OPINION

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Toddler not talking?
There could be a reason for that. I’ve just come across a fascinating study into the effects of screen time on the vocabulary growth of toddlers. It is by the Perth hospital-based Telethon Kids Institute, and the “first-of-its kind study has found that for every minute of screen time toddlers are exposed to at home, they hear fewer adult words, make fewer vocalisations and engage in fewer back-and-forth conversations with their parents”. The study, Screen time and parent-child talk when children are aged 12 to 36 months, was a collaboration with the University of Adelaide, the University of Oxford, and the Menzies Health Institute at Griffith University.
How did they conduct the study? They used Fitbit-like devices to track 220 Australian families intermittently over a 36-month period. I wasn’t sure about what a ‘Fitbit’ was. You may not be either: “On a basic level a Fitbit is a wrist-based fitness tracker. The underlying premise is that any movement is helpful, and the Fitbit device, since it’s strapped to your wrist, can capture and measure all that activity.” (https://blog.visionsource-plano.com/fitbit-pros-and cons)
The research was led by Telethon Kids Institute senior research officer Dr Mary Brushe. “Telethon Kids Institute is one of the largest and most successful medical research institutes in Australia. We’ve created a bold blueprint that brings together community, researchers, practitioners, policy makers and funders, who share our vision to improve the health and wellbeing of children through excellence in research. The institute is headed by leading paediatrician and infectious diseases expert Professor Jonathan Carapetis, with founding director Professor Fiona Stanley now patron. Telethon Kids is independent and not-for-profit. The majority of funding comes from our success in winning national and international competitive research grants. We also receive significant philanthropic support from corporate Australia and the community.” (www.telethonkids.org.au/about-us/)
I can’t help but think of our poor struggling impoverished Royal Hobart Hospital! As you can see, it is a humdinger of an enterprise. Back to the case in point: toddlers, screen time and vocabulary. In all, the researchers coded more than 7,000 hours in total to calculate the amount of screen time toddlers were exposed to as opposed to other electronic noises. According to Dr Brushe, “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. We know that the amount of talk and interaction children experience is critical for their early language development – this study highlights that screen time may be getting in the way of that”. Families who took part in the study did not know at the time of recording that screen time was going to be measured. This analysis was done retrospectively, after parents’ consent was sought.
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. And yes, there was a control group for comparison. The findings – brace yourself – published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Paediatrics – 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 Organisation 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 (!) This is found to seriously affect subsequent speech, vocabulary and reading development, with far-reaching effects in later life.
You have been warned.
John Fleming II


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