No Wonder We're Scared of Screen Time
A new study confirms: Fear sells.
Every week, I stumble across at least one new viral media headline warning about the dangers of screen time. Over the past few days, I’ve read that “every hour children spend on screens raises chance of myopia,” as well as that “more than 50 percent of children have their own tablet by age 4” — two headlines that, taken together, do not bode well for the collective eyesight of our children.
As a science and parenting journalist, I’m very interested in what the research tells us about the effects of technology on kids. I’m also fascinated by the factors that shape what kind of articles on the topic get written and go viral — and how these popular articles affect our parenting and our kids.
A fascinating new study sheds light on these issues — in particular, on the kinds of articles tend to get the most traction. The study, published in the Journal of Children and Media, was co-authored by NYU Steinhardt researchers Robin Neuhaus and Erin O’Connor. (The research was part of Neuhaus’s dissertation, and, full disclosure, I served as an outside reader on her dissertation committee. I’ve been excited to share more about her findings ever since.)
For the research, Neuhaus and O’Connor analyzed 136 online articles about kids and screen time that had been published between 2016 and 2021, and assessed how frequently these articles were shared or mentioned on a handful of social media platforms.
When analyzing the articles, they focused on five factors:
Validity: How well the article reported the credibility of the research, such as mentioning study limitations
Precision: The specificity of the presented research findings, including statistics
Context: How well the article situated the findings within existing literature
Exposing: The extent to which the article portrayed screen time as harmful (e.g. “toxic” or “addictive”)
Warning: The likelihood that the article used alarmist language (e.g., “irreversible damage,” “skyrocket”) or made suggestions for avoiding risks (e.g., parents should enroll in a ”screen time detox workshop”)
Here’s what they found.