic. Yes, there are some negative impacts of screen time. But there also are some genuine benefits. We need an approach that can let our kids take advantage of screens’ many benefits while minimizing the harm it can cause.
An Expert-Recommended Approach
Just about every expert you care to talk to about the impact of screen time on kids has the same message: Balance, balance, balance. You don’t have to ban home internet and move your child to an off-grid cabin in the woods. But you also shouldn’t leave them to unsupervised and unlimited screen time, either. Their devices have some benefits and some risks. Let’s find a way to emphasize the good while managing the bad.
Right now, the best way we know to protect kids from the harmful impacts of screen time is to limit the amount of time they can stare at their screens. You can do that by creating limits, setting timers, and taking devices away when you can. But that can quickly become a lot of effort on you – and also get complicated if the child also needs their device to do homework or similar activities.
The easier solution is to use a parental control software. These software allow you to easily and automatically set custom restrictions on your child’s device use. You can limit certain apps at certain times (such as allowing only homework-related activities before dinner), enforce time limits on individual apps and websites, and more. Plus, most parental control software also come with monitoring options so you can quickly spot potential danger in your child’s digital activities. It’s a great option to both reduce the negative impact of screen time and help keep your child safer in the digital world.
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