Why You Should Limit Screen Media for Children Under Three

When I first started to research this article I was certainly leaning towards the position that screen media is not a good idea for little kids. This may seem like a strange position when Cackleberries is a site for young children but that is the reason for this article. Our site is a wonderful place for a three year to play for an hour a day in a safe, nurturing environment but younger than three... well we can wait.

There is a physiological reason to not expose your child to screen media before they are three. It can affect the rest of your child’s life. This is serious stuff. There are much more elegant ways of explaining why than mine but in a nutshell here's what happens. Brain development is an on-going process of wiring and re-wiring the connections between neurons. During the first 8 months of life the brain produces as many as 1000 trillion of these connections. Over the next year and a half a pruning happens to keep the connections that have purpose and make the brain more efficient. Given that the brain operates on a 'use it or lose it basis', an “over-pruning” can occur when a child is deprived of normally expected experiences

This process is referred to as developing the architecture of the brain because what is kept during this time is the plan for life. The Kaiser Foundation studies concluded that the most important reason to not expose young children to screen media is that it does not assist in the development of this architecture. Things that best aid this development include:

• interaction with parents and other people
• playing with objects such as blocks and sand
• creative, problem solving activities

As possible as it is, it could be that none of this science is right. Even so, why would you want people you don’t know entertain your child? Save the screened media exposure until after their second birthday and limit your three year old to an hour a day. Fill these years with hugs and games and music. They're gone in a blink.