A Digital Journey Begins

What we may need most is an app that reminds parents that they need to ditch their own screens at home and spend real face time with their kids.

— MARY A IKEN, THE CYBER EFFECT

When a precious newborn enters this world, chances are a smartphone will be in the delivery room, to capture that first photo. That image may end up on Facebook or Instagram, or be sent via text to an aunt, uncle, or grandparent, who might share it on their social networks. Thus, that tiny infant has become a citizen of a digital world.

The work of helping that little digital citizen build a solid foundation that will stand up to the uncertain weather and shifting sands of the digital age starts early. Family and friends are constructing children's digital lives, and children have unprecedented access to mobile devices, at increasingly younger ages. In the United States, nearly all kids age eight and under (98 percent) live in a home with some type of mobile device, and close to half (42 percent) have their own tablet. Mobile device usage for children in this age range tripled between 2011 and 2017 — from only five minutes per day to forty-eight minutes per day — and one-third of their total screen time is spent using mobile devices. Even more striking is that 44 percent of children under the age of one use mobile devices every single day. By the age of two, that jumps to 77 percent.

You see the evidence of this everywhere you look — young children in cars, restaurants, and other public places with tiny heads bent over the glowing screen of a smartphone or tablet. There's even a name for this posture. Chiropractor Dean Fishman coined the term "text neck" in 2008, while examining a young patient who complained of headaches and neck pain. "Text neck" results from bending one's head over a mobile device. The gravitational pull on the head, which can weigh ten to twelve pounds, and the stress it places on the neck, can lead to incremental loss of the curve of the spine.

I see text-necking toddlers all the time. Recently, while riding my bike along the California coast on a dazzling winter morning, I counted five toddlers in strollers, all bent over an electronic device and completely oblivious to seagulls fighting noisily over a piece of trash, surfers surveying the growing swell, the bright red lifeguard truck passing by, and pelicans skimming low over the water's surface. Five kids missed all this and more because their attention was locked on their screens.

WORLD'S BEST BABYSITTER

Mobile tools are excellent babysitters. They can soothe a fussy child or keep fidgety ones occupied, so a busy parent can make dinner, check email, or even go on a much-needed run. A 2014 study of children aged six months to four years in an urban, low-income, minority Philadelphia community revealed that almost all had access to devices that their parents used liberally as "babysitters" — when the parents did chores (70 percent), to keep kids calm in public (65 percent), during errands (58 percent), and at bedtime (28 percent). Parenting is relentless work, and for many, childcare is an unaffordable luxury. Besides, with over eighty thousand apps and games classified as "education- and learning-based," it stands to reason that these young kids might be learning something. The preschool/toddler category in Apple's App Store is its most popular, accounting for 72 percent of the top paid apps. What could possibly be the harm?

That's the thing. We don't know. After all, the iPad is not even ten years old; it's a babe in terms of scientific research. Even kids who used them as toddlers are barely young teens today, so definitive data on their impact upon youth is pending.

As a comprehensive literature review published by UNICEF in late 2017 puts it, "research in this area still suffers from theoretical and methodological weaknesses that makes the evidence collected so far unreliable and inconclusive." The long-term impact of the short-term phenomenon of tablets, smartphones, and all the other mobile devices that have popped up in the recent past is unknown. That makes children the guinea pigs of our grand experiment.

I asked Dr. Pamela Hurst-Della Pietra about this. She is the founder and president of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development, a nonprofit organization working to stimulate dialogue about the impact of digital media on toddlers, children, and adolescents. This national interdisciplinary research organization brings together experts in medicine, social science, neuroscience, education, and other fields to address three vital questions about children and technology:

1. How is technology enhancing or impairing children's ability to live happy, healthy, and productive lives?

2. How are years of electronically mediated interactions shaping children's physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development?

3. What should we do about it?

"Parents need to understand that this is all very new, and we don't have a lot of definitive studies yet," Hurst Della-Pietra told me. "Meanwhile, there has been a sea change in accessibility; now you can take these devices anywhere. While there are some amazing benefits — Skyping with loved ones, for example — there are risks, too, and we don't completely understand them. But we do know there are developmental milestones young children need to hit in order to reach their full potentialities."

HELPING CHILDREN REACH THEIR FULL POTENTIAL IN A SCREEN-FILLED WORLD

Around the world, children and adolescents account for an estimated one in three internet users, yet the technology they use was not designed with their developmental needs in mind. While little is known about the long-term impact of today's devices upon a young child, a lot is known about healthy child development.

Babies require rich, multidimensional experiences in a real, three-dimensional world. They need opportunities for hands-on exploration and human interaction with loving adults. They thrive when they are read to, talked to, played with, and when they play with other children in real life. They benefit from being out in nature. A screen — regardless of whether it's a TV, tablet, smartphone, gaming console, computer, or even an internet-connected toy — can't deliver the same experiences as the real world.

A quick peek under the hood explains why infants need these real-world experiences. A newborn has trillions of brain cells, or neurons, waiting to be called into action. Each of these tiny brain cells has about 2,500 synapses — connections that pass signals between these neurons. When electrical signals pass between these neurons, these synapses are...