I have seen 1 and 2 year olds learn to read playing video games. I see no reason why a properly designed game wouldn't be able to help develop social skills as well.
The study itself acknowledged this, saying, "a meta-analysis showed that greater screen use was associated with decreased language skills, whereas screen time spent on educational programs was associated with increased language skills," and, "A limitation is that the information we collected did not allow us to separate educational screen time from other types of screen time."
You're right that babies won't be able to engage with games or puzzles for 4+ hours per day, but that is not what others in this thread are suggesting. The criticism I'm seeing is that a parent interested in educating their children shouldn't throw out all screen time just because most other parents use screen time poorly.
I have seen a 1 year old seeing a drawing and then correctly tapping the three letter CVC word (among four CVC words) that matches enough times in a row that I could reject the null hypothesis with near certainty. I have seen 2 year olds who had learned to verbally sound out words in games transfer that ability to read entire sentences and short books.
To add to your point, albeit from memory, I read here some time ago on the topic of losing the diaper at 12 months, and one technique discussed was to introduce hand signals, as communication ability of kids comes /way/ earlier than the mouth coordination required to talk. So it stands to reason that if you don’t require the kid to read /aloud/, reading as pattern recognition can come earlier.
The meta analysis you’re citing covered children up to age 12, with a mean age of 35 months. Again, this study isn’t saying that all screen time is bad, just that it’s not good for babies (i.e younger than the 1-2 year olds you are sharing anecdotes for).
Even the AAP allows for screen time after age 2. I’m not sure why people are bringing up irrelevant arguments instead of engaging with the article itself.
> I’m not sure why people are bringing up irrelevant arguments instead of engaging with the article itself.
As I pointed out, the article itself mentioned that similar studies showed that screen time was bad when they didn't control for the quality of screen time for older ages, which reversed when they did; and the article itself said that it was a problem with this study that it didn't.
> Even the AAP allows for screen time after age 2.
My anecdotes show that this recommendation is wrong. You can successfully use screen-based education before the age of 2.
No, I'm using data driven research to invalidate improperly analyzed data driven research. I pointed to research that shows that banning screen time is wrong for older kids, and I've pointed to this very paper, which says that it can't rule out that it is good for very young children when used properly. Why are you so insistent on ignoring the article?
I presented the anecdotes because they are the only evidence I know of that does control for parental negligence in screen time for very young children.
On average, 4+ hours of screen time has a negative effect on babies. That’s what the article is claiming and nothing you’ve said invalidates it.
I’m not sure why you keep bringing up older kids here or citing your own anecdotes (which again aren’t research no matter how hard you dress it up). But I seriously doubt the kids you cited are under 2, and even if they are there’s no way of knowing the other detrimental effects- how good is their socialization? Their eyesight? How do we know they wouldn’t learn how to read anyway with dedicated parents and books? Those questions are what makes something research and not anecdotes.
And again, 1-2 is very different than under 12 months. Can you give any examples of ‘high-quality’ screen time in babies? I know “Ms. Rachel” is popular but I don’t know of any research backing that up. What outcomes are you measuring?
> On average, 4+ hours of screen time has a negative effect on babies.
That's not what the study showed. It showed that on average, 4+ hours of screen time for babies is correlated with a negative outcome. Would you also say that on average, ice cream sales has a large effect on shark attacks? Then why do you insist on ignoring the actual causal effect between parental neglect and high screen time and poor educational outcomes?
> How do we know they wouldn’t learn how to read anyway with dedicated parents and books? [etc.]
You're holding my anecdotes to a higher standard than the research you're citing. How do we know these neglected children wouldn't be equally impaired had they not been put in front of a screen?
> Can you give any examples of ‘high-quality’ screen time in babies?
I already did under this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37222954). Children younger than one can start to learn to read from apps that help them learn letter sounds and associate words with pictures and actually read at age 1.
The study itself acknowledged this, saying, "a meta-analysis showed that greater screen use was associated with decreased language skills, whereas screen time spent on educational programs was associated with increased language skills," and, "A limitation is that the information we collected did not allow us to separate educational screen time from other types of screen time."
You're right that babies won't be able to engage with games or puzzles for 4+ hours per day, but that is not what others in this thread are suggesting. The criticism I'm seeing is that a parent interested in educating their children shouldn't throw out all screen time just because most other parents use screen time poorly.