So we have a couple of options. We can 1) hurl their electronics to the damn moon or 2) begin to implement some new limits. They won’t like the latter but they really wouldn’t like the former—and there are a few things you can do to make the transition a little less painful for everyone involved.

Despite the allure of easy-to-follow rules that address parental concerns, screen time recommendations have drawn increasing criticism from a wide range of experts.

Experts like Odgers say we'll never get good answers about the effects of screen time, unless we start asking better questions. And that means being honest with ourselves about what we mean by "screen time" in the first place.

The Privilege of ChoicesIn Silicon Valley, some feel anxious about the growing class divide they see around screen-time. Kirstin Stecher and her husband, who works as an engineer at Facebook, are raising their kids almost completely screen-free.“Is this coming from a place of information — like, we know a lot about these screens,” she said. “Or is it coming from a place of privilege, that we don’t need them as badly?”

Technology Is a Huge Social Experiment on ChildrenSome parents, pediatricians and teachers around the country are pushing back. “These companies lied to the schools, and they’re lying to the parents,” said Natasha Burgert, a pediatrician in Kansas City. “We’re all getting duped.”“Our kids, my kids included, we are subjecting them to one of the biggest social experiments we have seen in a long time,” she said. “What happens to my daughter if she can’t communicate over dinner — how is she going to find a spouse? How is she going to interview for a job?”

The psychologist Richard Freed, who wrote a book about the dangers of screen-time for kids and how to connect them back to real world experiences, divides his time between speaking before packed rooms in Silicon Valley and his clinical practice with low-income families in the far East Bay, where he is often the first one to tell parents that limiting screen-time might help with attention and behavior issues.

Lower-income teens spend an average of eight hours and seven minutes a day using screens for entertainment, while higher income peers spend five hours and 42 minutes, according to research by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit media watchdog. (This study counted each screen separately, so a child texting on a phone and watching TV for one hour counted as two hours of screens being used.) Two studies that look at race have found that white children are exposed to screens significantly less than African-American and Hispanic children.

It wasn’t long ago that the worry was that rich students would have access to the internet earlier, gaining tech skills and creating a digital divide. Schools ask students to do homework online, while only about two-thirds of people in the U.S. have broadband internet service. But now, as Silicon Valley’s parents increasingly panic over the impact screens have on their children and move toward screen-free lifestyles, worries over a new digital divide are rising. It could happen that the children of poorer and middle-class parents will be raised by screens, while the children of Silicon Valley’s elite will be going back to wooden toys and the luxury of human interaction.

“We have friends who are screen abolitionists, and we have friends who are screen liberalists,” Mr. Barbieri said.

“On the scale between candy and crack cocaine, it’s closer to crack cocaine,” Mr. Anderson said of screens.

Athena Chavarria, who worked as an executive assistant at Facebook and is now at Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic arm, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, said: “I am convinced the devil lives in our phones and is wreaking havoc on our children.”Ms. Chavarria did not let her children have cellphones until high school, and even now bans phone use in the car and severely limits it at home.

Some of the people who built video programs are now horrified by how many places a child can now watch a video.

A wariness that has been slowly brewing is turning into a regionwide consensus: The benefits of screens as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high.

The people who are closest to a thing are often the most wary of it. Technologists know how phones really work, and many have decided they don’t want their own children anywhere near them.

The fear of screens has reached the level of panic in Silicon Valley. Vigilantes now post photos to parenting message boards of possible nannies using cellphones near children. Which is to say, the very people building these glowing hyper-stimulating portals have become increasingly terrified of them. And it has put their nannies in a strange position.

From Cupertino to San Francisco, a growing consensus has emerged that screen time is bad for kids. It follows that these parents are now asking nannies to keep phones, tablets, computers and TVs off and hidden at all times. Some are even producing no-phone contracts, which guarantee zero unauthorized screen exposure, for their nannies to sign.

Silicon Valley parents are increasingly obsessed with keeping their children away from screens. Even a little screen time can be so deeply addictive, some parents believe, that it’s best if a child neither touches nor sees any of these glittering rectangles. These particular parents, after all, deeply understand their allure.

discourage the placement of media in children’s bedrooms and encourage parents to limit the total amount of entertainment screen time in general to <1 to 2 hours per day

clinically significant impairment or distress.”

The increasing prevalence of digital media has led to growing public concerns about potential detrimental effects, including the possibility that video game play may be “addicting.”

The tendency to be constantly connected to one’s social network through digital devices, therefore, potentially contributes to feelings of anxiety.

depression has been postulated to be caused by substituted digital communication, such as excessive mobile phone use that takes the place of face-to-face contact and causes subsequent social isolation

Adolescents may seek digital distraction from emerging anxiety or distress emotions, creating a reinforced behavioral avoidance of emotional experiences.

Little research has been conducted on acute fear reactions delivered by newer technologies, such as the Internet, social media, and portable devices.

A variety of surveys dating back as far as the 1930s have shown that a substantial proportion of children experience acute fearful reactions to various aspects of the content of media, especially movies, television dramas, and the news.1

anxiety resulting from lack of emotion-regulation skills because of substituted digital media use

Researchers have documented that the options of texting, instant messaging, and emailing have become preferred by some individuals over face-to-face interactions for some types of contact.

In contrast, research with adults showed that using the Internet to communicate with friends and family was linked with decreases in depression

Key topics of inquiry include the following: anxiety and depression associated with technology-based negative social comparison

ms.17 The majority of victims report negative feelings, such as embarrassment, worry, fear, depression, or loneliness after cyberbullying events.24

a feeling of being dependent on text messaging was associated with depression.

the behavior may actually increase risk in individuals vulnerable to social anxiety disorder.

Research has shown that individuals with Internet overuse or addiction report using it to avoid negative emotions, such as anxiety and depression.

adults showed that using the Internet to communicate with friends and family was linked with decreases in depression.6

people leading exciting and idealized lives in media programs invites social comparison and contributes to dissatisfaction with oneself.4

difficult to calm a child who has been intensely frightened by a program or movie, and the resulting loss of sleep and heightened levels of unnecessary anxiety

especially social media

Early research has explored the impact of traditional media (eg, television, movies) on children’s acute fears, which can result in anxieties and related sleep disturbances that are difficult to remedy.

In fact, researchers conducting a recent longitudinal study of adolescents found that greater use of mobile phones at baseline was associated with higher levels of depression 1 year later.19

The use of social technology (eg, texting, instant messaging, e-mailing) has become a primary method of communication for a majority of young adults, and interrupting the use of these technologies can lead to increased levels of anxiety.

For these individuals, opting to substitute digital media for interpersonal communication to avoid feared situations may become cyclically reinforced over time, making the person even more avoidant and worsening the symptoms and severity of social anxiety disorder.1

n contrast, research with adults showed that using the Internet to communicate with friends and family was linked with decreases in depression.6

However, considering that these types of technologies are often used to access video entertainment, much of what we know about fear and children is applicable to modern types of media use.

Research on traditional media has found that the representation of attractive people leading exciting and idealized lives in media programs invites social comparison and contributes to dissatisfaction with oneself.4

Media use that provides effective distraction, humor, connection to peers, and a wide social network could serve to help adolescents avoid depression and potentially reduce its impact on their functioning

A recent meta-analysis of 131 studies23 highlighted the following key findings: (1) most estimates of the prevalence of cyberbullying among adolescents fall between 11% and 48%, depending on the definition of cyberbullying, group demographics, and the reporting time frame; (2) there is a substantial degree of overlap between adolescents who bully others offline and those who engage in cyberbullying (similarly, victims of cyberbullying are often victimized offline); and (3) adolescents who experience cyberbullying are at increased risk for a wide range of mental and physical health problems.17 The majority of victims report negative feelings, such as embarrassment, worry, fear, depression, or loneliness after cyberbullying events.

In Japan, researchers noted anxiety in students (mean age = 18.4 years) such that when they did not receive an instant reply to their text message, they felt a fear of being ostracized

Although primarily correlational, research suggests that young people who replace in-person exchanges with virtual interactions intensify their social impairments, whereas those who use online exchanges to supplement existing friendships report improvements in the quality and closeness of their existing relationships.

Researchers have documented that the options of texting, instant messaging, and emailing have become preferred by some individuals over face-to-face interactions for some types of contact.

Research has shown that individuals with Internet overuse or addiction report using it to avoid negative emotions, such as anxiety and depression

A variety of surveys dating back as far as the 1930s have shown that a substantial proportion of children experience acute fearful reactions to various aspects of the content of media, especially movies, television dramas, and the news.

It is often difficult to calm a child who has been intensely frightened by a program or movie, and the resulting loss of sleep and heightened levels of unnecessary anxiety can cause physical, cognitive, and emotional problems.

n contrast, research with adults showed that using the Internet to communicate with friends and family was linked with decreases in depression.6

ocial networking sites can influence depression and anxiety in adolescents through technology-based negative social comparison, resulting in negative self-evaluation or anxiety about evaluation by others.

Social media can thus provide a good forum to practice skills related to identity development, such as self-presentation and self-disclosure.

Rather, it is more helpful to think in terms of a healthy media diet that incorporates similar properties to a healthy food diet: moderation in amount, consuming more of the helpful and less of the harmful content, and having regard for the age of the consumer.

The vast majority of laboratory-based experimental studies have revealed that violent media exposure causes increased aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiologic arousal, hostile appraisals, aggressive behavior, and desensitization to violence and decreases prosocial behavior (eg, helping others) and empathy.

Violence in screen entertainment media (ie, television, film, video games, and the Internet), defined as depictions of characters (or players) trying to physically harm other characters (or players), is ubiquitous.

exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiologic arousal, hostile appraisals, and aggressive behavior and decreases prosocial behavior

violent video games can also have negative effects on players.

Video games in particular have increased in popularity, with some teenagers reporting that they play ≥40 hours per week

Active mediation refers to parent-child conversations about media, including parental attempts to provide children with critical viewing skills regarding media. For example, a parent might discuss themes of bullying after the child views a television program containing aggressive behavior.9 Finally, co-viewing is when parents view, use, or consume media with their children but do not necessarily discuss the content with them

Children today average more hours engaged with media each week than they do engaged with almost any other activity (between 6 and 9 hours/day).

We find that child characteristics, the parent-child relationship, parental mediation practices, and parents’ own use of media all can influence children’s media use, their attitudes regarding media, and the effects of media on children.

For young children, active mediation can influence their comprehension of media, learning, and language exposure. When parents ask questions and scaffold interactions during media use, children as young as 3 can learn from videos and transfer learning to other settings.14 Between ages 1 and 2, toddlers can interact over video chat more effectively with parent support and learn content from media more readily when a parent co-views and teaches them the presented material.

In addition, low-income parents with toddlers with social-emotional delays were more likely to give their child mobile devices to calm them down or keep them quiet.

However, in older children, gaming has the potential to encourage more family interactions because children often attempted to bring parents into their online and console playing

A recent meta-analysis revealed that both restrictive and active mediation can reduce negative media effects, such as the learning of aggressive behavior, substance use, and sexual behavior, whereas co-viewing (without discussion) tends to enhance or facilitate media effects

How can parents use media as a tool to strengthen their family?

Sleep deprivation has been associated with increased obesity and weight gain among children, most consistently among those between ages 3 and 7

This suggests that displacement of physical activity may not be a strong link between screen time and obesity.

Observational studies have also revealed that greater screen time is associated with cardiometabolic risk factors more broadly, including hypertension, elevated cholesterol levels, insulin resistance, elevated inflammation, and the metabolic syndrome.2

Current evidence suggests that screen media exposure leads to obesity in children and adolescents through increased eating while viewing; exposure to high-calorie, low-nutrient food and beverage marketing that influences children’s preferences, purchase requests, consumption habits; and reduced sleep duration

Make sleep a priority: Talk with families about the importance of sleep and healthy sleep expectations.Encourage a bedtime routine that includes calming activities and avoids electronic media use.Encourage families to remove all electronic media from their children or teenagers’ bedrooms, including televisions, video games, computers, tablets, and cell phones.Talk with families about the negative consequences of bright light in the evening on sleep.If the child or adolescent in your care is exhibiting mood or behavioral problems, consider insufficient sleep as a contributing factor.

For example, media use in adults is associated with sleep onset latency but not with tiredness because adults who spend substantial time engaging with media may have the opportunity to compensate by sleeping longer.21 Such a compensatory mechanism is largely impossible for children and adolescents because their wake times are primarily determined by parents, school hours, and/or extracurricular activities.

Data from US population-based studies show that ∼30% of preschool-aged children and between 50% and 90% of school-aged children and adolescents do not get as much sleep as they may need.1,2 The pervasive use of screen-based media is a likely contributor to widespread sleep insufficiency. Screen-based media devices are present in the bedrooms of 75% of children,3 and ∼60% of adolescents report viewing or interacting with screens in the hour before bedtime.4 In a recent systematic review of 67 studies of screen time and media use in school-aged youth and teenagers (1999–2014), 90% found that screen time was adversely associated with sleep health, primarily via delayed bedtimes and reduced sleep duration.5 Potential mechanisms underlying these observed associations include the following6: (1) time displacement (ie, time spent on screens replaces time spent doing other things, including sleeping)7; (2) psychological stimulation based on media content8; and (3) the effects of light emitted from devices on circadian timing, sleep physiology, and alertness.9 Healthy sleep patterns in childhood and adolescence are associated with lower obesity risk,10,11 better psychological well-being,12 improved cognitive functioning,13 and lower risk-taking behaviors.14 We propose that sleep among children and adolescents should be a priority in family, school, and clinical contexts, as well as in future basic, observational, and translational research.

Indeed, many teenagers report at least sometimes doing homework while using another medium, including television (51% of teenagers), social networking (50%), text messaging (60%), and listening to music (76%).

American youth spend more time with media than any other waking activity: an average of 7.5 hours per day, every day. On average, 29% of that time is spent juggling multiple media streams simultaneously (ie, media multitasking).

There has been considerable concern that television may negatively influence young children’s executive function, especially the ability to focus and sustain attention in task situations.

There is little question from a large amount of research that educational television has a positive impact on cognitive development.

Thus, it appears that parental engagement with both television and interactive media, such as smartphones, may reduce the quantity and quality of parent-child interactions, which are crucial for the development of cognitive skills, especially language and executive function.

and other interactive technologies (eg, educational apps for tablets and smartphones) to support learning in formal educational contexts.1

Media have repeatedly been claimed to be important sources of children’s informal education beyond school.

The use of computer games as well as educational computer programs can lead to gains in academically relevant content and other cognitive skills. This article concludes by identifying topics and goals for future research and provides recommendations based on current research-based knowledge.

The cognitive impact of these media depends on the age of the child, the kind of programming (educational programming versus programming produced for adults), the social context of viewing, as well the particular kind of interactive media (eg, computer games).

s well as interventions on behalf of international development by organizations such as the United National Children’s Fund

Discursive and normative uncertainties mean that, for instance, “digital learning” is open to different interpretations, ranging from an instrumental concern with employability and growth to more idealist concerns for social mobility, social justice, and empowerment. In addition, given the huge inequalities in region, income, culture, sex, and so forth, efforts to promote digital opportunities can also become, inadvertently, the means by which inequalities are reproduced or new risks are encountered.

in-school and after-school virtual learning and online coordination of academic activities are further intensifying the already considerable academic pressures on children in middle-class households, with the potential to adversely affect parent-child relationships

Research on parental use of monitoring technologies suggests that such updates about children’s whereabouts may trigger authoritarian parents to be more controlling,19 which in turn is unlikely to enhance children’s academic performance.

For instance, the United States, among other wealthy countries, is witnessing calls for data-driven instruction in the hope that this can remove bias in student advancement, equalize education, and improve learning outcomes and teacher efficiency.

In India, progress depends on the business case for digital education, which is only slowly gaining ground as the education market develops software packages around textbook content

s the goal to prepare students for a competitive workforce, to connect marginalized youth, to support schools, or to provide progressive alternatives to school? The goals determine the means, and both have implications for evaluating technological interventions.

Or, consider that although most research stems from urban settings, many children globally live in rural areas (55% of the child population in China, for instance) where difficulties of mass migration, poverty, and loss of parents already undermine children’s well-being

Yet these promises are countered by prominent public and policy concerns over the harms to children associated with society’s growing reliance on digitally networked technologies.

This article documents the particular irony that while the world’s poorer countries look to research to find ways to increase access and accelerate the fair distribution of digital educational resources, the world’s wealthier countries look to research for guidance in managing excessive screen time, heavily commercial content, and technologies that intrude on autonomy and privacy

A considerable body of work now suggests that socioeconomic status predicts digital literacy skills.2

The concept of digital and media literacy as a broad construct has not yet entered political discourse. Policy makers must recognize digital and media literacy as literacy in today’s world.

In short, interventions that equip youth to critically navigate their digital lives have positive impacts that mitigate potentially harmful effects of participation in digital spaces.

The fallout about “fake news” from the 2016 US presidential election is but 1 example of the consequences we face when citizens do not engage critical digital and media literacies.

eading and writing in digital spaces may require a more complex application of skills than print-based literacy2

These questions underscore what parents, educators, health professionals, and community leaders need to know to ensure that youth become digitally and media literate.

In releasing the study results, Campus Technology reported that some teachers had expressed mixed feelings about the use of technology. These opinions came in the form of open-ended questions answered directly by educators. The educators were not identified. One noted that the learning process can suffer if students depend too much on their devices. “People can easily get addicted to their devices, and using technology can change the way the brain develops - not always in a good way,” the teacher wrote. Another educator wrote: “Technology is accidentally increasing students' weakness in reading and figuring things out (or critical thinking). They confuse clicking with learning.”

merican public life has become increasingly ideologically segregated as newspapers have given way to screens. But societies have experienced extremism and fragmentation without the assistance of Silicon Valley for centuries. And the polarization in the US began long ago, with the rise of 24-hour cable news. So just how responsible is the internet for today’s divisions? And are they really as bad as they seem?

Digest the information below, even though it might feel uncomfortable, and arm yourself with the truth about the potential damage screen time is capable of imparting—particularly in a young, still-developing brain.