'It's Like Visual Adderall': What Increased Screen Time Is Doing To Our Brains
Working from home? Time to open up your laptop.
Need a break? Can’t go wrong with Netflix.
Missing your friends? Whip out your phone to video chat with them.
Amid the coronavirus response, many of us are doing what we can to maintain safe social distance without having to be emotionally distant. Everything we used to do seems to have a virtual alternative, from hanging out with friends to collaborating on group projects. But, while having these alternatives may be a win for convenience, it also means from morning till night, we keep turning to the glare of our screens.
Research shows that extended screen time makes a palpable impact on the development of young brains. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends limiting screen time to one hour per day for children aged 2 to 5.
A landmark study published last year by JAMA Pediatrics found that healthy preschool-aged children who use screens more than the AAP recommends have smaller vocabularies and are slower to name objects they recognize.. They also found that screen time affects brain development -- kids with higher exposure to screens had lower white matter integrity, which is associated with language and literacy skills.
Penijean Gracefire is a practicing licensed mental health counselor and is passionate about helping people better understand how their brain works. Gracefire says a lot of people know too much screen time is bad for our brains, but they don’t necessarily know how or why, and that’s critical to changing behavior.
“If you aren't discussing with people how what they eat, what they put into their bodies and how much time they look at screens actually affects how they feel -- mentally and emotionally -- you aren't really equipping them with good decision-making techniques that affect mental health,” she said.
Most electronic screens, from our TVs to our smartphones to our laptops, emit a blue light that is visually more stimulating than red or orange lights. Constantly being exposed to blue light doesn’t allow a shift into warmer frequencies, which is what our brains are used to being in when we relax, sleep and physically recuperate.
A 2010 National Institute of Health study collected blood samples from subjects before and after exposure to a range of blue light between 2 and 3:30 a.m. Their research discovered blue light suppresses melatonin production more than the standard white fluorescent light bulb.
On top of this, LCD screens and lightbulbs have a “refresh rate” which means they flicker at a rate of 50-60 times per second and trigger the central nervous system. Gracefire compares this constant stimulation to being on “visual Adderall” and it not only affects our productivity, but also our quality of sleep.
“If you're constantly hitting yourself with those fast frequencies, your body can’t actually relax into the slower stage that it needs to really fully, properly sleep,” she said.
A lot of times when we take breaks or relax, we just switch from one screen to another, but in order to truly recalibrate our brains we need to give it the full spectrum of color. How can we do that?
Ideally, Gracefire says to look at the sky -- not directly at the sun -- once an hour for a few minutes. Other ways of taking a break could be closing your eyes for a bit or doing a small task that doesn’t require a screen.
“Anything can help with the reset a little bit,” Gracefire said.
So, go outside, walk through the trees, and remember to look up every once in a while.