Too much screen time can make your toddler more distractible, British researchers warn. The use of smartphones and tablets by babies and toddlers has soared in recent years. “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,” said lead author Tim Smith, a professor at the Center for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck, University of London. “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,” Smith added. To learn more, Smith’s team studied toddlers with different levels of touchscreen usage, assessing them at 12 months, 18 months and 3.5 years of age. At each visit, the toddlers did computer tasks while an eye-tracker measured their attention. Objects appeared in different locations of the computer screen, and researchers monitored how quickly the children looked at the objects and how well they ignored distracting objects. Toddlers with high daily touchscreen use were quicker to look when objects appeared and were less able to resist distraction than those with little or no daily screen time, the study found. Main researcher Ana Maria Portugal, an associate research fellow at Birkbeck University of London, said the team could not conclude,…  read on >  read on >

Too much screen time can make your toddler more distractible, British researchers warn. The use of smartphones and tablets by babies and toddlers has soared in recent years. “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,” said lead author Tim Smith, a professor at the Center for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck, University of London. “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,” Smith added. To learn more, Smith’s team studied toddlers with different levels of touchscreen usage, assessing them at 12 months, 18 months and 3.5 years of age. At each visit, the toddlers did computer tasks while an eye-tracker measured their attention. Objects appeared in different locations of the computer screen, and researchers monitored how quickly the children looked at the objects and how well they ignored distracting objects. Toddlers with high daily touchscreen use were quicker to look when objects appeared and were less able to resist distraction than those with little or no daily screen time, the study found. Main researcher Ana Maria Portugal, an associate research fellow at Birkbeck University of London, said the team could not conclude,…  read on >  read on >

Too much screen time can make your toddler more distractible, British researchers warn. The use of smartphones and tablets by babies and toddlers has soared in recent years. “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,” said lead author Tim Smith, a professor at the Center for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck, University of London. “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,” Smith added. To learn more, Smith’s team studied toddlers with different levels of touchscreen usage, assessing them at 12 months, 18 months and 3.5 years of age. At each visit, the toddlers did computer tasks while an eye-tracker measured their attention. Objects appeared in different locations of the computer screen, and researchers monitored how quickly the children looked at the objects and how well they ignored distracting objects. Toddlers with high daily touchscreen use were quicker to look when objects appeared and were less able to resist distraction than those with little or no daily screen time, the study found. Main researcher Ana Maria Portugal, an associate research fellow at Birkbeck University of London, said the team could not conclude,…  read on >  read on >

As Americans await their COVID-19 shot, a new study of a different vaccine shows the power of Facebook posts in fueling “anti-vax” resistance to immunization. The study included more than 10 years of public Facebook posts on the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. It found that nearly 40% of 6,500 HPV vaccine-related posts from 2006 to 2016 amplified a perceived risk. The data suggest the posts had momentum over time. “We should not assume that only the disease is perceived as a risk, but when research supports it, that medical treatments and interventions might unfortunately also be perceived as risks,” said Monique Luisi, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, in Columbia. “It’s more likely that people are going to see things on social media, particularly on Facebook, that are not only negative about the HPV vaccine, but will also suggest the HPV vaccine could be harmful. It amplifies the fear that people may have about the vaccine, and we see that posts that amplify fear are more likely to trend than those that don’t,” she said in a school news release Luisi said the findings could shed light on the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and distribution. During the rollout, people will likely see a lot of negative information and that negative information will be what trends on social media, she said. “If…  read on >  read on >