The usually ultra-cool marketing executive was over-the-top exasperated. “Every time we get together, the parents all talk about it. We don’t know what to do about Fortnite!” There’s much to learn about this wildly popular new pursuit and why it’s popping up at school, so let’s dig in.
Fortnite: Battle Royale is a free-to-play, third-person-action online video game where players fight to the Continue reading
Don’t miss the interview with a mom who helped her 14-month-old son overcome screen-induced syndrome: Watch it here.
Pediatricians are alarmed that babies and toddlers who spend hours a day on phones, tablets, and around TVs can develop a syndrome of marked behavioral changes. The good news: the changes often disappear when the children stop all screen exposure and switch to face-to-face contact, reading, and play with parents, caregivers, other children, and non-electronic toys.
Two doctors in France are leading an awareness campaign, which they explain in this video.
“Screen viewing several hours a day prevents the brain from developing and generates behavior problems and relationship problems,” reports Dr. Anne-Lise Ducanda, speaking also for colleague Dr. Isabelle Terrasse. “We decided to make this video to warn parents, professionals, and public bodies of the grave dangers of all screens for children between the ages of zero to four.”
The doctors had noticed more and more toddlers with unusual changes in behavior. Some had stopped responding to their names and speaking words, began avoiding eye contact, and had become indifferent to the world around them. Many children lagged behind developmentally for their age and were language delayed.
Drawing on left by a 4-year-old who spends little time on screen media. Drawing on right by a slightly older 4-year-old who was highly screen-exposed..
After asking parents in detail about the kids’ media use and household exposure, the doctors discovered almost all the children had spent large amounts of time on and around screens—in some cases, ten hours a day. But when families stopped the child’s screen exposure and greatly increased social interaction and play with the child, most if not all aspects of the condition eventually disappeared.
Various studies in Romania have come to similar conclusions, one stating “sensory-motor and socio-affective deprivation caused by the consumption of more than 4 hours/day of virtual environment can activate behaviours and elements similar to those found in children diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).”
Because this phenomenon has been so often observed in Romania, screen withdrawal there is now a therapeutic protocol for early ASD and a campaign is underway informing parents about the problem.
Romanian psychologist Marius Zamfir coined the term “Virtual Autism” to describe the screen-induced syndrome. He worries about lack of motivation among children exposed to excessive screen content. “Children’s brains are used to getting pleasure without making any effort at all,” he says in this video made for the Romanian public information campaign.
Meanwhile, a study released in 2022 of more than 84,000 Japanese babies and their mothers found that “among boys, longer screen time at 1 year of age was significantly associated with autism spectrum disorder at 3 years of age.”
“With the rapid increase in device usage,” concluded the authors, “it is necessary to review the health effects of screen time on infants and to control excessive screen time.”
A study of toddlers’ brains seems to bear out the behavioral indicators.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital researchers show evidence in JAMA Pediatrics that young children who spend more than two hours a day on screens have less brain white matter. The brain’s white matter aids in thought processing and organization, as well as performing other vital functions.
“Think of white matter as cables, sort of like telephone lines that are connecting the various parts of the brain so they can talk to each other,” study author Dr. John Hutton told CNN.
“These are tracks that we know are involved with language and literacy,” he continued. “And these were the ones relatively underdeveloped in these kids with more screen time.”
47 healthy toddlers were studied. Screen exposure among them ranged from zero to about five hours a day.
In their report, the study authors did not make a connection to virtual autism nor did they specifically mention autistic-like symptoms.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in 1975—when VCRs first came on scene—only one in 5,000 children in the U.S. was reported to have ASD. But by 2016, video on demand had become ubiquitous and the incidence of ASD had risen to one child in 68. The CDC now estimates the rate is 1 child in every 44.
Until very recently, “AV (audio-visual) exposure in infancy has been overlooked” as a risk factor for autism, according to research ophthalmologist Karen Frankel Heffler of Drexel University College of Medicine. As she writes in the journal Medical Hypotheses, “There has been an explosion in viewing opportunities for infants over the past 25 years, which parallels the rise in autism.”
“Attention in the vulnerable infant is drawn away from healthy social interactions toward TV, computer screens, and electronic toys,” according to Heffler.
In early 2020, JAMA Pediatrics published an analysis that Heffler co-authored which found that babies who viewed TV and videos at age one had a slightly greater chance of displaying autistic-like symptoms than non-TV watching babies by the age of two. Conversely, the study found, “Less screen exposure and more parent-child play at 12 months of age were associated with fewer ASD-like symptoms at 2 years of age.”
In 2022, Heffler’s team published a pilot intervention involving 9 children between 1 1/2 and 3 1/2 years of age who were diagnosed with ASD and watched at least 2 hours of screen media a day.
As the study shows, when screen time was replaced by increased interaction with caregivers, “Children’s screen viewing decreased from an average of 5.6 hours/day prior to intervention to 5 min/day during the study. Significant improvements were observed in core autism symptoms and parent stress from pre- to post-intervention.”
Heffler’s team also published a case study of two toddlers diagnosed with autism showed that when screen time was stopped and social time increased, there were “marked improvements in developmental trajectories.”
Australian research also shows that babies with early signs of autism may avoid an autism diagnosis if parents are taught communication skills through video feedback.
LEARN ABOUT THE LATEST TODDLERS AND SCREENS RESEARCH HERE FROM DR. KAREN HEFFLER
At the first-ever Children’s Screen Time Action Network conference, I happened to meet Dr. Heffler’s research associate, Lori Frome, M.Ed. Frome is an autism treatment specialist who discovered, also by chance, that the symptoms in one of her young patients who had been diagnosed with ASD disappeared after her screen exposure was curtailed.
Frome then tried the same treatment on her own young son, who also had an ASD diagnosis. Over the course of several months with no screens but intensive face-to-face interaction with herself and other loved ones, he had “a complete developmental trajectory change in the core deficits of ASD,” as Frome describes in this video. In other words, her son became developmentally normal for his age.
Screen media has a “very addictive power,” says Dr. Ducanda. “Little by little the child can no longer do without and demands it more and more. If the parents try and withdraw him, he can go into a real meltdown.”
Doctors Ducanda and Terrasse contend that heavy doses of screen time affect what would be, in pre-digital times, the natural wiring of a child’s brain.
Watching a ball move on a screen, for instance, does not register in a child’s mind the same way it does to manipulate and throw a ball. Says Dr. Ducanda: “The small child’s brain cannot develop without this sense of touch.”
Dr. Andrew Doan, an ophthalmologist and neuroscientist, produced this animated video to show how watching screen media can rewire a child’s brain. In this TEDx talk, I discuss the importance of parent-child Attachment and how digital devices can interfere with early relational health.
So, what’s a parent to do? For one thing: respect the child’s basic developmental needs. For babies and toddlers to learn to speak, reason, and develop crucial social skills, they need face-to-face interaction with loving people and to use all their senses as often as they can.
A study from Iran proves the power of parent interaction and play. Investigators selected 12 toddlers with autistic-like symptoms who had spent half their waking hours on screen devices. Their parents were then given 8 weeks of lessons in how to play with their children, with an emphasis on eye-to-eye contact, loving touch, and continuous communication. While the parents applied these lessons at home, objects that had absorbed the children’s attention were taken away, including digital devices.
At the end of the two-month period, the children’s screen time had shrunk to a bare minimum, their ASD-like repetitive behaviors were greatly reduced, and brain studies showed ASD-like readings had returned to nearly normal.
One of the study’s chief investigators told me consistency is the key. For the intervention to work, the parents had to stick with high-touch, high-talk interaction all day every day during the children’s waking hours. He says researchers can now confidently recommend that children under age three should spend their time playing and interacting face-to-face with caring adults and not using digital devices.
The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees that babies and toddlers should never use screens alone. Any interaction with screens should be limited to video calls with loved ones, with a caregiver standing by.
Preschoolers should not have more than one hour of screen time a day in order “to allow children ample time to engage in other activities important to their health and development,” says the AAP.
The World Health Organization agrees that, for the sake of their health and proper brain formation, children under age one should have no exposure to screens.
World Health Organization Infant Guidelines (Under Age One)
When you look through Today’s lens, early childhood has become a rarified, once-in-a-lifetime pre-digital opportunity. As I write in The Durable Human Manifesto: Practical Wisdom for Living and Parenting in the Digital Age, each child begins life as a “wild human”—as free and unplugged as any other animal.
“When toddlers range around, freely using all of their senses to examine, taste and play with whatever they choose, they are making rich and lifelong neural connections.”
So kids can stay on a healthy developmental track, experts including Dr. Ducanda and Lori Frome recommend that you:
Dr. Heffler points out in her research that characteristics that may resemble those associated with autism in very young children can have a variety of causes. If symptoms do arise, Dr. Ducanda and her colleagues recommend keeping the child away from all screens for at least a month, which will require the cooperation of every household member. If that can be accomplished, she claims, ASD-like problems in many children may “miraculously disappear or diminish considerably.”
Conversely, if a child has a full, well-balanced life with very minimal screen exposure, these types of symptoms may never emerge.
Watch an interview of an American mother who came forward after discovering information on this post to tell the story of how her 14-month-old son developed and overcame screen-induced syndrome.
This site has links to research and researchers.
Watch webinars with Lori Frome M. Ed. who explains how to detect, treat, and avoid screen-induced syndrome:
See the latest webinar on YouTube:
Also see this earlier webinar:
Download Lori Frome’s specially-curated Parent Resource List from the box on this page.
Finally, in this simple online course, I teach parents why and how to create loving bonds with their babies and toddlers as well as to maximize their brain development and language learning.
Note: This post was last updated on January 7, 2023
About the author:
The mom of three practicing durable humans, DurableHuman.com founder Jenifer Joy Madden is a certified digital wellness instructor, health journalist, digital media adjunct professor, and author of How To Be a Durable Human: Revive and Thrive in the Digital Age Through the Power of Self-Design and The Durable Human Manifesto.
Her work has informed millions on ABC News and Discovery Health Channel, in The Washington Post, Readers Digest and other news outlets.
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