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Gambling, Gaming & Technology Use Community of Interest

The Gambling, Gaming & Technology Use Community of Interest brings together addiction and mental health service providers, researchers and subject matter experts in the fields of gambling, technology/Internet use and video gaming to collaborate and share knowledge on emerging trends and clinical best practices.

The National Institutes of Health are currently conducting a study on over 11,000 children to look at the long-term effects of screen time. Preliminary findings show that children who use screens for more than 2 hours a day score lower on language and thinking skills. It will be interesting to see what else is uncovered as this study continues, including whether changes are dependent on what the screen is being used for and/or on the child's developmental stage. 

Read the full article here

Watch the 60 minutes interview here

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Nimira Lalani posted:

It will be interesting to see if they control for things like income and other social determinants of health.  I have a sense that it might be more likely for parents with fewer resources to use the phone/TV as a coping strategy, especially if they don't have as much support as other more affluent parents.

Hi Nimira,

You make an excellent point. Another thing to consider, on the opposite spectrum, is that many middle class to upper class schools now utilize tablets and laptops as part of the school curriculum. Does the content matter? Or is it just screen time. I wonder if the added family resources outside of school, that may support vacations, hobbies and sports (events away from screen time) and resources that support enhanced learning, is large enough to combat the effects of increased screen time facilitated through their education.

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Aaron Cox posted:
Nimira Lalani posted:

It will be interesting to see if they control for things like income and other social determinants of health.  I have a sense that it might be more likely for parents with fewer resources to use the phone/TV as a coping strategy, especially if they don't have as much support as other more affluent parents.

Hi Nimira,

You make an excellent point. Another thing to consider, on the opposite spectrum, is that many middle class to upper class schools now utilize tablets and laptops as part of the school curriculum. Does the content matter? Or is it just screen time. I wonder if the added family resources outside of school, that may support vacations, hobbies and sports (events away from screen time) and resources that support enhanced learning, is large enough to combat the effects of increased screen time facilitated through their education.

I was just about to say that Aaron! Content matters! This has been an ongoing debate and I'm afraid I'm on the pro-screen time. I find these studies skewed...

"If you give a child an app where they play with virtual Legos, virtual blocks, and stack them, and then put real blocks in front of them, they start all over,"

Why would you test block-building capacity and say this skill isn't transferable when using real blocks? Seems pretty obvious. I'm sure if you tested for non gross motor skills such as reading comprehension, receptive identification, language ability, etc, there'd be much more positive results.

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