For any artificial virtual perceptions, kids are too Young. Children who started watching television before their first birthday, and who watched more than two hours per day, were six times more likely to have language delays than children in a control group.[1]
There are many other detrimental effects on their mental and physical growth.
When your kid is glued to any of the mentioned screen(Mobile/TV/Tablet), he or she is disconnected from you and environment. Virtual mediums are one way mediums. There is no two way-communication. If a Kid touches a tree, there is a sensible response. If a kid does eye contact with any adult, there is a response. Screens don’t respond mentally/emotionally. This lead to potential disconnect. It delays brain development. You may think your kid is smart to learn operating of gadget but that is natural since their mind is by default operative and tend to learn operations quickly. What they lack is emotions as response. So only operating skills improve and overall development gets hampered.
They learn best when there is live human response. Toys help developing operative skills. If you replace humans with screens, they don’t get exposure to humans and so delay in development.
Wise parents keep kids away from screen as much as possible. Wise friends and relatives don’t give their mobiles to kids as a gesture of play.
Side note
Some fellow parents complain about chronic cough and constant whooping by their kids. Re-check – do you expose more to screens? It may be the reason!
” in the first two years of life, the brain triples in size. Connections that form in the brain, or synapses, are based on early life experiences. Prolonged exposure to rapid image changes during these first years of critical brain development preconditions the mind to expect high levels of stimulation. This, in turn, leads to inattention in later years. Studies on the impact of media have shown that the more kids watch TV before the age of three, the more likely they are to have attention problems in school. ”
Compare generation of 80s, 90s, 2000s and now. Day by day, they are becoming hyper but silly.
What I observe is, when parents are not able to respond Kid’s cry, they give mobile phone to keep them at peace. What a miserable parenting!
Research
Television viewing associates with delayed language development.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18460044
RESULTS:
Forty-six boys and 10 girls; mean [+/-SD] age, 2.11+/-0.47 years of the case group and 59 boys and 51 girls; mean [+/-SD] age, 2.23+/-0.80 years of the control group were enrolled. Children who had language delay usually started watching television earlier at age 7.22+/-5.52 months vs. 11.92+/-5.86 months, p-value<0.001 and also spent more time watching television than normal children (3.05+/-1.90 h/day vs. 1.85+/-1.18 h/day; p-value<0.001). Children who started watching television at<12 months of age and watched television>2 h/day were approximately six times more likely to have language delays.
CONCLUSIONS:
There is a relationship between early onset and high frequency of TV viewing and language delay.
