Screens, Childhood and the Disappearing Art of Real Life
For a long time the evidence has been mounting about how damaging screens are to young children. Slowly, oh so slowly, governments are mobilising to ban under sixteens from social media. They still don’t seem to have woken up to the addictive and harmful effects of gaming for under sixteens (and older). The evidence is now very strong that all screens are harmful to children’s development and should certainly be banned for under fives (what will parents do without a square nanny? How did we manage a generation ago?)
Last week the Financial Times published a major article on some fascinating research in to why population growth is plunging around the world – indeed not just growth, but actual populations. For the first time professors at Cincinnati, Pennsylvania, and Stanford Universities and demographers in Finland have looked at why birth rates are plunging across the world. The article by John Burn-Murdoch pulled much of this research together. It noted the facts that birth rates have declined steeply across different cultures and stages of economic development across the world. In high-income countries in Europe, North America and Asia birth rates are now well below 2 per woman (the natural replacement rate is considered to be 2.1), often approaching 1. In middle-income countries including Latin America it is now below 2 and in North Africa and the Middle East it is only just above2.1. In all cases the charts show a precipitous decline over the last 15 years and no sign of levelling off.
The research shows a clear correlation with a lack of couples formation – fewer couples mean fewer children. There is also clear evidence that people are socialising much less than in the past. In spite of all the matching apps, the evidence is that digital usage is preventing couples meeting and coupling. This evidence now exists for dozens of countries; less social engagement leads to less coupling and that leads to fewer children. Finnish research also shows that sexual dysfunction is highest among young adults with the highest social media use. The bottom line across multiple countries is that phones impact birth-rates and the more traditional a culture, the greater the impact of smart phones on birth rates.
There are all sorts of intriguing explanations being advanced for this effect: young women raise their expectations about relationships in a way men are not prepared for. There is also an emerging ideological divide of women moving left while men move right (particularly among non-college educated). Why is not clear! Back in 2001 researchers identified a link between falling birth rates and television ownership but since smart-phone usage is even more solitary than watching TV, the chances are the effect could be much larger.
The correlation between widespread introduction of smart-phones and the fall in birth rates seems to be universal, producing falls of 30-40 between 10 and fifteen years later. What governments can do about this is unclear since there is no uninventing the smart phone. Providing secure homes to young couples encourages family formation but if they are not forming couples that doesn’t help.
Perhaps most worrying is that falling birth rates are only one part of the isolation of young people caused by phones. Higher phone usage links with isolation and deteriorating well-being. Clearly governments face a major problem in the next decade. The only bit that seems to me to be clear is to stop screen habits developing early and encourage the young to be engaged with more interesting activities that stimulate their brains.
We did a workshop in a school last week where children were making creatures from their imaginations out of cardboard they were cutting up. Parents said it was the first evening the children had spurned screens for scissors, crayons and old cereal packets!
