According to many specialists, overexposure of the youngest to screens causes a slowdown in all of the child’s abilities, including their cognitive abilities.
A bad habit against which doctors draw the alarm signal. For several years now, numerous studies have insisted on the harmfulness of too much exposure to screens for the youngest children, which would cause a delay in development in some “addicts” to television, smartphones and other tablets.
“It’s very deleterious for a toddler who is under construction, and it affects all of the child’s abilities, language, the development of cognitive abilities, relationships with others, motor skills, emotional management” , confirms to BFMTV doctor Anne-Lise Ducanda, doctor in PMI and founder of the Collective overexposure screens.
“The longer he is going to be outside, the better”
In order to help children in this situation and their parents, Sylvie Dieu Osika, pediatrician at the Jean Verdier hospital (AP-HP) and member of the CoSE collective, decided to set up dedicated consultations during which advice is given.
The patient of the day, Samuel, is a three-year-old boy who barely speaks. The consultation, which begins with a routine questionnaire, quickly shifts to the child’s screen consumption.
“Five or six hours of television a day,” confirms his mother, who insists that her son started watching television at the age of six months, during the first confinement of 2020. “It is true that “During the Covid period, we couldn’t go out, we couldn’t do practically anything. To be able to occupy them, I only found this solution, the TV”, she admits.
Throughout the consultation, and without trying to make the parents feel guilty, the pediatrician will provide several tips to remove Samuel from the grip of the screens. “The longer he’s going to be outside, the better,” she insists.
“And I’m going to go further, if you can’t do it for x reasons, I prefer that he be in study until 6 p.m., that he spends hellish days, that he is tired That he comes home at 5 p.m. to watch TV, no,” adds the specialist.
Before 3 years, it’s no
It must be said that the consequences of overexposure of young children to screens can be dramatic. “We create disability”, accuses Sylvie Dieu Osika, who again points to difficulties “in language, development of cognitive abilities, relationship to others, motor skills and management of emotions.”
A list corroborated by numerous works, the latest of which come from the barometer of the Children’s Foundation on the impact of digital technology on children’s health, published last February. The study thus showed behavioral disorders (anger, aggressiveness) and sleep in 84% of cases of overexposure to screens.
In a study published in 2016, the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA) pointed out the harmfulness of screens for the youngest. The accompanying message was then clear: before the age of 3, a child has nothing to do in front of a screen, touchscreen or not.