The digital world is here to stay. Toothpaste is out of the tube. And it has squirted everywhere: at home, at school, at work, at daycare, in our leisure activities! The fact that we are currently looking at the impacts of screens on our young people in a special commission in Quebec City is evidence of the magnitude of this phenomenon that is profoundly interfering with the heads and bodies of humans under construction.
This is especially true for children aged 0 to 5 because of the extreme plasticity of their brains. To learn, toddlers need to have both feet in life, where we look at each other, talk to each other, and touch each other. Screens distract them from essential keys to their cognitive, language and socio-affective development, notes the Toddler Observatory in a hard-hitting report that everyone should have.
Problems with sleep, vision, self-regulation of emotions, socialization: the list of dangers documented by the Observatory leads it to advocate for an all-round precautionary principle for toddlers. Before the age of two, we avoid; at two years and older, we limit. This is because we are navigating in a scientific pea soup, due to the lack of sufficiently detailed and varied data and studies on the subject.
Not only is there a huge amount of catching up to do on the science front, but our blinders are harming us. Before the commission this week, the Institut national de santé publique du Québec expressed concern that “screen use is too often approached from a narrow perspective, considering the consequences in isolation.”
It is true that Quebec is betting almost all of its marbles on approaches that appeal to muscles: limiting screen time, banning cell phones in class, keeping social networks at a distance. But punishment, banning or individual support have their limits. Screens are here to stay. What we need now is to do everything we can to prevent them from causing harm. And to do that, we need to focus more on education and support, our Achilles heels.
Weapons of mass occupation, screens are often offered as a reward; the child and the parent (or teacher or educator) each benefit from a respite on their side. However, for toddlers, best practices mobilize an active presence of the adult to comment, interact and moderate throughout the activity. The rule of sustained presence also applies to older children, who develop better habits when they are accompanied and equipped.
Among the emerging concepts, that of technoference (or technological interference) invites a profound questioning. With our screens almost connected intravenously, we no longer count the notifications that catch our ear or our eye during the day. These interruptions can be exasperating for our loved ones, but, we learn, these escapades have even more deleterious effects on our relationships with our children. It is to be put in the balance.
More broadly, it is high time to stop reducing our relationship with screens to a matter of good or bad individual choices. Hitting parents and children over the head is as unfair as it is unproductive. They have their way to go, but regulating life in an ultra-connected world is also the business of daycares, schools, politicians, legislators, businesses, and so on. It is a societal challenge.