Children’s Internet Safety 21 Screens reduce empathy Research has shown that screen time inhibits young children’s ability to read faces and learn social skills, two key factors needed to develop empathy. Face-to-face interactions are the only way young children learn to understand non-verbal cues and interpret them. “Until babies develop language,” says Charles Nelson, a Harvard neuroscientist who studies the impact of neglect on children’s brains, “all communication is non-verbal, so they depend heavily on looking at a face and deriving meaning from that face. Is this person happy with me, or are they upset at me?” That two-way interaction between children and adult caregivers is critically important for brain development. Exposure to screens reduces babies’ ability to read human emotion and control their frustration. It also detracts from activities that help boost their brain power, like play and interacting with other children. But if you have to rely on screens at certain moments, just make sure to control the quality of what they see and engage with them while they’re watching.The benefits of limiting and even eliminating screen time in these early moments will last a lifetime. BABIES NEED HUMANS, NOT SCREENS cont’d unicef.org Image by Drazen Zigic
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