a landmark government study is looking into this issue taking a look at how addictive smartphones may be and how they impact your brain the first data is out and experts are weighing in our Sherman Chow is here now with that Sherman this is the largest study of its kind here in the u.s. yeah it is it truly is a landmark study it is called the ABCD study appropriately enough that stands for adolescent brain cognitive development and that study it began in 2016 and it has what scientists consider quality data the NIH will be spending 300
million dollars tracking 11,000 kids over the course of a decade and this first wave of data were talking about involves some 4,500 kids that information alone will be able to fill three libraries of Congress so one of the first pieces of information to come out that toddlers who are on screens two hours or more a day score lower on thought at language tests than those who spend less time and of course the first two years of life are a critical period for brain development a former Google manager was the first Silicon Valley insider to publicly
acknowledge that phones and apps are designed to win what he calls the war for attention and for older kids Tristan Harris says there's a fundamental difference between gossiping on the house phone a generation ago and what happens today but what this misses is that your telephone in the 1970s didn't have a thousand engineers on the other side of the telephone who are redesigning it to work with other telephones and then updating the way your telephone worked every day to be more and more persuasive now this ABCD study looks at many other impacts on the adolescent
brain including puberty sports and concussions drugs alcohol even mental illness and as you may know many Silicon Valley parents including industry leaders strictly limit the technology use for their own children experts saying that these are great ideas great devices but use them with a purpose and the quote is you know use the tool don't let the tool use you tell me about it when it serves is everything for them their line of communication and any cases there TV - Thank You Sherman
