Concordant research carried out by various scientists and doctors has concluded that the overexposure of toddlers (0-6 years) to screens (TV, smartphones and tablets) has extremely harmful effects on their brains.
Radio France Internationale (RFI) in its program “Priorité Santé” of 31 August 2021, discussed this subject with Dr Anne-Lise Ducanda, a doctor specializing in overexposure to screens in France.
Dr Ducanda asked herself this question when, between 2013 and 2017, she noticed that she had seen seven times more children with mental difficulties than usual. They had problems with language delay, learning, intolerance to frustration, clumsiness and communication difficulties.
After analysis, this specialist doctor found that 95% of the children who came to consult had been overexposed to screens in their families.
After this finding, Dr Ducanda published a report in 2017 to alert families and the world to this health scourge.
Today, she notes that there is no change on the part of parents and she wrote a second book, published in August 2021, entitled “Les tout-petits face aux écrans: comment les protéger” (Toddlers and screens: how to protect them) published by Editions du Rocher, in which she re-launches another alert to raise collective awareness of this scourge.
Dr Ducanda reminds us that children who are overexposed to screens are deprived of human interaction and the sensory discovery of the world around them.
The same observation is made by British learning and behavioral specialist Dr Noel Janice Norton. “Children’s exposure to screens has direct effects on the brain and learning, similar to those seen with any addictive substance including drugs,” she says.
“When you give your child a tablet or a smartphone, it’s really like giving them a bottle of wine or a gram of cocaine,” says Mandy Saligari.
The two researchers advise parents to choose schools for their children where the use of screens is very limited. And at home, television should only be allowed for children over the age of 14. All of this is to favour more time for reading books and human relationships.
A child aged 3 to 5 should not spend more than one hour (1h) in front of a television or smartphone screen. For children under 2 years old, the screen should be banned altogether.
Domice Gasarabwe & Gerard Rugambwa
