Does the excessive use of gadgets cause behaviour problems?

According to recent research from the A[pha Generation Lab at the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University, hyperactivity in children is not caused by cell phones or computer screens. To put it simply, a highly active child is likely to fidget more with gadgets.

There have been a few studies suggesting that early and excessive TV viewing can lead to later attention problems and hyperactivity. The reverse is also true: fidgety, restless children are more likely to use digital devices, and their parents are also more likely to allow such children to engage with gadgets. To maintain their alertness level, hyperactive children need constant stimulation which is provided in the fast-paced, colourful stimuli of videogames and movies.

The relationship between digital devices and hyperactivity/attention deficit is therefore mutual, with bidirectional effects influencing one another.

The same can be said of social problems: shy children or those with poor social skills tend to overuse gadgets, such as playing video games or watching TV. The virtual world can be an escape from the social world that they find difficult to understand or experience. But digital media use in solitude increases their isolation even more. In early years, peer relationships are important to develop healthy social skills, which can be replaced by solitary digital media use.

Thus, social problems and digital media use also seem to have a back-and-forth impact.

In the past, children’s engagement with screens was largely limited to TV viewing. In contrast, today’s youth are exposed to modern devices such as tablets and cellular phones at an increasingly younger age. Few studies have followed up children’s use of mobile devices and the development of behavioural problems over time but such studies are very important because they can tell us which came first: the chicken or the egg—the behavioural problem or the cellular phone use.

The Alpha Generation Lab at the Department of Ethology at ELTE has tried to fill this gap. Parents of preschool children aged 4-6 years were asked to fill in a questionnaire on their child’s mobile/tablet use and behavioural problems. After 3 years—when the children were 7-9 years old—they were asked to fill in the questionnaires again.

“We found that the level of hyperactivity and attention deficit in preschool predicted the amount of mobile use in school, meaning that the more fidgety and distracted a child is in preschool, the more gadgetry they use in early school. This can be explained by the fact that parents are more likely to use digital devices to distract or engage these children, and the children themselves are more likely to seek stimulating, intense content,” said Veronika Konok, head of the research team at the Alpha Generation Lab, Department of Ethology, ELTE.

However, the amountof mobile phone use during preschool did not predict the extent of hyperactivity and attention deficit during early school years. “We can conclude that mobile use in early childhood does not lead to hyperactivity/attention deficit, unlike, for example, watching TV. But we need to interpret this result carefully, as the lack of correlation could be due to, for example, the low number of participants, with only 100 parents completing the questionnaire for the second time, or other factors. We do not recommend anyone to allow unlimited mobile phone use for their pre-school children based on the results of this research,” added Rebeka Szőke, Ph.D. student at the Alpha Generation Lab, Department of Ethology, ELTE.

Another reason for the lack of correlation could be that cellular phone apps for preschoolers are often developmental and less over-stimulating than, for example, cartoons or violent games for older children.

The researchers also found that children with social problems use mobile phones more, but this is only true at school entry age. They did not find a causal relationship, i.e. whether early cellular use leads to later social problems or vice versa. The question of cause and effect is therefore unclear, and it is likely that there is a two-way relationship.

The research was published in Sustainability.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.