Screen time does not affect your child’s social skills – study

So a new study out claims the fear that screen time affects child’s social skills is nothing more than ‘moral panic’.

The new kids do not have interpersonal skills that are different from those from the 90s, it turns out. So yeah, uncle so and so, you can stop turning your nose up at these ‘kids of today’.

The research suggests smartphones, screen-time, and social media have not negatively affected kids’ social skills, and modern concerns over the impact of screen-time recalls past “moral panics” over the effect of new technology on children.

Douglas Downey, a sociology professor at Ohio State University and Benjamin Gibbs from Brigham Young University examined data of Early Longitudinal Tests.

They took people who went to kindergarten in 1998 and those in 2010 and tested their social skills, which means to ‘successfully negotiate the expectations of others in social interactions.’

From kindergarten to fifth grade the development was the same with a slight difference being in children who frequent online games and social media.

In short, there were no major differences in social development.

Kinda feels a bit of a relief really because well, humans have always been bemoaning that their kids are not adjusted to the levels they did, for better or worse. The decline is always overstate as panic sets in around where their children could end up.

What is worse now is the ceaseless presence of screens which has created a massive alien out of children in the 21st Century. Because parents never had to deal with such a massive shift to a different world, it creates fear that whatever morality the former had cannot be passed on to their offspring.

Panic!