Early results of a timely pandemic study by 电子游戏软件 psychologist 约书亚Hartshorne show that increased screen time by children is likely an indicator of family distress.
When the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly changed life for American families due to school and daycare closures, children began spending dramatically more time engrossed with cell phones, 电脑, 和电视.
“As it turns out, screens are the babysitter of last resort,” Hartshorne explained. “I was surprised how closely the increased screen time results tracked school and daycare closures. 基本上是瞬间发生的."
约书亚Hartshorne
“屏幕时间是家庭陷入困境的一个症状,哈特霍恩补充道, 谁是这项电子游戏正规平台的联合首席电子游戏正规平台员, an assistant professor in BC's 心理与神经科学系, and head of the University’s Language Learning Lab. “COVID的数据似乎是一致的. 把父母. 取消儿童保育. 压力和屏幕时间增加.”
在COVID危机之前, increased screen time for youths already was of concern to 父母, 教育工作者, 和政策制定者, given its association with negative developmental outcomes. Interventions over the past few decades have focused on educating 父母 about these dangers and advising them on how to limit screen time.
但在大流行期间, screen time spiked as a direct result of the sudden decrease in adult caretaker availability, 根据Hartshorne.
“This indicates that lower screen-time rates prior to the pandemic were not merely a function of well-informed parenting but of well-resourced parenting,他解释道. 他的电子游戏正规平台, 由国家科学基金会资助, addresses implications for policy and for the ongoing scientific debate about whether screen time is actually problematic for child development.
“Since lockdowns and school closures proliferated in late winter, there has been extensive discussion about their effects on children among policymakers, 教育工作者, 科学家们, 父母, 以及广大公众. People have been particularly concerned about a potential rise in screen time, 尤其是电视和社交媒体,哈茨霍恩说.
“我们开始回答两个问题. 首先，看屏幕的时间真的在增加吗? 第二，为什么它在增加? Without answering the second question, it's hard to know what to do about it."
A third question—whether screen time is actually bad for children—will be examined in the second phase of the project. “尽管公众达成了共识, 科学家们 are actually pretty uncertain about that,他说.
“COVID的数据似乎是一致的:以父母为例. 取消儿童保育. 压力和屏幕时间增加.”
Hartshorne’s team queried both kids and 父母 about screen time, through its own surveys and those of other researchers. The team also employed public data sets about COVID and data on actual screen time usage from Reelgood, 一家管理流媒体订阅的公司.
Findings confirmed the team’s premise that screen time had increased during the pandemic, a dramatic shift in family behavior not due to millions of 父母 nationwide changing their minds about the dangers of screen time, 根据这项电子游戏正规平台, but largely due to lack of child care—a term the team used broadly to include schools—and the resulting stress on 父母.
“This matters for the pandemic, obviously,哈茨霍恩说. “Policymakers have treated screen time as a public information problem. 不仅仅是在COVID期间, 但历史上, the primary way of addressing screen time has been teaching 父母 that it is bad and giving them tips for controlling it. But if screen time is really about 父母 not having another option, then all these public education campaigns are likely to do is make 父母 feel bad.”
These conclusions, he said, are of national importance beyond the COVID-19 era.
“我们需要现实地看待我们的选择. If we want to decrease screen time among the nation's kids, that may require investing in child care. Either helping 父母 work shorter hours or providing universal daycare or after school programs. Our study suggests that this is much more likely to work than simply educating 父母.”
He cautioned that although the public consensus seems to be that screen time is bad for kids, 数据不确定，科学家也不确定. “This project was really the first part of a project to use COVID-19 to study whether this huge increase in screen time matters: will we see effects on child development?
通过国家科学基金会资助的一项相关的全国性电子游戏正规平台, Hartshorne developed and launched a tool to track these effects: the KidTalk应用, through which his team is collecting data about development to determine how COVID-19 disruptions—from school closings to canceled playdates—are changing children’s language learning environments. 父母 are engaged as “citizen 科学家们” to create timelines of their children’s evolving speech development: this data will help developmental psychologists better understand language development and how it may be affected by the pandemic.
Hartshorne’s team comprises researchers from the University of Maryland, including co-principal investigator Associate Professor Yi Ting Huang. 像许多COVID-19电子游戏正规平台人员一样, they are making their peer-reviewed results available as quickly as possible 通过预印本. 期刊投稿即将到来.
Rosanne Pellegrini | University Communications | January 2021