How to manage children’s relationship with screens

The ever-increas­ing num­ber of screens and their daily use in our lives raises the ques­tion of their impact on our health. But what does the cur­rent sci­entif­ic lit­er­at­ure really tell us about the impact of screens on the phys­ic­al and psy­cho­lo­gic­al health of chil­dren and teenagers?

This is one of the ques­tions that the report “Chil­dren and Screens: In Search of Lost Time¹”, sub­mit­ted to French Pres­id­ent Emmanuel Mac­ron in April 2024 and pre­vi­ously reviewed by Cath­er­ine Rolland for Poly­tech­nique Insights, seeks to answer. The title of this report, far from refer­ring to the hours lost in front of screens, is in fact aimed at the delay in pub­lic policies to reg­u­late their use.

The fig­ures don’t lie, in 2022 French house­holds had an aver­age of 10 digit­al devices with screens (smart­phones, tele­vi­sions, e‑readers, com­puters, tab­lets, games con­soles, con­nec­ted brace­lets, etc.). The same year, the Digit­al Baro­met­er showed that 87% of the over-12s owned a smart­phone, includ­ing 89% of 13–19 year-olds. These teen­agers also own 69% of per­son­al com­puters and 63% of games con­soles. But if our screen time and digit­al usage are skyrock­et­ing, can we still talk about addiction?

To date, pro­longed use of devices with screens is not offi­cially recog­nised as an addict­ive beha­viour, mainly because it includes very het­ero­gen­eous and var­ied prac­tices. How­ever, sci­entif­ic stud­ies and sur­veys by Santé Pub­lique France record daily screen time, with fig­ures ran­ging from 2 to 3 hours for 10-year-olds (3 hours 07 minutes in the 2015 Esteban study; 2 hours 36 minutes in the 2022 Elfe cohort).

How­ever, for Grégoire Borst, pro­fess­or of devel­op­ment­al psy­cho­logy and cog­nit­ive neur­os­cience at Uni­versité́ Par­is-Cité and dir­ect­or of the CNRS Labor­at­ory of Child Devel­op­ment and Edu­ca­tion Psy­cho­logy (LaPsyDÉ), “talk­ing about screen time makes no sense! Tak­ing into account the qual­ity of what we watch, on the oth­er hand, seems more rel­ev­ant.” It seems dif­fi­cult to lump togeth­er video games, car­toons or videos of nurs­ery rhymes played over and over again.

This het­ero­gen­eity jus­ti­fies great cau­tion in sci­entif­ic art­icles seek­ing to determ­ine the neg­at­ive effects of screen use on the cog­nit­ive capa­cit­ies and devel­op­ment of young people. This cau­tion is echoed in the con­clu­sion of the meta-ana­lys­is pub­lished in Novem­ber 2023: An umbrella review of the bene­fits and risks asso­ci­ated with young people’s inter­ac­tions with elec­tron­ic screens by Tar­en Sanders & Co². By review­ing around a hun­dred stud­ies on the sub­ject, the Aus­trali­an research­ers found pos­it­ive and neg­at­ive effects, of “low to mod­er­ate” intens­ity, asso­ci­ated with the use of devices with screens. Only the cor­rel­a­tion between social net­work­ing and depres­sion seems note­worthy, although it is still too early to estab­lish a caus­al link.

Yet in 2017, a study by the Uni­ver­sity of Rennes³ widely repor­ted by the media poin­ted to a link between “watch­ing tele­vi­sion in the morn­ing” and “devel­op­ing a lan­guage dis­order.” For Grégoire Borst, these res­ults con­ceal a more con­crete explan­a­tion: a child watch­ing TV alone will inter­act less with adults and there­fore speak less. On the oth­er hand, “watch­ing tele­vi­sion with chil­dren has a pos­it­ive effect on lan­guage devel­op­ment,” explains the research­er. Watch­ing tele­vi­sion with a child also helps to devel­op joint attention.

Oth­er phe­nom­ena, such as techno-con­fer­en­cing, have a much more neg­at­ive impact on chil­dren. This term refers to the use of screens by adults in front of chil­dren, inter­fer­ing with their inter­ac­tion with them. “If, tomor­row, we take screens away from all the chil­dren in the world but not from adults, I’m not sure that many things will change,” adds Grégoire Borst, who again stresses the import­ance of co-view­ing to counter this phenomenon.

It’s hard to talk about a neg­at­ive effect on the cog­nit­ive devel­op­ment of young people. So, are fears about the use of screens unfoun­ded? “No, we must con­tin­ue to warn, par­tic­u­larly with the “no screens before the age of 3 policy,” insists the research­er. Because the real prob­lem is the somat­ic risks!” Lack of sleep and a sedent­ary life­style, could these be the real dangers?

The issue of time and qual­ity of sleep is at the top of the list of con­cerns raised by the report Chil­dren and screens: in search of lost time. Chron­ic sleep debt leads to a cas­cade of health prob­lems (excess weight, dia­betes, car­di­ovas­cu­lar dis­ease, mood dis­orders, depres­sion, poor immune reg­u­la­tion, etc.). Yet “we know that chil­dren don’t get enough sleep,” points out Grégoire Borst, who points out that the rhythm nat­ur­ally shifts in adoles­cents, des­pite their school timetable, which is often poorly adap­ted. “If we add the use of screens in the even­ing, we increase the risk of insom­nia, anxi­ety and health prob­lems in gen­er­al.” The same is true of the risks asso­ci­ated with a sedent­ary life­style, which is itself encour­aged by digit­al activ­it­ies that take place seated and indoors.

Anoth­er point to watch out for is young people’s expos­ure to inap­pro­pri­ate or even shock­ing con­tent on the Inter­net. “It would nev­er occur to any­one to give a child a very sharp knife the first time they learn to cook” explains the research­er. “It’s the same for the Inter­net in gen­er­al.” Which brings the import­ance of co-view­ing and super­vi­sion of these prac­tices back to the centre of the recommendations.

Even among older young people! Because teen­agers are very vul­ner­able to social net­works, whose algorithms favour social rewards. While the limbic sys­tem, which con­trols anxi­ety, emo­tions and addic­tion mech­an­isms, is mature at this age, the pre­front­al cor­tex, which is respons­ible for reg­u­lat­ing this sys­tem, con­tin­ues to devel­op until the age of 25. “Adoles­cents are emo­tion­al pres­sure cook­ers with neither the lid nor the means to lower the pres­sure,” says Grégoire Borst once again. That’s why it’s so import­ant to provide sup­port and open up a dia­logue about these uses with­in the family.

In fact, this is Grégoire Borst’s final piece of advice: “It’s a good idea to think up times for dis­con­nec­tion with­in the fam­ily, for both chil­dren and adults.” It’s a way of open­ing up com­mu­nic­a­tion on these uses by set­ting aside times for exchanges, such as meal­times or the time before going to bed.

Sophie Podevin