Brain Development Research Featured on TODAY Show
NBC’s Vicky Nguyen recently visited Cincinnati Children’s to interview experts here about their ongoing research to document how spending hours viewing smartphones, tablets and other device screens can affect brain development in young children.
The segment aired Jan. 8, 2025, on the TODAY Show.
The takeaway message: parents should strive to avoid screen time for children ages 3 and younger because too much screen time can be linked to harmful changes in the brain’s white matter and related impacts upon language development and reading skills. Direct, face-to-face interactions between parents and children, be it playing, talking or reading together, are more beneficial for healthy brain development.
The segment included comments from three experts:
- John Hutton, MD, MS, a former faculty member at Cincinnati Children’s now at UT Southwestern Medical Center, who has studied the impact of screen time upon reading skills for years.
- Nehal Parikh, DO, MS, a member on the Perinatal Institute and director of the Neurodevelopmental Disorders Prevention Center at Cincinnati Children’s who is leading a study tracking risk factors that affect the brain development and developmental outcomes of prematurely born infants.
- Lisa Hunter, PhD, scientific director of audiology for the Division of Patient Services Research at Cincinnati Children’s, who collaborates with Parikh and is leading a study on connections between hearing loss that commonly occurs among preterm infants and later language development.
