NIH Study Probes Impact of Heavy Screen Time on Young Brains
- Seven-plus screen hours may cause prematurely thinner cortex
- Early findings hint heavy use of devices may hurt test scores
Children play games on a smartphone.
Photographer: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
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Brain scans of adolescents who are heavy users of smartphones, tablets and video games look different from those of less active screen users, preliminary results from an ongoing study funded by the National Institutes of Health show, according to a report on Sunday by “60 Minutes.”
That’s the finding of the first batch of scans of 4,500 nine- to 10-year-olds. Scientists will follow those children and thousands more for a decade to see how childhood experiences, including the use of digital devices, affect their brains, emotional development and mental health.