Media consumption in children: being or appearing on the screen

Naked children's feet carefully feel over stones, hard noodles and crumpled newspaper. Green, blue and red hula hoops frame the different materials. A little girl balances from tire to tire on the barefoot path that her physiotherapist designed in the gymnastics room of the Social Pediatric Center (SPZ) in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Her steps seem hesitant, not always in balance.

“That’s loud!” Anna (name changed by the editors) suddenly shouts, backing away in shock from the shimmering, crackling emergency blanket lying between two tires. Some sounds are still very foreign to her.

Little Anna came to physiotherapy with her father. He helps her take off her shoes and takes her to the door of the gymnastics room, where the physiotherapist Antje Taubert warmly greets them both. Then the father says goodbye and goes back to the waiting area of ​​the SPZ. Anna entered this practice for the first time about a year ago. At that time she barely spoke and avoided any eye contact. “She made progress so quickly,” says Antje Taubert.

Social Media In the summer, a group of experts commissioned by the EU Commission presented proposals on how young people's access to social media could be regulated. Core of the model: Young people should only have limited access from the age of 13. A youth version of the platforms is intended for 13 to 17 year olds, where addictive features such as endless scrolling, algorithmic feeds or automatically starting videos are disabled by default. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented a technical solution for age verification, the so-called Eudi wallet, in July. In the future, responsibility will lie with the platforms, which de facto do not control current age restrictions - many only allow profiles from the age of 13.

EU On Wednesday, Commission President von der Leyen will give her annual State of the Union speech in the EU Parliament in Strasbourg. She is expected to announce how she plans to introduce the experts' recommendations into parliament as a bill.

Germany Education Minister Karin Prien (CDU) also presented a commission of experts in the summer. She suggested something similar to her colleagues at EU level. They also advocate for mandatory youth protection versions of social media and also consider a ban on children under 13 to be worthy of discussion. Prien had made it clear several times how exactly we wanted to decide in the fall. On the one hand, the EU has legislative responsibility for regulating tech companies. On the other hand, a coordinated strategy is expected to have more impact.

At the beginning the girl showed significant developmental delays. “She hadn’t learned to play at all and actually only knew how to use the smartphone – i.e. sliding the display,” remembers the physiotherapist. Without being able to grasp and feel things, the child lacks the basis for his own actions, explains Taubert. “The children cannot experience the entire material experience, social experience, self-experience, the cause-and-effect principle – i.e. what happens when I do something – on the smartphone,” says the physiotherapist.

When Anna initially came here, she avoided higher levels. If she felt overwhelmed, she simply turned away. Her movements were also noticeable, such as the frantic waving of her hands in front of her body. “This type of self-stimulation is one of the autism-like symptoms that normally developing children don’t need,” explains Taubert.

Katrin Klöpper has been observing for around ten years that more and more children are unable to cope with their environment. It started back then with the excessive consumption of media by small children, explains the senior doctor at the center. One main reason: the use of smartphones, which are becoming increasingly integrated into people's everyday lives. “But not to the extent that we are seeing now,” emphasizes the doctor. She sits at her desk diagonally opposite the gymnastics room, where little Anna continues to work her way along the barefoot path. Klöpper opens some video recordings of her patients on her laptop.

A five-year-old boy appears on the screen, standing almost motionless in a room. There are various musical instruments around him. A therapist repeatedly encourages him to play - but he remains uninvolved. In the next video you can see another boy who is barely aware of his surroundings. Both children speak little or not at all, avoid eye contact, hardly show any gestures and have limited movements. They are not autistic, but exhibit similar behaviors.

Nevertheless, the symptoms are often summarized under the name “virtual autism”. Experts reject this popular scientific term because autism has primarily genetic causes. The autism-like symptoms caused by high media consumption have not yet been officially recognized - long-term studies on the phenomenon are lacking. Katrin Klöpper relies primarily on her clinical experience: If media consumption is reduced, the symptoms improve quickly. The pediatrician observes that more and more children are affected. Depending on consumption, the symptoms vary in severity.

Current figures prove what the doctor observes every day: Since 2020, two to five year olds' access to smart devices has increased significantly, the current miniKIM study shows. Every fifth toddler now has their own tablet, and every tenth in this age group has a cell phone or smartphone.

Although most parents are critical of smartphones in the hands of children, almost half of the primary carers also see advantages. Some hope for a learning effect: German-speaking parents let their children practice English with apps, parents from abroad use them to teach their children German.

The current media addiction study by DAK-Gesundheit and UKE Hamburg shows what consequences excessive media use can have during childhood: one in four people aged 10 to 17 can hardly get away from the screen. Experts speak of a worrying development. The isolation of families during the Corona years accelerated this greatly. Katrin Klöpper also sees the pandemic as a turning point. Schools and kindergartens were closed, although many parents worked from home. The pressure to manage childcare and work at the same time was high. Screens quickly became the solution to keep children quiet for long periods of time.

“We had to keep our daughter, who didn't go to daycare yet, busy so that she could work or study,” says Anna's father, who is patiently waiting for the physiotherapy session to end. He remembers well the pressure of having to do everything. He worked outside the home. His wife attended a German course and ran the household. When she studied, cooked or showered, she kept her little daughter occupied with her smartphone or sat her in front of the television.

The child seemed happy, says the father. But over time, Anna changed. She withdrew emotionally and reacted insecurely to her environment. “She had no balance and couldn’t touch anything,” the man remembers. Then he adds quietly, “And she never kissed us.”

Even at night, the many hours in front of the screen had an impact on Anna. She processed the visual stimuli in her sleep and kept waking up. “Our daughter screamed serial names,” the father remembers, still stunned.

For him and his wife it was clear: something was fundamentally wrong. They sought medical advice and soon banned all screen media from their daughter's everyday life. Instead, they brought building blocks, toy figures and radio plays into the house to offer their child tangible experiences.

Today the father looks with concern at other families who give their small children smartphones. He himself will never forget the moment when he and his wife learned what the long screen time was doing to their daughter. “Back then we just looked at each other and thought: We did something wrong, it’s our fault,” he says quietly.

Whether it's your own knowledge or advice from the pediatrician's office: For parents, the diagnosis of screen-induced developmental disorder is usually associated with great shame. “It is often clear to parents in advance that there is a connection with the smartphone,” reports Klöpper, who took a few phone calls in her consultation room.

This makes sensitive interaction in the SPZ all the more important: “We try to work without accusations and not to say that anyone is guilty.” Klöpper doesn't want to condemn screens in principle. Parental role models and a real relationship in everyday life are crucial. Only when children sit alone in front of the screen do they lose connection to the environment and their own feelings, says Klöpper.

A child must first learn to calm themselves. If the smartphone regularly takes on this task, the feeling is suppressed, but dealing with one's own emotions is not practiced. The brain is particularly malleable in the first years of life. If small children sit passively in front of screens a lot during this time, it leaves its mark on their brain development.

Neuroscience now clearly shows that excessive media consumption changes important nerve connections and pathways. Klöpper observes these consequences in everyday life: Some children are used to fast, changing stimuli. If they don't happen, it will be difficult to maintain your attention. They also find it more difficult to endure boredom and frustration. In her opinion, what this can mean becomes apparent in elementary school at the latest. Suddenly children are supposed to sit still, listen, wait, concentrate. Skills that require self-regulation.

“Another problem with smartphones and laptops is when parents themselves constantly look at their smartphones,” says the doctor. Experts refer to this as so-called technoference – the constant interruption of interpersonal interaction through digital media. For example, if a mother or father repeatedly looks at the display while feeding the child, on the playground or while reading aloud, the connection to the child is repeatedly broken.

For small children, however, this reliable eye contact is important for their development: they reflect their own feelings, learn emotional security and experience that their needs are perceived. If this direct response is permanently missing, some children withdraw emotionally or show unusual behavior in order to generate a reaction at all. “The smartphone in the parents’ hand acts like an invisible wall that prevents emotional closeness,” emphasizes Klöpper.

Many parents console themselves with the fact that the television was on when they were children. But Klöpper contradicts: The medium has changed drastically. In the past, programs were quieter, slower and less intrusive, and the television stayed at a distance, on the wall. The smartphone, on the other hand, completely eliminates this distance. “There is simply no space left in between, no world, no person with whom I could still interact,” says the doctor.

In the meantime, physiotherapist Antje Taubert has picked up the rustling blanket, shows it to Anna and gives it to her. The foil, which was scary to Anna just a few minutes ago, spontaneously becomes a “glittering blanket” - the little one shines. Then she feels a shimmering pink glass stone, laughs and throws it back into the blue hoop. It crackles again - this time as she crosses the crumpled newspaper.

Anna is no longer frightened, continues running and feels the hard edges of the noodles under her feet, which are in the next tire. She briefly appears irritated, but then she continues to explore the surface with her toes, while Taubert comments on each discovery: hard, soft, cold, warm. During the exercise, Anna gets to know these different adjectives in a tangible way - sensory impressions that she previously missed on the smooth, two-dimensional display. “She has to have these experiences first,” explains the physiotherapist.

Where there used to be withdrawal, waving of hands and silence, today the girl seeks eye contact, uses simple words and actively participates in the game in the room.

“Only if the parents get involved can you see how quickly things improve,” emphasizes Taubert. “Then you can see how the children become more persistent and develop motivation,” explains the physiotherapist as she throws a few noodles back into the tire. For her, the case of the girl, who barely spoke and had coordination problems when walking, is an example of the change in her entire professional field: "The therapy can no longer be sorted into individual specialist groups. It takes a multi-professional team - because of the complex stories that these children bring with them," says the physiotherapist.

Anna's father waits at the edge of the gym until his daughter has overcome the last hurdles of the barefoot path. He came in for the last few minutes to watch her progress. Since his diagnosis, he has radically changed his media habits. After work, he leaves his smartphone untouched. “It’s just for making phone calls now,” he says. The television is still in the living room, but it stays off as long as Anna is awake. “I would like to watch a bit of football in the evening,” he laughs. But Anna has already been in bed for a long time.

When the lesson ends, she runs to her father, who is sitting on a wooden box near the door. He beams and happily takes her in his arms. “Parents see from their children’s progress that it’s worth sticking with,” says Antje Taubert with satisfaction. The father takes Anna's hand, they both say goodbye to the physiotherapist and stroll down the hallway to the door. He asks his daughter how it was. Anna laughs and says a little. The father's smartphone remains silent.