Children Who Use Phones Daily Experience Halted Brain Development

News

Children Who Use Phones Daily Experience Halted Brain Development

A groundbreaking study conducted in Japan has revealed that children who use smartphones daily experience a significant halt in their brain development over a span of three years.

This means that cognitive abilities, memory, the hippocampus responsible for learning, as well as neural development for language and emotions, essentially come to a standstill during this period.

This eye-opening research was conducted by the Aging Medicine Research Institute at Tohoku University in Japan, a prestigious national university where even the renowned Chinese writer Lu Xun once studied.

The study tracked the internet usage habits of 223 children with an average age of 11 over the course of three years, focusing on the impact of “Internet Usage and Brain Development.”

The study categorized children’s internet usage habits into seven stages:

1. No access to computers or smartphones.
2. Access to computers and smartphones but never used.
3. Occasional usage.
4. Usage for one day a week.
5. Usage for 2-3 days a week.
6. Usage for 4-5 days a week.
7. Almost daily usage.

Before commencing the study, the research institute ensured that all children had comparable intelligence levels and no preexisting brain conditions. In addition, the study employed MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to examine the children’s brain structures.

After tracking these children for three years, the research institute was astounded to discover that children who used the internet more frequently exhibited slower language development and, to a greater extent, had their brain development halted.

Professor Ryuta Kawashima, the director of the research institute, pointed out that brain scans taken after three years clearly indicated areas of the brain affected by adverse influences, as depicted by the black regions. Many brain regions of children who frequently used the internet, especially smartphones, were tainted with these black areas.

Furthermore, significant portions of the white matter, representing neural regions, were also extensively impacted, impeding neural development. The brains of children who used smartphones almost daily exhibited minimal development over the three-year period.

The research report from the Aging Medicine Research Institute at Tohoku University identified brain areas negatively affected by this development halt, including the frontal lobe cortex supporting cognitive functions, the hippocampus involved in memory and learning, language-related regions, and emotional processing regions. All of these are critical functions necessary for human life.

Children Who Use Phones Daily Experience Halted Brain Development

The report emphasized that if a child purchases a smartphone upon entering junior high school and uses it for internet access every day for three years, their brain development essentially remains at the level of a sixth-grader when they complete junior high school. In contrast, other children who don’t use smartphones have already progressed to the level of ninth graders in terms of cognitive abilities.

How can a child with the cognitive abilities of a sixth-grader expect to excel in high school entrance exams? This is a grave question that every parent must consider.

Professor Narushige Hayashi, a professor at a Japanese medical school and the president of the International Society for Brain Cryotherapy, believes that excessive smartphone use not only diminishes cognitive abilities but also leads to reduced concentration. Constantly checking phones, responding to emails or texts, disrupts one’s thought processes and work, greatly reducing efficiency.

In response, Professor Hayashi advocates:

– If you want to excel in school, stay away from your phone.
– If you want to excel at work, turn off your phone.