To prevent a child from being occupied by electronic screens for too much time, the child is placed in nature and grows naturally.

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Knocking on the blackboard” (ID: qiaoheiban8 ), author Gong Xiaoli.

The novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” has a line: tens, millions, don’t let the children, close to your TV, it is best not to buy, install, this is the most stupid thing.

Children have watched a few episodes of cartoons? Can not remember. The iPad that was thrown to him two hours ago is still showing colorful images.

When the child started shouting the screen was unclear, we finally gathered at the door of the hospital clinic. I clearly know that my child is staring at the screen for a long time and is likely to have premature myopia. And I also know that this is not the only dilemma I have encountered. Ophthalmologists remind me that 90% of Asian children will wear glasses in the future due to the massive use of electronic screens in modern society.

Let's put down the electronics, or the kids will really get silly

Another study abroad has also confirmed the adverse effects of watching the screen. A new study published in the American Medical Association Magazine Pediatrics by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center shows that children are staring at electronic screens for too long. Will change the structure of the brain management language and self-control part.

When you look at your mobile computer for a long time, it will become silly. With scientific evidence, this result surprised me.

Put down the electronics, or the kids will really get silly

The Pediatric Associations of the United States and Canada have pointed out that children aged 0-2 should not be exposed to any technology products (such as computers, mobile phones, iPads, etc.); Should be more than 1 hour; children aged 6-18 should not exceed 2 hours per day.

How much time does it take for children in China to spend on electronic products?

China Children’s Center (2019) released in August 2019According to the sample survey, Chinese children’s use of electronic products is ranked in the top three of their off-campus time allocations, both on the school day and on weekends.

Children spend an average of 43.24 minutes a day on electronic school days and 96.27 minutes on weekends. In addition, the use of electronic products by rural children in rural areas is significantly higher than that of urban children.

Compared from the length of time, the average length of time for children in China to use electronic products has not timed out, but this still makes me uneasy. I want to know what kind of branding technology has left on people. In addition to the part of the e-groom that liberates parents and technology, how does it change the child’s body subtly?

Change the brain?

Screen media activities are one of the most common recreational activities for children and adolescents, but few studies have examined their effects on brain structure or function.

A study published in JAMA magazine in March said that the use of mobile phones would delay the development of children’s language expression for about 18 months.

A Canadian research paper in April said that watching screen time would affect the development of preschool children’s attention; another study in the same month showed that watching the screen too long would affect the child’s development.

Let's put down the electronics, or the kids will really get silly

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital explained the structure of the brain. The hospital invited 47 healthy children aged 3-5 to participate in the experiment. They performed MRI and cognitive tests. The results showed that children who were “staring at the screen” for more than an hour each day had lower levels of white matter development.

White matter is a key part of the development of skills such as language, literacy and cognition. The first five years of child growth are also the fastest period of brain development. If the brain is not developed at first, it is more difficult for children to Later in the study, he became active and focused.

Pediatrician Hutton is not worried about the fact that parents use more electronic devices and their children are affected. About 90% of children even start using electronic devices before the age of one.

Gray and white matter determine the child’s intelligence

How important is the role of white matter in the brain? It determines the child’s intelligence.

There is a saying that live to the old and learn to be old. Throughout our life, we can learn new skills and develop new skills. That’s because the gray matter cells of our brain work perfectly with white matter cells.

Gray cells continue to grow new tentacles, linked with other nerve cells, which is equivalent to each gray matter neuron cell is a super bio computer, and ourThere are 14 billion such super-computers in the cerebral cortex, which is the brain’s enormous plasticity and endless source of creativity.

The white matter cells are responsible for transmitting information, the white matter cells are reduced, the link of information transmission is blocked, and the powerful CPU cannot run.

Put down the electronics, or the kids will really get silly

Children’s period, the prefrontal lobe responsible for advanced thinking is the key period of development and growth. The external education is proper. The gray matter cells of the prefrontal cortex are well wired, and the white matter cells develop rapidly, leading to thickening of the prefrontal cortex. It will make people smart.

In reality, the child can see the ball rolling away, and the association that ran past it, and on the screen, the child may not know where the ball rolled, and there will be no triggering of subsequent actions.

The human brain also conforms to the natural law of “natural selection, use and retreat”, and passively accepts information for a long time, and those brain cells that have not been used for reinforcement are eventually reduced. Human intelligence is naturally limited.

Continuous exploration of the relationship between the screen and the brain

As the age grows, the brain develops gradually, and will the impact of electronic screens on cognitive development in adolescents be reduced?

The answer is no.

In December 2018, the US medscape news reported the findings of the largest study of the American Teen Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study.

The study is expected to recruit 11,500 children between the ages of 9 and 10 and conduct a 10-year follow-up survey of these children. The main purpose of the study was to investigate whether there were any brain patterns associated with screen use and to observe various brain factors that could cause mental problems in children and whether these factors were related to screen use.

At the end of 2018, ABCD has collected brain imaging from the first 4,500 children. The analysis found that children with a screen time of more than 7 hours a day were significantly thinner than their peers.

This result is similar to a 2017 study on the use of children’s Facebook. However, there were only 62 children in the 2017 study, and their Facebook data was only 5 weeks old. The study found that the longer the children stayed on Facebook, the thinner the gray matter of the nucleus accumbens in their brains.

The nucleus accumbens is an important center of the brain reward system. Just like the more people who brush the circle of friends, the less likely it is to feel reward and pleasure. The brain reward system is not well developed. In the long run, the child may become less and less motivated and unwilling.It is also a reasonable result of behavior to study hard.

Let's put down the electronics, or the kids will really get silly

Speak back to the ABCD study. By analyzing the results of existing cognitive tests, they initially found that children who had more than two hours of screen time per day scored significantly less than two hours of children in language and thought tests. This is consistent with the conclusion of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital that children have been staring at electronic screens for too long and will change the structure of the brain’s management language and self-control.

This is just the first batch of data, and the project has just begun. The project leader said that they will continue to report to the other interested scientists on the various stages of the report and the data already collected.

The follow-up report to this study is indeed worth looking forward to. The study should provide an objective, rather than empirical, answer to many controversial or rather vague parenting and addiction problems.

Bathing in the sun

Either scientific conclusions or vague awareness, long-term staring at the screen is not good for children, and has been accepted by most parents. So how do you get the right medicine? The advice given by the doctor is very simple, that is, to get more sun.

There is a well-known controlled experiment in the medical community about the protective effect of light on vision.

The researchers compared the prevalence of myopia in Chinese children in Singapore and Sydney, Australia. Both groups were Chinese children, so from a genetic point of view, their genetic characteristics of myopia should show similarities.

However, compared with the visual status of the two groups of children, the prevalence of myopia in children living in Sydney was only 3.3%, while the rate of myopia in children living in Singapore was as high as 29.1%. The researchers then carefully analyzed the children’s lifestyle, with Singaporean children spending 3.05 hours per week and Sydney children spending 13.75 hours per week.

The same is the emission spectrum, which is different from the high-frequency blue light emitted by the screen. The spectrum of the sun is a continuous full spectrum. It has different wavelengths of light. This kind of light source is transmitted over long distances and evenly dispersed in our eyes. It gently stimulates the development of retinal cells, which have preserved human eyes for thousands of years.

The benefit of the sun for the brain is that the child is naturally in love and fun, taking him to outdoor activities, which is conducive to decompression in a relaxed environment.

Put down the electronics, or the kids will really get silly

The number of brain nerve fibers, dendrites, and synapses in the absence of exercise and long-term exercisers

An expert in the field of brain and motion, John Rudy, a professor at Harvard Medical School, who pointed out that exercise can increase the pressure threshold and improve the ability to withstand stress.

In China’s “Preschool Children’s Sports Guide”, it is also stated: “Preschool children have more than three hours of physical activity during the whole day, at least two hours of which are outdoor activities.”

This guide also has a scientific basis. Outdoor sports can produce a large number of neurons, while environmentally optimized stimuli help neurons survive. That is to say, the physical education class provides the brain with the raw materials needed for learning, while the learning in the classroom encourages the newborn nerve cells to connect to the neural network. In 2007, German researchers found that people learn vocabulary after exercise by 20% faster than before exercise.

To prevent your child from being occupied by electronic screens for too much time, it is to put the child in nature and grow naturally.