When control is just a pious wish

In the media education of earlier years, screen time was a hugely important factor. Parents wanted to know from experts how long children were allowed to sit in front of the television or computer. They wanted to be able to judge how much media time was acceptable or too much. With a recommendation of 90 minutes of screen time for twelve-year-olds, they were allowed to organise their own quota. Anyone who wasted an hour and a half on the console could no longer watch their favourite series.

Then media convergence threw a spanner in the works of our educational endeavours. In a nutshell, this technical term means that technologies and media are becoming increasingly intertwined. Today, children and young people can chat on a games console, watch TV on a computer, make calls with a smartwatch and play with a mobile phone. Now that children have their own smartphones, controlling their usage time seems to have become a pipe dream.

But one question still concerns parents: How much screen time is harmless? A few weeks ago, the Australian Catholic University published a recent study in which the advantages and disadvantages of screen use were analysed. Scientist Taren Sanders and his colleagues went to great lengths to compare over 100 meta-analyses that had already been carried out.

The figures are impressive: almost 2,500 individual studies with around two million participants were scrutinised. However, the results did not reveal any new findings. The theory - which has been discussed for some time - that it is not only screen time that is decisive, but also the content, sounds reassuring for parents at first. However, opinions differ among experts.

No positive benefit from social media

In an interview given on the occasion of the publication of this study, Sanders said that reading and writing skills can be improved by learning content on the devices, but that this performance deteriorates as a result of watching television for too long.

This is less surprising than Sanders' comments on the effect of social media on children and young people: He has not been able to find any study or meta-analysis on this topic, he said, that has shown a «positive aspect» for children's development. The researcher therefore sees it more as a «risk» that has «no benefit». However, Sanders conceded that there could be positive effects, but that these may not yet have been researched. In any case, he advises parents not to allow their children access to social media. How realistic this advice is is another matter.

Sweden and New Zealand are banning tablets from primary schools again.

The results of this study therefore remain somewhat vague and are of little use for education. However, there are already a number of findings and recommendations that are quite clear. For example, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that children under the age of two should not be allowed to look at a screen at all. A Japanese study conducted by Tohoku University in Sendai in 2023 even warns that children up to the age of four can suffer from developmental disorders due to screen consumption.

Screen consumption influences brain development

The results of an analysis of more than 30 studies from 2023 also urge caution. Neuroscientists from China's Shanghai Normal University and Australia's Macquarie University in Sydney focused their research on brain development. The focus was on children between the ages of six months and twelve years.

In children, the prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed. This is responsible for intellectual performance, motivation and the control of emotions, for example. Its development continues into early adulthood. According to the analysis, screen time leads to changes and delays in the brain's neuronal networks. This is also confirmed by a recent study from Malaysia.

Our approach to the question of how much time a child should spend in front of a screen must become more differentiated.

These findings have brought politicians onto the scene: The Chinese state wants to protect its children and young people more strongly by imposing restrictive limits on smartphone use. French President Emmanuel Macron is also planning to limit screen time for children. And Sweden and New Zealand are currently banning tablets from primary schools.

Research is not keeping pace with development

This all sounds very alarmist. In reality, however, it is more about pausing and reflecting to realise the possible consequences. Because we still know too little about the effects of digital screen time on children. Technological development is progressing at a seven-mile pace and research can only keep up with this speed to a limited extent. These media are too young, too fast and too changeable for a long-term study that looks at the effects of digital media on children's development over years and decades. This is why renowned scientists and doctors from Switzerland, Germany and Austria are calling for a moratorium to «revise the one-sided fixation on digital technology in daycare centres and schools».

Whatever the outcome of all these endeavours, parents need reliable guidelines for everyday parenting. Pro Juventute has carefully considered suggestions on the subject of screen time. However, these recommendations are only useful for children up to around ten years of age, as long as parents are still able to control media times and do not shy away from gruelling discussions with adolescents. Instead of capitulating, we need to put the responsibility for screen time in the hands of our children at this point.

A prerequisite for this is good and thorough media literacy training, which helps children and young people to self-regulate their usage times. This won't be easy, as they don't just play and post, but also use their screens on a daily basis for homework, leisure activities and making arrangements.

Conclusion: Screen time is far from obsolete, but our approach to it must be more differentiated. This includes keeping an eye on the further results of research and always remaining realistic. Until then, the dose makes the poison.