Toddlers who spend a lot of time playing with touchscreen devices are more easily distracted, a new study suggests.
Using eye tracking technology, UK experts found infants with high daily touchscreen use were quicker to look at other objects when they appeared within their line of sight on a computer screen.
They were also less able to resist distraction compared to toddlers with no or low touchscreen use, experiments found.
The findings fuel the growing debate around the role of screen time on infant development and increased levels of screen time during the current pandemic.
Early exposure to devices like tablets (pictured) and smartphones might influence the way children are developing
According to Ofcom, 63 per cent of infants aged three to four years used a tablet at home in 2019 – up from 28 per cent in 2013.
It’s believed this figure will likely have risen due to more devices around the home, due to the need to stay connected during lockdown.
‘The use of smartphones and tablets by babies and toddlers has accelerated rapidly in recent years,’ said study author Professor Tim Smith from the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London.
‘The first few years of life are critical for children to learn how to control their attention and ignore distraction, early skills that are known to be important for later academic achievement.
‘There has been growing concern that toddler touchscreen use may negatively impact their developing attention but previously there was no empirical evidence to support this.’
Professor Smith is currently leading the TABLET project at Birkbeck that looks into infant use of touchscreen devices and the effects.
TABLET (Toddler Attentional Behaviours and LEarning with Touchscreens) takes place both online, via short questionnaires and at Birkbeck’s Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development (otherwise known as the ‘Babylab’).
For this particular study, researchers recruited 40 infants at 12 months of age who were stable high (HU) or low (LU) touchscreen users from toddlerhood to pre-school.
The study followed them over the next 2.5 years, bringing them into the lab three times, at 12 months, 18 months and 3.5 years.
Parents assessed their child’s touchscreen use in hours and minutes before each visit, through a question embedded in an online survey – ‘On a typical day, how long does your child spend using a touchscreen device (tablet, smartphone or touchscreen laptop)?’
During each visit the toddlers took part in computer tasks using a Tobii TX300 eye-tracker eye-tracker to measure their attention as objects appeared in different computer screen locations.
Researchers measured how quickly toddlers looked at the objects and how well they could ignore distracting objects.
The team found that infants and toddlers with high touchscreen use were faster to look at objects when they appeared and were less able to ignore distracting objects compared to the low users.
However, the study, which has been published in in Scientific Reports, did not identify cause and effect.
‘We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention,’ said study author Dr Ana Maria Portugal at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
‘It could also be that children who are more distractible may be more attracted to the attention-grabbing features of touchscreen devices than those who are not.’
The fact infants with high smartphone use were more prone to being distracted could be interpreted as a positive or negative trait, the team say.
They plan to now investigate how attention behaviours ‘found in screen-based contexts translate’ outside the lab.
‘What we need to know next is how this pattern of increased looking to distracting objects on screens relates to attention in the real-world,’ said co-investigator Dr Rachael Bedford, from the Department of Psychology at University of Bath.
‘Is it a positive sign that the children have adapted to the multitasking demands of their complex everyday environment or does it relate to difficulties during tasks that require concentration?
According to Ofcom, 63 per cent of infants aged three to four years used a tablet at home in 2019 – up from 28 per cent in 2013
‘What we need to know next is whether this attention difference is advantageous or detrimental to their everyday life.
‘It is important we understand how to use this modern technology in a way that maximises benefits and minimises any negative consequences.’
Another limitation is that the assignment of touchscreen use was based on a parent-report question, which may be subject to reporter bias and under-estimation.
Last year, TABLET research published in JAMA Pediatrics revealed that toddlers with high daily touchscreen use are faster to find targets that stood out during visual searches.
Using the same cohort of infants as this study, toddlers took part in a computer task at the 18-month and 3.5-year visits.
They were trained to search for a red apple amongst a varying number of either blue apples (‘easy’ search) or blue apples and red apple slices (‘difficult’).
An eye tracker monitored their gaze and visually rewarded the child when they found the red apple, allowing them to perform the task even though they were too young to verbally describe what they were doing.
‘We found that at both 18 months and 3.5 years the high touchscreen users were faster than the low users to find the red apple when it stood out amongst blue apples,’ said Dr Bedford at the time.
However, there was no difference between the touchscreen user groups when the apple was harder to find.