014: Understanding the AAP’s new screen time guidelines

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) just updated its screen time recommendations - and, for the first time, we can actually see and understand the research on which the recommendations are based. They're a bit more nuanced than the previous versions, so join me as we walk through what the recommendations mean for parents of babies and toddlers - whether or not your children have been using screens until now. We'll look at the impact particularly of TV on cognitive development, obesity, and prosocial vs. antisocial behavior. News flash: if you're not watching and discussing shows WITH your child, he may be learning antisocial behavior from even the most innocuous of PBS programming. This is the first in a two-part series on screen time. Here we focus on what science says about the impacts on development. In the second part we'll examine what we can do about mitigating these impacts and on harnessing some of the good that digital media can do for our kids, since they are growing up in a world where the use of digital media is a fact of life.