Crystal Cleven testifies on screen inferiority effect and smart screen concerns
Crystal Cleven, a physician scientist and parent, describes the 'screen inferiority effect' showing screens lead to poorer reading comprehension, shares research on preschoolers read to by screens showing ADHD-like EEG findings, and reports parents saying children already watched YouTube in school this week.
Good afternoon, my name is Crystal Cleven and I'm a mother of two young kids in the New York City Public Schools.
While touring 4K programs, I had a vision of kids sitting in a circle being read to by a teacher with a real book.
Instead, I repeatedly saw these kids staring up at a smart screen, a robotic voice emanating from the screen reading to kids.
While these normally curious and eager three to four year olds were not engaged with the text, the teacher, or each other.
I'm a physician scientist, so naturally I dug into the data.
There are extensive high quality studies that demonstrate something called the screen inferiority effect.
Which is the phenomenon that learning on screens leads to poorer reading comprehension, language acquisition, and shallower processing of information than when you do it on paper.
One study of preschoolers showed children who were read to by a screen performed significantly worse
on attention tests and had EEG findings similar to those with ADHD compared to those who are read to by an adult with a book.
Yet our youngest kids have some of their first and only book exposures delivered by a screen.
By age five, there is a one million word exposure gap between children who are read to daily and those who are not.
New York City public schools should be racing to close that gap using real books.
Even screen-based brain breaks or movement breaks used heavily in schools are simply a short form overstimulating videos.
Several studies have shown they worsen attention, self-control, and negatively impact memory and decision making.
We've been in school for four days.
I've had dozens of parents tell me their children, young children, have already watched YouTube in school.
The current non-educational videos, to be clear, the current guidelines are not strong enough.
They do not talk about smart screens at all.
And we are asking elective officials at the city and state level to implement stronger
laws, and enforceable guidelines.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And we'll add two more people to the panel, too.
Alina Lewis and Jean-Marc Apelon.