10 Reasons to Keep My 3-Year-Old Screen-Free This Week, and Every Week

This is a week of worldwide unplugging—a much-needed break for some at a time when the average smartphone user picks up his or her device 1,500 times a week.

Screen-Free Week, an annual international event sponsored by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, kicked off Monday and runs through Sunday, May 10. Begun in 1994 as “TV Turnoff Week,” Screen-Free Week today encourages adults and children alike to power down all devices, recharge, and reconnect to the vast offline world. (Note that the focus is on unplugging from all forms of digital entertainment; using screens for work or homework is forgiven.)

There’s a lot of talk these days about “unplugging.” There’s a National Day of Unplugging, held each March for the past six years. There are entire blogs devoted to unplugging and living a less distracted life. There are even retreats for unplugging and an “unplug” hashtag.

And it’s no wonder. The average mobile user spends almost three hours a day on mobile devices, according to a recent study by the research group Flurry. Pew Research Center reported last month that 46% of smartphone users say their device is something they “couldn’t live without.”

The Web is particularly filled these days with advice columns, blog posts and tip sheets on how to unplug your children and limit their screen time, such as this from the Mayo Clinic, this from an Internet addiction specialist, and this, which digs into some neuroscience and explains how those little hits of dopamine keep us endlessly reaching for our phones.

This wave of advice is only natural at a time when more kids than ever seem glued to smartphones and tablets. It’s not your imagination: More than six in 10 kids aged 12 and under owned their own Internet-enabled mobile devices in 2014, according to a report by Ipsos MediaCT—a 250% increase since 2011. In 2014, parents were “significantly more willing to pay for online content for their children” compared just to 2013, according to the report.

And today's mobile users are getting younger by the year. Last year, Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, released its second large-scale study in two years on children and media use in the U.S. It found that the percent of children ages 8 and younger who had used a mobile device nearly doubled between 2011 and 2013, from 38% to 72%.

Among children under 2 years old, 38% had used a mobile device in 2013, up from just 10% in 2011, according to the study. In just these two short years, there was a five-fold increase in tablet ownership among families with kids ages 8 and younger, up from 8% of all families in 2011 to 40% in 2013.

Even babies as young as 6 months old are now tapping away on smartphones. In a study by pediatric researchers presented last month, more than a third of parents said their baby had “touched or scrolled a screen” before turning one. Fifty-two percent said their baby had watched television on a mobile device.

“We didn’t expect children were using the devices from the age of six months,” said the study’s author, Dr. Hilda Kabali of the Einstein Healthcare Network. “Some children were on the screen for as long as 30 minutes.”

This study, which polled parents of young children in an urban, low-income community, found that a majority of kids were using smartphones or tablets by the time they reached age 2. Fourteen percent of one-year-olds were using a mobile device at least one hour a day. By age 2 this number jumped to 26% percent, and by age 4 to 38%.

Many parents know by heart the most recent guidelines on screen time and children from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP): No screen time for any child under 2, and no more than one to two hours for older children. But clearly these guidelines are not meshing with much of today’s reality.

The Common Sense Media study, titled “Zero to Eight: Children's Media Use in America, 2013,” found that children under 2 years spent an average of about an hour a day (58 minutes) with screen media. Two- to 4-year-olds spent an average of about 2 hours a day (1 hour and 58 minutes) with screens. And that was just in 2013.

The AAP itself, in a resource called “Why to Avoid TV Before Age 2,” states that “Surveys tell us about 40% of infants are watching some sort of video by age 5 months, and by age 2 the number rises to 90%.” In “Tablets and Smartphones: Not for Babies,” the organization states, “Unfortunately, when the use of tablets, smartphones, and computers is added to TV time, it has been estimated that the average 12-month-old is exposed to up to 2 hours of screen time a day.”

Let’s pause for a moment for some math. Two hours a day equals 730 hours a year—or the equivalent of 30 straight 24-hour days out of the year spent looking at a screen. And that’s if the child didn’t sleep at all. Taking out the time a baby or toddler might spend sleeping—let’s say approximately 12 hours a day—that’s 60 straight 12-hour days of screen time in a year, or about one-sixth of the child’s year.

I have a very personal interest in these numbers and in the creep of mobile screens these days into smaller and smaller hands. It comes in the form of an adorable tiny human who’s running around our home, delighting us with her hilarious antics and huge, infectious giggle.

The iPad debuted in April 2010. My daughter debuted the following year—and thus she is part of a brand-new, budding generation of children born after smartphones, tablets and apps began permeating every facet of life.

My daughter and her fellow i-Era toddlers entered a world in which caretakers could hook iPads to their bouncy seats and strollers—even to their potties. They live at a time when the company BabyFirst, with its expanding array of videos, games and apps for babies as young as 6 months old, is reaching 50 million homes through cable TV alone.

Ten years ago a 4-year-old would not have been seen watching YouTube—it had only just launched in February 2005. Today’s 4-year-olds have an entire YouTube Kids app, just for them—a gigantic repository of videos that even “preliterate” kids can easily access through a voice search function.

Even today's toys have gone mobile. Remember those classic barnyard sets, where you could open the doors and play with the little figures inside? Well my daughter can have the iPad-added version. It’s part of a whole line of “Apptivity” toys by Fisher-Price devoted to iPhone and iPad play, some with a target age of 6 months and up—even “birth & up.” From one product description: “Share the technology you enjoy every day, with baby… Your device locks securely inside to protect against baby’s messy dribbles, drool and teething.”

My daughter knows there are screens in her world. But watching or using them is not part of her daily life or routine. She’s seen her dad’s iPad. She’s taken pictures with it here and there and also with our iPod Touch. She knows what taking a video is all about. She knows that my laptop can produce dazzling, alluring images and videos. We’ve watched a few short clips on it together—we once watched the “So Long, Farewell” bit from The Sound of Music, and she’s loved acting it out ever since. This past holiday season, we all watched A Charlie Brown Christmas (bless you, Charles M. Schulz) and had a great time.

But she’s never used an app or video game made for kids. And our cellphones and devices have never been go-to items for keeping her busy—we’ve just stuck with old-school toys instead. When she’s around, the TV is off—and she doesn’t seem to miss it. (Weirdly enough, neither do we.) She’s made it three and a half years without being interested in our TV set, and frankly I’d love to ride this wave as long as possible.

I think of screens in my daughter’s life the way I think of lollipops and cupcakes. She’s seen them. She’s eaten them. She knows they’re out there. She loves them with a deep and powerful passion that sometimes borders on fixation. But she doesn't eat them every day, every week, or every month. They make extremely rare appearances—usually tied to her toddler friends’ birthday parties or special holiday events. They bring her ridiculous joy. But in her regular, daily life she is certainly fine without them.

My daughter will have her whole life ahead of her to be inundated by screens of all kinds. Early childhood is a magical time—a time for digging and building and climbing and gluing and pouring those same objects out of a container and putting them back in again over and over and over, just to see how it all works. There will never be another time like this in my daughter’s life—I know this. Her early childhood—this, right now—may be the only chance she’ll ever have to not be reliant on screens and devices as an important part of each day.

This alone is usually reason enough to keep the screens away as much as possible during these first fleeting years. But in honor of Screen-Free Week, here are 10 more reasons for keeping my little one “unplugged” this week, and every week.

1. What we know about early learning.

It is well documented that infants and toddlers learn best through hands-on playing and face-to-face interaction with other human beings. During this critical time of extremely rapid brain development, babies and toddlers learn by using their five senses and by freely moving their whole bodies to explore the world around them.

Real-world, physical play helps infants and toddlers develop hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and visual perception—which the AAP says “can’t be addressed in the same way on a 2-dimensional screen.” Our young brains build in response to the stimuli we experience from the world around us—which is why the type of stimuli we experience really matters.

Michael Rich, director and founder of the Center on Media and Child Health (and also known as the “Mediatrician”), puts it this way: “What optimizes early brain development is interaction with other people (like snuggling with a parent or making faces with a sibling), creative, problem-solving play (like trying to roll a ball), and manipulating the physical environment (like knocking plastic containers together to see what noise they make). As sophisticated as they are, screens can't provide any of these.”

The details in the AAP resources “Why to Avoid TV Before Age 2” and “Tablets and Smartphones: Not for Babies” are worth looking at. They note that “Infants may stare at the bright colors and motion on a screen, but their brains are incapable of making sense or meaning out of all those bizarre pictures. It takes 2 full years for a baby’s brain to develop to the point where the symbols on a screen come to represent their equivalents in the real world.” 

On the flip side, “Good evidence suggests that screen viewing before age 2 has lasting negative effects on children’s language development, reading skills, and shortterm memory. It also contributes to problems with sleep and attention”—with toddlers who watch more TV being more likely to have problems paying attention at age 7. “If 'you are what you eat,' then the brain is what it experiences, and video entertainment is like mental junk food for babies and toddlers,” the AAP states.

Recently, researchers with Boston University's School of Medicine zoomed in specifically on young children's use of mobile devices and interactive media. In a new commentary published in the journal Pediatrics, they argued that too much use of mobile media—especially if used to calm and distract children “during mundane tasks,” i.e., as an electronic babysitter—could be detrimental to the social-emotional development of young children, stunting their problem-solving skills, self-control mechanisms, and development of empathy.

2. What we don't know about toddlers and screens.

Research on how smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are affecting young children is truly brand new. As the Boston University researchers point out in their recent commentary, studies on interactive media and infants and toddlers under 2 are particularly scant.

Remember, it was only in 2007 and 2010 respectively that the iPhone and iPad launched, helping propel forward the use of mobile devices by everyone. Ever since, there’s been an explosion of apps-for-kids and new kinds of children’s programming created specifically for mobile. It will take society some time to see the real effects of all of this.

“The impact these mobile devices are having on the development and behavior of children is still relatively unknown,” the Boston University researchers wrote. 

In the study (found here) they state that “research regarding the impact of this portable and instantly accessible source of screen time on learning, behavior, and family dynamics has lagged considerably behind its rate of adoption.”

The researchers stress: “Pediatric guidelines specifically regarding mobile device use by young children have not yet been formulated.” (Emphasis mine.) There is nothing beyond the AAP's general guidelines on children and screen time that more specifically addresses mobile devices. “New guidance is needed because mobile media differs from television in its multiple modalities (eg, videos, games, educational apps), interactive capabilities, and near ubiquity in children’s lives. Recommendations for use by infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children are especially crucial, because effects of screen time are potentially more pronounced in this group.”

That’s enough for me to take a wait-and-see stance about any real effects mobile media might be having on our little ones. I don’t want to conduct social experiments on my toddler. I'm happy to wait and take in whatever new guidelines on mobile device use and children the experts might develop in time.

3. What a lot of teachers say.

Despite a scarcity of research in this specific area so far, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting something may be happening to our youngest generation of learners in this age of mobile proliferation. 

One day not long ago, a well-respected preschool teacher in our community began telling me about a marked change she's noticed in the children she's been teaching in recent years—ever since, in her opinion, smartphones and other mobile devices started becoming ubiquitous in young kids' lives.

A seasoned veteran who's worked with 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds for decades, she described observing that in more and more children today, imaginary play was becoming much more passive. Active imaginary or “pretend” play, which requires that children invent their own “play narratives”—i.e., engage in make-believe using their imaginations—develops important social and emotional skills, language skills, and thinking skills.

Many educators argue that when children use video games and apps, they are given “pre-loaded” play experiences. The narrative is already provided for them. (A good description of the difference between active imaginary play and playing with screen media, along with great ideas for fostering imaginary play, can be found here.)

I've heard other preschool teachers discussing the same thing, concerned by what they see as an alarming trend that's getting increasing attention at today's teacher conferences. 

A guide from TRUCE

TRUCE, a national group of educators concerned about the effect of children's media on children's play and behavior, addresses what it calls the “escalating misuse and overuse of screen technologies in the lives of even the very young” in a detailed guide for educators called "Facing the Screen Dilemma." Created together with the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Alliance for Children, the guide states: “There’s no question that screen technologies are drastically changing the lives of children,” and “It’s clear that both the nature of what children encounter on screens and the amount of time they spend with screens are vital issues."

The group urges early childhood educators to make careful, evidence-based decisions when it comes to “how, why, whether, and when to incorporate screen technologies into their settings.” As a parent, I take heed as well. TRUCE, which stands for Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment, has additional guides worth looking at, for educators and parents alike, on screen media and young kids and how to encourage active play.

4. Potential risks to physical health.

Tech neck, tech claw, netbrain, iDisorder, digital eye strain: An array of new maladies seem to be resulting from our modern technology use.

You can find details about a host of them here from WedMd. Some have to do with repetitive strain injuries and bad posture. “Tech neck” has been used to refer both to the danger of damaging your spine due to looking downward into devices and to a newer discovery—saggy, wrinkly neck skin caused by our tilted heads.

From Dr. Kenneth Hansraj, Surgical Technology International 

And how about this one: Using multiple devices at once could be causing the structure of our brains to change, according to one study.

Maybe my young child wouldn’t be at risk of such things just yet. But too much screen time has long been linked to other physical problems, too. “Studies have shown that excessive media use can lead to attention problems, school difficulties, sleep and eating disorders, and obesity,” according to the AAP. What's meant by “excessive” here? Pediatricians often define this as more than two hours of screen time a day. 

We know that sleep problems and the risk of obesity are longstanding concerns when it comes to kids and screen time, and new studies continue to provide new information. One published in Pediatrics this year detailed many ways that sleeping near small-screen devices—tablets, smartphones and other cellphones with screens—can interfere with children's sleep.

A new study on obesity and screens finds that even a low amount of screen time might affect children's weights. Its authors found an association between watching just one to two hours of TV a day and an increased likelihood of being overweight and obese in kindergarten and first grade.

I won't delve deeply here into the complex topic of cellphone radiation and questions about possible links to cancer, but one quick overview of research on mobile phones and cancer, from Cancer Research UK, can be found here. I read its conclusion with interest: “Mobile phones are a relatively recent invention. So far, studies have indicated that using these phones for about 10 years is unlikely to cause cancer. But we cannot be completely sure about their long-term effects. And there have not been enough studies looking at how mobile phone use could affect the health of children.” 

In a 2013 appeal to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct further research into cellphone radiation and adopt new standards, the AAP wrote: “Children are not little adults and are disproportionately impacted by all environmental exposures, including cell phone radiation. Current FCC standards do not account for the unique vulnerability and use patterns specific to pregnant women and children. It is essential that any new standard for cell phones or other wireless devices be based on protecting the youngest and most vulnerable populations to ensure they are safeguarded throughout their lifetimes.”

I am not a scientist or medical professional. I’m not a science or medical writer. I won’t pretend to understand all the ins and outs of some of these potential risks—particularly when it comes to radiation. On this one I go with my gut. I'm content to see my daughter sitting on the floor fiddling with wooden puzzle pieces, blocks, tinker toys, a magnifying glass, and other analog sources of amusement, knowing no harmful rays are being emitting.

5. Potential risks to mental health.

We don't need studies to tell us some people are addicted to their devices. But if we want verification, there is plenty to be found.

Interestingly, a new study from the UK concludes that “the more you use a smartphone, the higher the risk of becoming addicted.” The researchers of this study, which classified 13% of its participants as being addicted to their devices, actually advise that prospective smartphone buyers be “pre-warned of the potential addictive properties” of the technology.

When it comes to mobile devices, concerns about potential mental health risks, especially for children, go well beyond addiction. The Telegraph recently ran a sobering report on children and mental illness, with one child psychotherapist's take in particular on the impact of having constant round-the-clock Internet access. Despite a sensationalistic title—"Are Smartphones Making Our Children Mentally Ill?"—the report raises serious concerns as it explores some specific challenges that children and young adults of a generation ago—even a decade ago—were not up against.

Young people today can “access the Internet without adult supervision in parks, on street, wherever they are, and then they can go anywhere,” says the psychotherapist, Julie Lynn Evans. “So there are difficult chat rooms, self-harming websites, anorexia websites, pornography, and a whole invisible world of dark places. In real life, we travel with our children. When they are connected via their smartphone to the web, they usually travel alone.”

The article notes that admissions to child psychiatric wards in the UK have doubled in the past four years, with the number of young adults hospitalized for self-harm growing by 70% in the past decade. While it's unclear if this is in any way related to the rise of mobile device use among young people, Evans believes there's a connection.

“Something is clearly happening,” she says, “because I am seeing the evidence in the numbers of depressive, anorexic, cutting children who come to see me. And it always has something to do with the computer, the Internet and the smartphone.”

“When they are 15,” Evans says, “you don’t, for example, let them go to pub, or stay out in the local park at four in morning, yet they’ll get into much less trouble physically there than they will on their smartphones on the Internet. I’m not talking about paedophiles preying on them. I’m talking about anorexia sites and sites where they will be bullied.”

While my own daughter is still too young to be facing such potential dangers, children of younger and younger ages are now owning their own Internet-enabled devices—and it may not be long before I start hearing requests for one. (I have a good friend whose 6-year-old has been begging her for a smartphone.) In 2013, 7% of children 8 years old and under owned their own tablets—about the same percent of parents who did in 2011, according to Common Sense Media's 2013 report on kids and media use. These types of concerns for even young children are here today, and will be tomorrow.

6. Habits formed during childhood can last a lifetime.

“Screen media can be habit-forming,” states the report “Facing the Screen Dilemma.” “Young children who spend more time with screens have a harder time turning them off when they get older.”

A Common Sense Media column notes: “Remember that kids quickly develop routines. If they associate going to restaurants or driving in a car with playing games on your phone, it will be difficult to transition them out of this behavior.” This seems like a no-brainer, and yet I still have to remind myself of this constantly.

Going to restaurants when my daughter was a baby and younger toddler was certainly tough. There were the rushed and truncated meals, the sometimes stressful efforts to keep her occupied and calm—not to mention the huge tips left as apologies for the gigantic mess we always made.

But as she grew and learned to talk and communicate more, family mealtimes, even in restaurants and diners, became a new kind of delight. She relishes the social aspect of meals, chatting away about her day in nursery school, giving running commentary about anything and everything she sees all around her, asking questions, joking and making up new word games and songs.  

We hope this will keep going throughout her life—the association with meals and talking, connecting, sharing, and laughing. It's the kind of habit we want to instill, no matter how much effort it takes. If we'd conditioned her from the beginning to use screens during meals—at a time when distracting her with one certainly might have made our own lives a little easier—I know we would all be missing out today.

7. I think knowing how to entertain yourself in a line, a waiting room, or a car is an important skill to have.

There are definitely a lot of situations in life that are potentially boring. But I don’t think handing my daughter a screen to help her get through them is doing her a service.

I can remember plenty of long car rides when I was a kid. We did what kids did—look out the window, play games, read, do activity books, write Mad Libs (back when it was only in paper books you could write in). We'd listen to the radio, sing, chat about this or that. And we'd learn from doing all these things. I actually liked settling in with my little book of crosswords during some very long car rides to visit grandparents several states away. I liked watching the changing scenery outside.

When I was 5, in the mid-1970s, my family took a flight from Boston to LA. I don't remember the ride very well, but I imagine my brother and I did similar kinds of things—activity books and games. I thought of this recently, on a similar cross-country flight (New York City to LA), where I was surprised by how well our 3-year-old managed. It was amazing how much time she killed with a couple of plastic eggs filled with silly puddy and a handful of crayons. There was a screen on the back of the seat right in front of her. She poked at it some and definitely enjoyed it. But we didn't buy any movies, and ultimately she seemed much more interested in examining all the new things around her and looking out at the clouds.

Learning to occupy oneself as a kid in these situations isn't just useful. It helps develop patience, resourcefulness and creativity. Little kids are so naturally great at making up their own fun and games. They have an innate ability to entertain themselves, and the results can be impressive when we let them.

8. I don’t like the marketing targeted to kids through various screen media.

I mentioned earlier the new YouTube for Kids app. Last month, a group of children’s and consumer advocacy groups filed a scathing complaint against it with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), urging that the commission investigate whether YouTube's owner, Google, is violating longstanding laws that protect children who watch TV.

The group claims that the app uses unfair marketing practices, such as combining commercials and videos in ways that are deceptive to children, having “branded” channels for toy and other companies, and endorsing toys, candy and other products through so-called “user-generated” videos without disclosing the business relationships that the video makers have with these products’ manufacturers.

“To cite just one example,” the group's press release states, “Google claims it doesn't accept food and beverage ads but McDonald's actually has its own channel and the 'content' includes actual Happy Meal commercials.”

Says Dale Kunkel, Professor of Communication at the University of Arizona, in the press release: “YouTube Kids is the most hyper-commercialized media environment for children I have ever seen. Many of these advertising tactics are considered illegal on television, and it's sad to see Google trying to get away with using them in digital media.”

I could go on about marketing targeted to kids. But suffice it to say here, the less my child is marketed to in these types of ways, through various forms of screen media and “children's programming,” the better.

9. I don’t believe my toddler will be “left behind” if she doesn’t start using a smartphone now.

Some argue that learning how to work the latest technological tools as early as possible in childhood is critical today. I just don't buy it. And I'm not alone.

“There’s no evidence to support the popular view that children must start using screen technologies early-on to succeed in a digital world,” says literature from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. But there is evidence that you can spend your earliest years without any exposure to handheld screens and mobile devices and still grow up able to figure out a new iPhone 6.

That evidence is us. Anyone who is reading this did not manipulate mobile touchscreens or any such thing as a 2-year-old—unless you happen to be about 8 years old or younger. But many of us grownups today, including those working in technology fields, feel we’ve been able to “keep up” with the latest in tech as much as we need.

It’s hard to remember sometimes, but smartphones and tablets did not begin their great and rapid proliferation all that long ago. (Again, the iPhone only debuted in June 2007, and the iPad just five years ago last month.) Even kids born 10 years ago—yes, 10 years ago—were born into a different digital time. Forget about those born 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, or folks like me born more than 40 years back. I made it all the way into high school before ever touching a “personal” computer. I was 13 when Apple's Macintosh arrived with such drama into the world. (I'll never forget this remarkable ad.) It was great, and I loved it, and it was easy to catch on as an almost-adult. And it's been the same with so many new technologies since.

I have not been “left behind” in today's rapidly changing world because I didn't use computers as a baby or toddler or have the Internet as a kid. I am not at a disadvantage today because I lived through 30 years of life (yep, 30) without having a cell phone. And I don't think my life in those 30 years suffered.

I may be sounding a bit old-fogeyish here, but my point is simple: New technologies come along and we learn them. If we have a solid foundation from our critical, earliest years in “learning how to learn,” we should be just fine. In 2011, a New York Times piece about high-tech Silicon Valley employees who sent their own children to a school with no computers or screens drew a lot of attention. It's still worth reading today what these parents had to say.

Even Steve Jobs was a low-tech parent, writes Nick Bilton in a New York Times article from 2014. Jobs wouldn't let his own teenagers use iPads when they first came out. In 2010 he told Bilton, “They haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

Bilton quotes several other “tech parents” who limit their children's screen use seemingly even more than other parents do. CEO of 3D Robotics and former Wired editor Chris Anderson says, “[We] have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself, I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.” If parents steeped in technology in their professional lives aren't worried about their children “falling behind,” then I can't be either.

10. Screens haven’t felt necessary.

I mentioned earlier that our digital devices, and even TV, have never been go-to items when we need to keep our daughter distracted or occupied, whatever the circumstance. We've used the same old stuff that's worked forever: pots and pans, nesting boxes, tupperware, wooden spoons, water-and-floating-things-in-the-sink, play-dough, and books—always books.

In the kitchen refrigerator magnets have absorbed her attention for countless little chunks of time. In restaurants crayons, stickers, and paper have worked when she’s gotten antsy. In doctors' offices she plays with small books or toys of her own if they don't already have some out. Often it's just her own looking around, singing, game-making, and, yes, good old conversation that keeps her completely engaged in these situations.

It's true that it's not easy to get grownup things done when there's a toddler around who needs constant supervising, help, and attention. No—this is not going to be easy. And I don’t think people should expect it to be. We were toddlers too, and we presented the same challenges to our own parents, but somehow we all lived through it without holding small flashing screens in our tiny little hands.

Our parents, in whatever ways they did it, did it. Some probably put their babies and toddlers in front of TVs sometimes—but probably not all, and we don't really know how often. If you're as old as I am, there were only about two shows on for a kid to watch when we were 2 years old. And when they were over, they were over. No 24-hour kids' channels back then. Before TV (which would be nearly all of human history), parents and toddlers somehow managed together too.

So I try to remember all of this. It may not be easy to always keep the screens off and away when the kids are little, but so many things about parenting aren't easy. At the end of the day, I always think of how fleeting this time really is. And how much I'll miss it when it's gone. I love my conversations with my daughter. I love how intense her imagination is, and the endless new games and ideas she's constantly coming up with. Before she could talk, I loved all of our playful games and all that time spent smiling and looking into each other's eyes. Each step of the way, I've marveled at her non-stop changes and never-ending new developments. This week and every week I'll try not to let the lure of any screens take either of us away from this.

"The Touch-Screen Generation": Reflections on The Atlantic Magazine's Report

When the April issue of The Atlantic first appeared, its cover story, "The Touch-Screen Generation," created a lot of buzz. It promised to answer some pressing questions on the minds of many parents today about letting small kids use smartphones and tablets. On the magazine’s cover, beneath the catchy bold cover line, was the question, "What's this technology doing to toddlers' brains?" Hanna Rosin, the article’s writer, asked early on in the piece, "How do small children actually experience electronic media, and what does that experience do to their development?"

Unfortunately, after more than 7,000 words, Rosin came up with very few answers. I don’t exactly blame her. The problem is no one really knows how tablets and smartphones might affect a young child's development. Not yet, at least. As Rosin herself writes in the piece, "To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter or teach her to speak Chinese, or alternatively that it will rust her neural circuitry — the device has been out for only three years, not much more than the time it takes some academics to find funding and gather research subjects."

Exactly. The iPad debuted three years ago this month. So before 2010, a grand total of zero toddlers could be found playing with one — in a restaurant, a grocery store line or anywhere else. Before June 2007, no toddler had ever used an iPhone, either. (The Apple App Store, with its endless apps for small kids, didn’t appear until 2008.) Today’s toddlers are truly the first in the entire history of toddlerhood to ever use such touchscreen devices. So research in this area is understandably in its infancy. Rosin herself notes, "Because interactive media are so new, most of the existing research looks at children and television." Indeed, most experts agree: There’s a lot we just won’t know for some time.

But here’s something we do know: Toddlers and preschoolers are being targeted like crazy by app developers. The apps-for-tots market is exploding today as more and more developers scramble to get in the game. Over 80% of the top-selling paid educational apps in the iTunes App Store now target children, and of these, a full 72% are aimed at preschoolers. (See this study by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center.) Thousands of apps for kids are being released every year. And it doesn't stop at the toddler/preschooler level. At a conference of children’s app developers Rosin writes about in her piece, developers were testing apps for kids as young as a year old. We live in an age when people post YouTube videos of 2-month-olds poking at iPads — and app developers know it.

It’s not surprising that today’s parents have many concerns and questions about the effects of smartphone and tablet use by young children and babies. How much screen time is appropriate at different ages? Are there any risks of longterm harm from using these devices? Many parents are legitimately struggling over how to use this technology with their little ones. Some tell tales of toddlers begging for their iPad and throwing fits when forced to give it up. Some call it an obsession — even an addiction. Some worry their toddlers are zoning out on touchscreens to the point where they won't answer when they're called. (Just take a glance at this recent story about a 4-year-old in the UK being treated as an iPad "addict," or this follow-up in The New York Daily News on small kids hooked on iPads.)

For all its promise, Rosin’s article did not adequately address these concerns. It’s a lengthy piece, but in the end the big message seemed to be that parents should simply relax. Rosin writes that parents today have a “neurotic relationship with technology” and feel guilty about giving their small children tablets and smartphones to play with. She made the case in her piece — and in a slew of radio and TV and interviews that followed — that because there are interesting and various things kids can learn from interactive apps, parents really should shake their negative attitudes about them.

"Free yourself from this neurosis and guilt," Rosin said on NPR's "Weekend Edition." "Technology is with us. Just accept it. The phones are with us. The iPads are with us. Some of them are amazing — they're super cool."

In an interview with Boston's WBUR show "Here and Now," Rosin said we’re "in a neurotic place" now and talked about parents' "instinctive horror" over children using touchscreen technology. She urged parents "not to instinctively, automatically treat it like poison — talk about it like it's poison and a lollipop and sugary sodas. It's really not the same."

On "The Leonard Lopate Show" on WNYC in New York, she said, “Don’t pass onto your children the idea that 'this is poison, use it sparingly.' Understand that even for little kids there are interesting things that they can do and learn with this technology. It's not time wasted, it's not brain rot. It's actually something more interesting than that."

OK, we get it. But the interviews — and indeed the article itself — seemed too dismissive of many genuine concerns and real-world parental choices about technology and kids today. Two years ago, The New York Times ran an in-depth piece about Silicon Valley execs who chose to send their own kids to a Waldorf School that uses no computers or screens at all. It quoted parents like Alan Eagle, a Google employee with a computer science degree, who said, "The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that's ridiculous." Parents like Eagle had reasons for feelings as they did. Rosin mentioned this article on "Here and Now" but quickly brushed aside these tech execs' choices. "When you deal with a technology so much what I realized is that your paranoia maybe gets increased instead of decreased," Rosin said.

"Paranoia"? There’s no question that tablets and smartphones have a high coolness factor and can potentially offer kids great experiences and opportunities for learning. Indeed, Rosin spends a big chunk of her article detailing exactly how cool various interactive apps for kids really are, in her opinion. But does it do parents any favors to call their cautions and desires to limit screen time a "neurosis"?

In interviews, Rosin repeated one story again and again — something she seems to be basing much of her conclusions upon. As she writes in her article (though you have to get to the very end to find this out), she conducted an experiment with her youngest son in which she gave him unlimited access to an iPad for six months. She put it in the toy basket and let him use it whenever and however he wanted, no restrictions. 

While it was "extremely annoying" at first — Rosin's son wanted to use the device for two-hour stretches at inconvenient times — Rosin says he eventually dropped it under a bed and forgot about it. It fell out of rotation for weeks. "Now he picks it up every once in a while, but not all that often," she writes. "It took the edge off my thinking, 'Oh my God, his brain is turning to mush, he’s going to become addicted to this thing,'" Rosin said on "The Leonard Lopate Show." "I no longer have that thought."

Rosin told Lopate she wishes she "could urge all parents" to try the same experiment to put their minds at ease. Does she mean all parents of kids of all ages? Is any age too young for giving unlimited use of a touchscreen? Rosin calls her son a "toddler" in the article but doesn't specify his age. On NPR's "Weekend Edition," though, she said he was 4 when she conducted this experiment. Is a 4-year-old toddler with unfettered access to an iPad any different from a 15-month-old toddler with unfettered access to an iPad? (Are 4-year-olds even technically "toddlers"?) What about a 12-month-old? A 7-month-old? A 3-month-old? Would Rosin have conducted the same experiment on her son if he had been 18 months old at the time rather than 4? Would she have drawn the same conclusions?

Generalizing about "toddlers" — especially based on one experiment with one 4-year-old — seems dangerous here. And that’s one problem The Atlantic piece has: It discusses some research involving kids of certain ages — Rosin cites one study (unpublished as yet) her own child participated in that documented behaviors of 32-month-olds using iPads, for example — but offers nothing regarding any new research or data on even younger children, say, the under-2 set.

Even research on children and TV, after so many decades, becomes more scant when it comes to kids under about age 3. And we know kids 2 and under are being handed tablets and smartphones (forget about TV) with increasing frequency these days. But The Atlantic, despite its promised focus on "toddlers," seems to wander away from any real focus on touchscreen use by the very youngest of our children.

The hundreds of comments from online readers — on The Atlantic’s website and elsewhere — were telling. What they told is just how complex an issue this really is. Some commenters pointed out what else wasn't covered in this 7,000-plus-word article – big topics like the importance of manipulating 3D objects to the early development of young brains. A month later, the comments are still coming in. I’d like to let some speak for themselves here. First, a few comments from The Atlantic’s own site:

- From Rob O'Daniel, who calls himself "a career IT guy, not some head-in-the-sand Luddite": "…children only have a tiny sliver of time in which it's allowable for them to be children. So why cut into that precious time by preemptively trying to mold them into junior technologists and rapid media consumers? My son will have the rest of his life to be enslaved to PCs and other techogadgets, While he's 6 yrs old, I'd like for him to indulge every Lego-playing, finger-painting, bike-riding, earthworm-digging, silly-dancing, fort-building impulse possible. If I've given him a strong foundation that will allow him to survive and thrive in the analog world, the digital will come effortlessly."

- From "Robert SF": "Children need to learn to manipulate 3D objects in a 3D world. Playing ball and getting hit, running around and falling, building something and watching it collapse, all teach that, but a flat screen cannot teach that."

- A similar thought from "djoelt1," who has three young children who aren't allowed to use screens: "At the stage of life the children are in, the laws of physics, chemistry, magentism, optics, and sound are so everpresent and fascinating that nothing on a screen could rival it." This person wrote about the activity of constructing jumps for bicycles, for example. "No amount of fancy graphics or imaginary bike jumping program can teach about how to harness balance, center of gravity, speed, and ramp angle to ride off a jump and land on one wheel or two."

- On a different note, from Natalie Danner: "How are children learning social skills, self-control, attention, persistence, and the ability to entertain themselves without technology?" 

- Dennis Noble brings up the possible dangers of radio waves emitted by wireless devices: "Anyone with any awareness these days knows that exposure to wireless is considered a risk to health. The International Agency on Reseach [sic] on Cancer classified the Radio Frequency radiation as a possible carcinogen, the same classification as DDT and lead. Children are far more vulnerable to this and as we expose young children to this technology, we are playing Russian roulette with their brains, their bodies, and their DNA." (See the IARC's 2011 press release on this here. For more on the subject, see what the National Cancer Institute says about cell phone use.)

- From "sammybaker," a point, made rather pessimistically, about what kind of foundation might be laid when kids use screens at very young ages without a parental "media plan" in place: "Handing little kids a tech device is like handing them a bag of cookies and expecting them to have the frontal lobe ability to not scarf them down. What they learn at 3 or 6 or 8 will stay with them as teens. Those years go by fast. If you don't navigate childhood with a media plan, be ready for that chubby cheeked 'pester power' pro to mutate into an entertainment obsessed 7-year-old and then a texting, sexting force of nature risk taker at 13. When mine turned 8, we had a written set of rules they had to agree to for that iPod, etc... If they are not able to do that, don't hand them a tech device, unless you commit to the time to sit next to them and play with them, edu apps or not."

- With more on possible down-the-road effects of being plugged in early (and often), reader Anthony Davis commented on "digital natives," whom Rosin defines as "the first generations of children growing up fluent in the language of computers, video games, and other technologies": "Yes, and I still have to teach these 'digital natives' in college that copying and pasting from Wikipedia and checking out the first entry on a search engine don't qualify as research. The smartphone is not a back up for poor short-term memory during a quiz. The squiggly green and red lines on the documents in their word processors are actually trying to tell them something basic about their writing ability. Skimming off Sparknotes.com is not the same as synthesizing and analyzing…" (He continues on from there...)

- "Kira" observed that not having access to digital devices makes kids work to find creative solutions: "We restrict use quite a bit in our household and I've noticed that in those ‘I'm bored’ moments, not having access, makes our two kids work together to have fun - build things, play cards, play keep it up with a ball, etc...To me that is worth restricting the app use."

- Reader Hal Horvath had similar thoughts to "Kira": "We use breaks, including days at a time, from the finite world of apps/games, and I can tell you from repeated experience that an interesting thing happens. After a day or two without the Wii, computer, or Kindle, our daughter doesn't even seek them out, but continues building and creating her own stuff, out of found materials."

- Another reader, "pavopax," linked to this recent article from Fast Company, "Why Your iPhone Addiction Is Snuffing Your Creativity," also on the importance of, well, boredom.

A few more interesting comments from other sites:

- From "mld," on Rosin's interview with WBUR's "Here and Now": "I think its [sic] the wrong question to ask. More important to ask 'why are we so enamored with a toddler's ability to operate a touch screen?' So what? It isn't difficult--not like they learned to play the violin or learned to read." 

- From "Sally," on the interview with WNYC's Leonard Lopate: "I have an 11 year old son, and I find that he becomes very aggressive when he spends a lot of time on an electronic device, especially when playing video games. I limit screen time for him."

- From "Taylor," responding to a post on The New York Times' parenting blog "Motherlode," by KJ Dell'Antonia, about The Atlantic's article: "[A]fter introducing the iPad to my toddler to keep him entertained on a long car ride, we are now awash in a sea of regret. He asks for it CONSTANTLY, cries and throws things when we say no, already knows how to navigate to the movies we've downloaded, go back to the beginning, etc. It's crazy to me. We've done a great job of standing our ground so far - he's allowed to use it only once a week, only supervised, etc. But it's the whining about it that drives me crazy. Anyone with tips, please let me know what worked for you to curb iPad cravings."

- From Mike Kaplan, also commenting on the "Motherlode" post: "One thing missing from iPad play is the tactile interactions with objects, and I wonder what we're losing when we replace three-dimensional playtime in the world of objects and space with 2-dimensional time in the world of simulated objects and simulated space. The coordinated input from multiple senses that you get when handling and looking at an object may be more important than it appears, especially during early development."

- Elaborating on this same idea, Amy L. Slutzky, a pediatric occupational therapist of 33 years, wrote in to "Here and Now" a rather technical explanation of exactly why it's important for babies and toddlers to explore their 3D world. Part of her post: "I 
think we are wise as adults to be cautious regarding exposure of very young
 children to any electronic screen use. When we talk about child development, 
development of the brain, it is easy to limit our thinking about cognitive
 development to visual and auditory learning. However, development, especially
 during the earliest months and years, depends on a gradual expansion of sensory-motor, 
or physical control of the body and the hands during movement, directed by the 
visual system…. Spontaneous
 three-dimensional manipulations with infinite varieties of intensive tactile
 qualities and resistance is critical to development of skillful dexterity, or
 eye-hand coordination. Each specific interaction with the environment contributes 
to a storehouse in the brain for future reference."

Slutzky cites two experts who each "estimated that one-third of our children are failing to develop the
 musclulature of the hand, and the eyes for competent use... The precision muscles in the palm of the hands and the fingers, as well 
as the tiny but all-important eye muscles that control movement of the eyes 
hands [sic] do not have the opportunity to develop in the complex context of the
 three dimensional world no matter how 'interactive' a designed program might 
be."

Indeed, while Rosin lauds the interactiveness of many children's apps, several online commenters argue that apps necessarily have built-in restrictions and limitations. Here's "Jane," for another example, responding to the Leonard Lopate interview: "As interactive and educational as the apps may be, they are REPLACING children's imaginations with pre-determined choices, rather than allowing the children to come up with their own ideas, or allowing them to learn to interact with the world around them."

In a recent New York Times piece called "The Child, the Tablet and the Developing Mind," reporter Nick Bilton quotes Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at UCLA, saying, "We really don’t know the full neurological effects of these technologies yet." Bilton writes that Small, author of iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, says "we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills."

When it comes to our children, caution seems prudent on so many fronts — especially in an area of life in which so much is yet unknown. Hardly anyone would criticize a parent for wanting to limit her young child’s or baby's TV time. Why such a different response to parents' choices about mobile screens held inches from their children's faces? Parents’ concerns need support and understanding. Let’s respect the challenges parents face when it comes to technology use and tots and keep the "neurosis" talk out of it.