Shocking MRI Study of Children’s Brain After Screen Time
This is five-year-old Rose. She was one of 60 children to undergo an exhaustive study in the U.S. using an MRI machine to scan the brains of children aged three to five years old. The results? Truly shocking. Interactive screen time causes a loss of white matter in the brain.
Doctor on How Screen Time Effects White Matter in the Brain of a Child
Well, in the simplest terms, we could actually refer to some measure of brain impairment or brain damage. So, white matter in the brain is a material called myelin. So what myelin does is it wraps around the axons of neurons and acts like an insulator, a conductor, not too dissimilar to the plastic coating of a wire. So if we’re seeing definites in myelin production early in life, we’re probably seeing deficits in neural connectivity.
Narrator Asks If Doctor About His Reaction to the Results
The study shows the more screen time a child is exposed to, the greater the loss of brain white matter. Can you remember your first reaction to those results, not only as a professional in this field, but as a father?
Doctors Reaction to Child Screen Time Study
My gut reaction was, wow. I was not anticipating seeing anything like that. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time that something as little as screen time, and it said two hours a day, was having such a profound effect on the brain white matter of a child associated with sort of language development.
The Rise of Smartphones, Social Media, Apps Play a Role in Loss of Brain White Matter
By association literacy, it was a shock, to be honest. He also believes big data backs it up. In 2010, smartphones became mainstream and affordable. Apps and social media exploded. So now, we can track the impact it has on a child. Psychological distress in our teenagers has skyrocketed. Look at the dates. It’s all after the 2010 smartphone revolution.
