By Casey Neill
“It’s time to think about screen use.”
Dr Michael C Nagel has co-authored Becoming Autistic: How Technology Is Altering the Minds of the Next Generation, with Dr Rachael Sharman.
The University of the Sunshine Coast academics explored the effects too much screen time and too little social time had on the developing brain.
Specifically, autistic traits are showing up in otherwise neurotypical children.
“I’ve had concerns about technology and the impact on child development for more than a decade,” Dr Nagel said.
“It may be having an impact we don’t quite understand yet.”
He said he’d come across worrying studies suggesting a rapid rise in the diagnosis of autism in the Western world.
“There seems to be a connection between screens and young, developing brains,” Dr Nagel said.
“The brain doesn’t fully mature until we’re well into our twenties.
“It’s susceptible to all kinds of environmental assault.”
He said data showed structural changes to the brain as a result of screen use in children.
“Whether that’s reversible or not is still unknown,” he said.
“We tried to map out what we think is happening based on evidence, and what you can do about it.
“We don’t think we can talk about how much time is too much time.
“We can’t create a controlled environment to test that.”
Rather, he said, they talked about what children needed for healthy development.
“If there’s any silver lining in the Covid cloud, it reaffirmed for us that people need to be with people,” he said.
Decades of research, he said, supported kids being with other children in real time, and able to read other people’s faces.
“The message to parents is: be mindful of what your children need,” he said.
“Having a phone didn’t suddenly become a right.
“You have to parent technology.
“You have to set up boundaries, and it’s much easier to do when kids are younger.
“With teens, you have to wean them off slowly and create boundaries and borders.
“It’s not about saying to kids ‘you can never use screens again’.
“It’s not about stepping back into the dark ages.”
And it’s not only their own device use impacting kids.
“It’s really important for parents to remember your child’s social queues develop when they’re looking at your face,” he said.
“There are too many missed opportunities when parents are on their phones.”
Or handing their children a phone in a cafe.
“If you’re doing it continually, you’re taking away opportunities for the child to learn,” he said.
He said TVs also contributed, but were much more passive.
“It does add to the overall length of screen time,” he said.
“If kids are on screens before, during and after school…”
