How Does Excessive Screen Time Harm Brain Development in Children?

Why Is Screen Time So Hard to Control for Our Stone Age Brains?

Explore the neuroscience behind digital addiction and learn how to manage screen time and protect children’s brain development using insights from Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age.

Ready to break free from digital distraction and reclaim your attention? Read the full article to discover expert strategies from neurologist Richard Cytowic and start building healthier screen habits for you and your family today!

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If you’re like many people, you probably struggle to keep your screen time in check. Neurologist Richard E. Cytowic explains why your brain is evolutionarily hardwired to seek your phone every time you see a blinking alert, why doing so may be harming you, or your children, and what you can start doing to develop a healthier relationship with digital technology. Gain insights into the ways heavy screen time use is changing children’s brains, and what humanity stands to lose if people don’t start reclaiming their attention and engaging more with their off-screen world.

Take-Aways

• Excessive screen time is changing children’s brain development, resulting in reduced impulse control.
• Social media addiction can be fatal and trigger severe psychological harm.
• The change-sensitivity that ensured early humans’ survival makes it tough to look away from a flashing TV today.
• Cellphone and tablet usage is giving rise to increased body dysmorphia and virtual autism.
• Depriving children of sufficient human contact can inhibit the development of empathy.
• Like slot machine addictions, smartphone addictions trap you on a “hedonic treadmill.”
• Protect your sleep from blue screen light with self-care and sleep hygiene practices.
• Start rethinking your digital habits, making room for silence and connection.

Summary

Excessive screen time is changing children’s brain development, resulting in reduced impulse control.

The word “addiction” is derived from the Latin word addictum, the root of which means “bound to.” In ancient Rome, people used the word addictum to describe the time duration that a slave or indentured worker had to serve a master. This context can help people reflect on the degree to which those with smartphone addictions surrender power to digital devices. Many people don’t see excessive screen time as a problem and even celebrate the fact that there’s so much “free” content online. However, as retired Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff explains, people’s blindness to digital addiction’s harms is by design: Tech giants garner as much data as they can about you, then leverage human psychology to exploit your vulnerabilities, keeping you glued to your screen. The fact that people willingly cede their autonomy to Big Tech makes it all the more dangerous to human society.

“Is a screen the last thing you see at night or the first thing you clutch in the morning?”

Screen addiction, which often begins in infancy, is actually changing human brain development: Researchers have noted reductions in brain volume and slowed development in young people’s frontal lobes, which are responsible for impulse control. Those growing up in an age of constant connection will experience several harms from excessive screen time, including reduced attention span, lack of adequate interpersonal skills, social disconnection, and increased susceptibility to addictive behavior. Children who spend hours a day staring at screens aren’t learning how to engage with people in real life. They are missing out on time spent learning by imitating their adult carers, which helps them develop empathy, their mental models, and their sense of self-identity.

Social media addiction can be fatal and trigger severe psychological harm.

In the past two decades, it’s estimated that 76,000 visits to the emergency room were related to injuries caused by inattentive cellphone usage — tripping while walking with your iPhone, for instance. In 2014, the US Department of Transportation reported that phone use while driving had resulted in 33,000 driver injuries. The following year, 19 people died due to selfie-related incidents. For example, tourists have fallen off the edge of the rims of the Grand Canyon trying to snap selfies.

“Absorbed self-admirers have fallen from cliffs, crashed their vehicles, and electrocuted themselves atop train cars while posing for their followers.”

There’s a correlation between heavy use of social media and chat apps and an inability to task-switch effectively and maintain focus. That said, it’s unclear whether this correlation exists because distractible people are more likely to be glued to their phones or because phones increase distractibility. Neuroscience helps explain part of the reason that it’s so hard to stop giving your attention to your screen, even if you wish to do so: The human brain’s two hemispheres support different skill sets and distinct conceptualizations of your identity — including your “past, future, family, culture, and social history.” What you perceive as a singular, unified self is actually the product of the ways the two hemispheres interact. Thus, part of you may want to put down the phone, but another part of you wants to engage in an endless scroll, triggering an internal battle for control.

The change-sensitivity that ensured early humans’ survival makes it tough to look away from a flashing TV today.

Your brain is evolutionarily hardwired to give importance to small sounds and visual changes. Your prehistoric ancestors benefited from responding to a cracked twig in the night, as it may be a life-or-death situation, such as a predator near the cave. Your brain also has an “orienting reflex,” which means you’re hardwired to pay attention to novel stimuli to ensure survival. Because of these inborn tendencies, your brain may misperceive digital sound interruptions, such as text alert rings, as having life-or-death significance. Visual digital interruptions can, similarly, capture attention and trigger intense surges of emotion: When you see things in your peripheral vision, such as a push alert that briefly flashes, it activates a part of your brain’s temporal lobe — the lingual gyrus — that’s connected to your brain’s emotion center, the limbic system.

“The exquisite sensitivity to change that helped humans survive in the past is, ironically, a liability in the present.”

Today, the impulses that kept your ancient ancestors alive manifest as feeling unable to look away from your phone or commercials flashing on a waiting room TV screen. Software engineers exploit these vulnerabilities. Stable, non-dynamic visual stimuli, such as landscapes, aren’t going to grab your attention as much as a tiny flickering alert on your phone.

Cellphone and tablet usage is giving rise to increased body dysmorphia and virtual autism.

New mental health conditions are emerging in response to excessive social media usage and heavy screen time. For example, according to a paper in Boston University School of Medicine’s publication, Facial Plastic Surgery, social media has given rise to “Snapchat dysmorphia,” a new type of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), in which individuals become so accustomed viewing themselves through a filter, such as the Facetune app, that they become distressed that their real-life face doesn’t look like their edited, digital one. Sufferers may even seek plastic surgery in an attempt to bridge the gap between their digital and offscreen selves.

“Developmental autism never improves spontaneously during early childhood, but children with virtual autism show dramatic improvements once digital screens are taken away.”

Heavy screen time can also result in the development of autism-like behaviors, or “virtual autism” in younger children. Little children can’t learn to make eye contact or display context-appropriate facial expressions in social situations from the faces they see on the TV or their iPads because these faces don’t “smile back” and engage with them. Child psychiatrist Victoria Dunckley identifies digital devices like smartphones and iPads as the primary source of a host of issues that she encounters among children without autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in her practice. Much like children with ASD, neurotypical children may also experience regression of their social and language skills after engaging in heavy digital device usage. Fortunately, if you’re a parent, there are steps you can take to limit your child’s development of virtual autism, such as organizing in-person play dates and limiting screen time for children 12 years old and younger.

Depriving children of sufficient human contact can inhibit the development of empathy.

University of Wisconsin psychologist Harry Harlow’s research forms the basis of attachment theory. He conducted a series of experiments about the impacts of depriving young chimpanzees of warmth and comfort: In one experiment, he created two “surrogate” chimpanzee “mothers” — both were mechanical and dispensed milk, but one was covered with a soft cloth, while the other simply featured bare wires. The chimpanzees “raised” by a soft maternal substitute were able to comfort themselves when scared, clinging to the cloth, while those that drew milk from a surrogate composed only of wires never developed the capacity to comfort themselves — they entered a “pit of despair” shrieking and rocking their bodies in distress. The monkeys raised without nurturing never fully developed a capacity for relational understanding, even when reintroduced into bigger groups, as compared to those who didn’t suffer the same early neglect.

“Miss the developmental window, and the capacities to read others, infer intent, and empathize are permanently degraded, while the problems that result from having too little empathy, or none at all, inexorably mount.”

Some worry that today’s iPhone generation may face a similar fate to those chimpanzees raised without warmth: In their book Screen Schooled, former teachers Matt Miles and Joe Clement compare children raised by screens to Harlow’s test subjects: “Many of our children and adolescents are wasting away in ‘digital pits of despair,’” they write, because a life lived online is no substitute for real-world human connection. As children escape into digital worlds, they may do so at the expense of developing both empathy and healthy attention spans, as the two are linked: Empathizing with others requires the ability to focus on another person long enough to understand a perspective other than your own, which you can’t do if your eyes are almost always focused on a screen.

Like slot machine addictions, smartphone addictions trap you on a “hedonic treadmill.”

Many people are stuck on a “hedonic treadmill,” chasing fleeting moments of happiness and lacking genuine inner contentment. Those who engage in the nonstop pursuit of external rewards — such as the approval others give you on social media — may find themselves struggling to overcome digital distractions. Novel experiences release dopamine, the feel-good neurotransmitter, in human brains. But, in most cases, repetition of the same experience deadens your sensitivity to it: the once-exciting activity becomes predictable.

The perpetual unpredictability of digital rewards means they never become less exciting. When you check your phone regularly for messages or novel content, hoping to see something that temporarily satiates a desire, your behavior isn’t much different from that of a gambler who keeps playing a slot machine in hopes of winning a big jackpot. Seeing a new post on social media is like the small win that keeps the gambler playing. These intermittent rewards trigger short-lived positive feelings that keep you — like the gambler — hooked and anticipating more.

“Weirdly, anticipation supersedes attainment, becoming many times more rewarding than securing the actual object of one’s addiction.”

After engaging in an addictive behavior for a while, your brain will start treating cues for the addiction — say, smartphone alerts — as more salient than the reward itself — the new post or message — trapping you in a constant state of craving. You’ll spend hours scrolling on your phone, anticipating a dopamine rush that is never as good as the one you felt when using a social media platform for the first time.

Protect your sleep from blue screen light with self-care and sleep hygiene practices.

Screen exposure and blue light can disrupt your sleep, which can result in health consequences such as more rapid cellular aging. Improve sleep hygiene and get a more restful sleep by doing the following:

• Be consistent — Set a bedtime and wake-up time and stick with it, even on weekends.
• Make your room dark — Block out light sources as much as possible and consider wearing an eye mask.
• Choose a restorative sleep posture — You’ll get a better night’s sleep if you either sleep on your side with your bottom leg straight, your top leg bent, and your chest rotated toward the mattress (the “three-quarters prone” position) or on your side, with a pillow between your knees and your legs straight.
• Cool things down — Try to keep your bedroom between 65°F and 68°F (18°C-20°C). Consider buying a cooling gel pillow or mattress pad.
• Keep bathroom lights low — Buy low-wattage LED nightlights (avoid blue and go for red if possible) and put them in your bathroom.
• Dim lights two hours before bed — Use candles or low lights to create a cozy ambiance before bed, dimming or turning off bright, overhead electric lights.
• Consider a walk — If you live in a calm area, consider taking a walk outdoors in the dark before bed and observing the night sky.
• Limit use of digital devices — If you absolutely must use your smartphone after sunset, consider using free software, such as f.lux, which will adapt your screen color to the time of day, making it warmer in the evenings. Avoid checking the time on your phone while in bed. Invest in a digital clock instead (ideally with red numbers).
• Get natural light — Open your curtains when you wake up, and consider taking a quick morning walk without sunglasses. Take time to look at the sun, as you’ll see energizing blue wavelengths in the morning.

Start rethinking your digital habits, making room for silence and connection.

Start reclaiming your life and your attention with the following steps:

• Rethink habits — Reflect on your screen time consumption and time spent gaming or engaged in other digital activities. For example, do you really need to consume all “Breaking News,” or would you be better served by reading more quality news stories, less frequently.
• Embrace niksen — This Dutch word refers to “the art of doing nothing and putting life on pause for a few minutes.” Take time, for example, to engage in moments of play or in unstructured activities.
• Switch to paper — Consider writing by hand and buying print media to ensure you focus more on the words in front of you.
• Stop streaming while you eat — Resist the temptation to watch something on your screen while you eat, reclaiming meal times as mindful moments.

About the Author

Dr. Richard E. Cytowic is a neurologist, a public speaker, and the author of books such as The Man Who Tasted Shapes.