New research shows the average three-year-old is deprived of hearing 1000 words a day if they are using a screen, potentially impacting their language development, Emily Campbell writes.
Dr Mary Brushe from the Telethon Kids Institute led a team of researchers who tracked 220 Australian families over two years to measure the relationship between household screen use and children’s language environment.
According to Dr Brushe, the average child hears between 5000 and 35,000 words per day, and conversations during the early years are critical for development.
“Growing up in a language-rich home environment, where there is lots of talking and conversation, is so important for children’s language development,” Dr Brushe says.
“More recently, we have also seen evidence for the importance of those back-and-forth interactions between parent and child for children’s social and emotional skills too.
“These interactions help support children’s vocabulary and are also critical for bonding and attachment with the child,” she says.
New methodologies
Dr Brushe said her team’s study stands out from existing research into the impact of screen time on language because it uses an objective measure of both screen time and children’s early language experiences.
“The majority of research so far has relied on parents reporting their own and their child’s screen time, whereas we have used advanced speech recognition technology to quantify the child’s home environment in terms of the number of words and conversations and their exposure to screens,” she says.
“Importantly, our research also includes exposure to modern screen devices like tablets, iPads, and mobile phones.”
There is a continuously growing body of research focused on screen time during the early years, although Dr Brushe says it has often struggled to keep pace with technological change, so much of the existing literature focuses on television and computer games.
“We see some evidence that excessive screen time in early childhood may be associated with children’s physical activity levels, their attention, language development and social/emotional skills; however, we need more longitudinal evidence before we can really understand the true impact of screens,” Dr Brushe says.
Advanced speech recognition technology
To conduct the study, Fitbit-like technology was used to monitor the audio and quantify the number of words spoken to, by and around the children who live in English-speaking homes.
Background and electronic noise from devices were also recorded, which researchers analysed to calculate screen time.
To collect data, families fixed the recording device to children and recorded 16 hours of audio on an average day, once per six months over the course of two years.
The experiment resulted in over 7000 hours of audio, which showed children in the study accrued, on average, three hours of screen time per day.
“This means that for every extra minute of screen time, the three-year-old participants heard seven fewer words, spoke five fewer words themselves, and engaged in one fewer conversation,” Dr Brushe says.
It is estimated this ‘technoference’ led to children missing out on hearing over 1100 adult-spoken words, speaking 840 less words themselves and denied 194 conversations per day.
“However, the study could not capture parents’ silent screen-related activities, such as reading emails, texting or quietly scrolling through websites and social media, meaning we are probably underestimating how much screen usage and ‘technoference’ is occurring around children.”
