Mothers and fathers who scroll on their phones for more than an hour a day may be making their child less intelligent, a study has found.
Parents’ screen time had a greater effect on children’s speech than how many young people used devices, while five-year-olds with tablets or phones were found to have poorer language skills than those who did not.
However, the skill differences associated with children’s screen time disappeared by the time they turned seven.
The Norwegian researchers warned that smartphones and tablets disrupt attention – and that frequent use can make parents less communicative with their children.
This limits the opportunities to develop vocabulary at a crucial stage of language development.
Research shows that about 90 percent of brain growth occurs before the age of five.
Earlier this year, the government warned that excessive TV time could damage a toddler’s speech, and advised parents to limit screen time in children aged two to five to no more than an hour a day.
Research shows that just an hour of scrolling on your phone can affect a child’s language skills
The study – published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics – followed 747 Norwegian children for three years, from the age of five to their eighth birthday.
At the start of the study, parents were asked how many hours their children spent on average looking at screens and whether they had their own tablet or phone.
Mothers and fathers were also asked about their own social media use and were instructed to enter their screen time as recorded by their phone.
Children took language tests once a year at ages five, six and seven, assessing how many words they could understand and how well they understood grammar.
Rather than comparing one-time scores, the team tracked how children’s language skills changed over time, allowing them to distinguish between those who started with weaker skills and those whose development slowed over time.
After adjusting for potentially confounding factors, including family income and parental education, researchers from the University of Oslo found that parental phone use was associated with slower vocabulary development.
Specifically, vocabulary development slowed with every hour a parent spent on their phone per day.
Children whose parents were glued to their phones for four hours a day scored about 2.5 points lower on language tests, compared to children whose parents used their phones for about an hour a day.
Young people with their own device – 43 percent of the group – also had lower language scores at the start of the study, but not at the end.
Dr. Junyi Yang, a special education expert and the first author of the study, said: ‘Smartphone use often disrupts attention. Research into the interaction between parents and children shows that such disruption can affect children’s word learning and language development.
‘Greater overall screen use reflects a reduced opportunity for responsive interactions at home.’
On average, researchers found that the more time a parent spent on their phone, the higher a child’s screen time.
The researchers concluded: ‘Increased overall screen involvement within the family may replace high-quality interactions, such as shared reading and storytelling activities that promote word learning.’
It follows a study published in January which found that two-year-old children with the highest screen use – around five hours a day – were able to say significantly fewer words than children who looked at screens for less than an hour.
Device use is now nearly universal in early childhood, the researchers found, with 98 percent of two-year-olds now looking at screens every day.
The World Health Organization recommends limiting screen time for children aged two to four years to a maximum of one hour per day.
