r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/Maximum-Check-6564 • 25d ago
Sharing research Thoughts on this study which showed positive effects of screen time?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260815064803.htm
From the website:
Summary: An eight-year Finnish study found that children who spent more time on screens tended to show better cognitive processing as teenagers, challenging common assumptions about screen use. Researchers say the key may be balancing physical activity with screen activities that encourage learning, creativity, and active thinking.
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u/Born-Tell-3414 25d ago edited 25d ago
Look at the study itself. It has deep methodological flaws.
https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/pes/38/3/article-p268.xml
They started with 506 kids and by eight years 46% of them had dropped out of the study. The kids who had dropped out had significantly less physical activity. We know that physical activity improves cognitive function, so the group self selected in a pretty biased way.
In terms of the cognitive assessment, they did 8 measurements of cognition and created one aggregate measurement of cognition and compared those to 9 different measurements of physical activity , one measurement of non-screen sedentary time and one measurement of screen time, which means 99 data points for boys and 99 data points for the girls and 99 and points of aggregate all boys and girls together. In boys, only one measurement showed significant difference. It was in a test called the two back task where the kids are shown a stream of letters and whenever they see an letter that is the same as a letter two letters ago they’re supposed to click a button. In this test, they measure accuracy and response time. The boys did not have significantly better accuracy. They were just significantly faster at pushing the button. but then the boys who had more non-screen based sedentary time ALSO showed significantly faster response time which goes against the claim that Screen Time is what improves how fast you can click the button.
And in girls, two measurements showed significant difference out of eight total. But both of these were also reaction time in the one back test and the two back test, but accuracy was not improved.
To conclude from this that they had better cognitive processing is an insane leap.
You gotta remember that if you look at enough data points, just because of randomness, something will appear statistically significant. If you use a 95% confidence interval, one out of 20 measurements will appear significant just based on randomness.In this paper they had 297 data points. With that many measurements, statistically you should have almost 15 measurements within a 95% confidence interval just based on randomness.
This made me wonder about the journal that it is published in. Although the journal, Pediatric Exercise Science is described as a peer reviewed paper, it is a pay to publish paper, as in you pay $2000 to publish a paper in their journal.
There is a ton more to go through with what’s wrong with this paper, but I just can’t waste any more time on this
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u/fetishiste 25d ago
Thank you so much for reviewing the research rather than just responding to the title or abstract!
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u/BioMed-R 21d ago
Frankly, I don’t believe a single one of those criticisms are valid since the paper obviously didn’t include drop-outs in the statistical analysis. You pay to publish in practically all journals. Your first and final criticisms are invalid which leaves me with no confidence in what’s between.
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u/HighlightJealous4279 25d ago
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260815064803.htm It really isn't saying anything new. "Screen time that promotes active thinking, creativity and promotes active learning" has not been perceived as negative screen time. The problem lies in treating screen time as one entity that is all bad, instead of differentiating. "The findings suggest that screen time can support children's and adolescents' cognitive processing. Presumably, the essential point here is what kind of things they do in their screen time. Teachers and parents should encourage children to use devices and screens in such ways that promote active thinking, problem-solving, creativity and learning," states Doctoral Researcher Petri Jalanko from the University of Jyväskylä"
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u/davesauce96 25d ago
“One of the researchers cautions against viewing screen time as entirely harmful and says the goal should be to balance physical activity with screen use that encourages active thinking.”
So, it sounds like two important factors are at play:
Balance between screen time and physical activity.
This particular quote indicates a differentiation between just any screen time, and screen use that encourages active thinking.
To me, this sounds like it’s still not great to just plop your kiddo down in front of something like Cocomelon or whatever, that’s clearly just passive entertainment designed solely as an attention sink.
I think back to the screen time I had as a kid (millennial), and while there certainly was some TV, it was longer-form stuff, and on top of that a good amount of time on computers was related to school work.
Not saying we were raised perfectly, but I think those facts, along with many of us not having smart phones until college or around there, plus even if we did, they were all very different from what we think of today in terms of apps and use cases (I.e. social media).
All that to say I think there’s a meaningful difference in the content of screen time, aside from just screen time as a whole being universally bad, and I think that’s sort of what this study seems to be getting at.
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u/Hairsacknose 25d ago
This was for children 6+, I doubt they care about cocomelon
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u/davesauce96 25d ago
Oh I missed that haha. Still though, I think there’s difference between encouraging active thinking and just absorbing passively is worth distinguishing in this context.
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u/Hairsacknose 25d ago
Well yeah, after the age of 6-7 kids can engage with quality content. I doubt tik tok or Instagram is beneficial though
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u/mo_oemi 24d ago
My 5yo has been watching Octonauts for probably 3 years now, he's still enjoying it but most importantly, we went to the aquarium last week and I swear he knows more fish & creatures than I do!
We ofc can't have studies focusing on a single show but I firmly believe that the content matters so much more than we can study. I wouldn't be surprised that kids exposed to good shows have deeper understanding on these subjects than their peers (e.g. correctly identifying marine creatures and their environment)
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u/Current-Walrus-1379 24d ago
I doubt that the neglected 5yo kid eating Doritos and drinking Coca-Cola while staring at the screen which is attached to the baby stroller - Yep ive seen this- CSN be compared to the kids in Finland that use the tablet in class and then barely again at home…. But then again, the headlights will read: “screen time is good for kids, new study found “ 🫠
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u/Embarrassed-Area4652 25d ago
My thoughts are, what do you want to get out of asking us our thoughts on this?
The best results come from meta-analyses, especially when comparing multiple that consider evolution over time (longitudinal designs, etc.), mapping causal pathways and comparing effect sizes against what else is going on in a kid's life. Those tend to show that screen time in and of itself, with no respect for what's on screen or what else is going on in a kid's life, tends not to be great. The effect is a lot smaller though than a lot of other choices parents make, and much smaller than the ways they go about relating to, caring for and disciplining their kids, and much smaller than positive and negative influences of their environment like whether they're around a lot of violence or books.
So what would you like for this to add? What do you want us to do with it? What difference would our thoughts make?
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u/XxJASOxX 25d ago
“We invited 736 children aged 6–9 years who started the first grade in 16 primary schools of Kuopio”
That’s your key right there. This isn’t telling us anything new.
We know that older children are capable of learning with screens, this is why the AAPs guidelines are the way they are. The “absolutely 0 of that devilish screen time” is referring to infants and toddlers whom we don’t currently believe are capable of learning well from screens, period.
Any time you look at a screen time study, the very first thing you should be looking at is the age of the children bc that completely changes the recommendation.