Theme 1 – Difficulty establishing causality due to confounding factors
Many commenters stressed that the study likely missed key variables such as parents’ socioeconomic status, education, working memory, and the amount of adult attention children receive.
- “Yeah, I admit I didn't click through and read the methods so it's possible they did what was necessary, but off the top of my head, you would need to do your best to model: 1. Parents' own socioeconomic status 2. Parents' educational attainment 3. Parents' working memory…” – hyperpape
- “Yea I’d love to see what they attempted to control for. I can’t imagine it’s possible to begin to draw a causal link.” – trescenzi
- “The big thing missing there are measures of parental behaviour and how much attention the kids get from adults.” – graemep
Theme 2 – Screen time displaces real‑world interaction and developmental experiences
A recurring view was that screens crowd out time for sensory exploration, social interaction, motor‑skill practice, and problem‑solving, which are crucial in early childhood.
- “The screen time crowds out time they could be interacting with the real world, engaging with all of their senses, and interacting with people. Two hours per day adds up over a critical time of their life…” – bitshiftfaced
- “It's not entirely about what they're watching… it's about what they're missing out on in that time. It's 2 hrs every day not communicating with another human being, not developing motor skills, not problem solving etc.” – almostarockstar
- “They lock their sight on it, anything else is irrelevant including mother. Its like watching a heroin junkie with full syringe dangling around.” – kakacik
Theme 3 – Content, context, and age matter; not all screen time is equal
Commenters argued that the effect depends on what is watched (educational vs. passive entertainment), how interactive it is, and the child’s age, suggesting lumping all “screen time” together obscures nuance.
- “Good calm shows with wide vocabularies are similar to reading… But why. Why are we stimulating with mindless color movement, like a modern lava lamp?” – basch
- “I don't mind my kid spending an hour watching some educational TV, or a couple hours playing Hello Kitty. I don't want her spending 15 minutes watching Cocomelon.” – nucleardog
- “Also, I think the type of content kids consume can tell us more about the performance, because IMO, long form content can have a different impact than short form.” – shymaple