More nurturing reading environment may stimulate brain development in children
I could talk about this for hours, but "screen time" is too vague - placing a kid in front of a youtube autoplay stream is vastly different than playing a word game on the iPad with their parents right next to them.I've found low effort, high stimulus creates bad behaviour, which is obvious. But specifically, it creates a low effort flow state, setting false expectations about life in general, and parents should make sure to minimize this kind of media.However we found a few good apps, and both my kids knew the alphabet before 1 year old, and my 2 year old is drawing Chinese characters (he's spent 1/4th of his life in China) thanks to good apps, and having parents present while using them.
And passive media isn't all bad, How Things Work and David Attenborough, and anything space related has taught my kids a lot.I wish more studies would not focus on "book time" vs "screen time", because what's really important is interactivity, such as being present with your child for them to bounce things off you, or apps that give small rewards for high effort tasks, rather than large rewards for low effort tasks - it just so happens that books are more conducive to this, but if you actually pay attention to what your child is doing, screens can be a powerful tool.That being said, it's really tough being a parent, and sometimes you just want to put some high stimulus thing on the screen to get a break - in my experience, it's only bad when that becomes a habit or norm.