At Age 2, 58% of Toddlers Use the Internet and Show No Interest in Insects or Outdoor Play

At a certain nursery, during nap time after lunch, smartphones are used to help the children fall asleep with apps. These are called ‘sleeping apps,’ which feature characters singing lullabies or counting sheep. The nursery staff use these apps to help the children fall asleep by showing them to the children as they lie down.

The director of this nursery says the following.

“Recently, there are parents who use apps to help their children fall asleep at home. Personally, I believe the best method is for parents or nursery staff to lie down with the child and gently pat their back to help them sleep. However, some children have become accustomed to apps and dislike being put to sleep in other ways. When staff sing lullabies, the children say, ‘Teacher, you’re bad at singing,’ and ask for the smartphone. As a result, we reluctantly use apps for naptime.”

According to the nursery staff, there are quite a few children who are already unable to part with their smartphones by around the age of one. Such children will ask, ‘Where is my smartphone?’ when told by staff at the nursery, ‘Feel free to do what you like.’

What is the current relationship between children and smartphones? To explore the issues faced by children today, we will consider the situation of preschoolers with smartphones based on the recent book “Report: How Smartphone Parenting is Destroying Children” (Shinchosha), which interviews over 200 educators from nurseries to high schools and highlights the difficulties children face.

 

“Smartphones Are the Only Plaything”

Currently, it has become common to see children watching smartphones while riding in the back of a bicycle during nursery drop-offs, or families eating at restaurants while all looking at their smartphones. It’s not uncommon to find smartphone holders attached to strollers or car baby seats.

At nurseries as well, it’s not unusual for children to want smartphones. A nursery director in Tokyo says,

“Children who only use smartphones at home are unable to play outside. Even when taken to the playground or a nearby park and told ‘You can play,’ they do not try to play like other children. They stand still as if they do not know what to do. They probably cannot think of any options other than operating a smartphone. Some even pull on the teacher’s sleeve and ask ‘Can I borrow your smartphone?’ Smartphones have become their only form of play.”

In the interviews conducted, nursery staff all said that it is not just that children play outside less but that there is an increase in children who show no interest in play at all.

The reasons children do not play outside are various. Activities in parks are prohibited, opportunities for interaction have decreased due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become difficult to stay outside due to high summer temperatures, and busy parents cannot take them out.

With these factors compounding, children are spending more time viewing smartphones or tablets at home rather than playing outside. It is only natural that children will become disinterested in play itself under these circumstances. It is not only parents and smartphones but also numerous social factors that contribute to this situation.

As the situation becomes more severe, nursery staff are concerned about ‘stimulus addiction’ caused by smartphones. Children who grow up watching intense short videos for hours from around the age of one find this level of stimulation becomes their standard, making them less interested in the small, everyday things.

For example, when a nursery teacher says during a walk, ‘This insect is beautiful,’ or ‘Shall we play with water?’ some children show no interest at all and do not attempt to engage. Compared to the stimulation they get from smartphones, they do not find these activities appealing.

The director says:

“I feel that children’s interest in play is diminishing year by year. While I don’t say that smartphones are the sole cause, I do feel that they have some impact, especially when parents come to pick up their children. At the nursery, the children seem dazed and show no interest, but the moment their parents hand them a smartphone, their eyes light up and they become engrossed in it. Every time I see such a scene, I feel a sense of gloom, wondering what the nursery means to these children.”

I don’t think smartphones are inherently bad. Smartphones offer unique benefits that can’t be obtained elsewhere. However, conversely, outdoor play provides unique benefits as well, such as communication skills, physical abilities, empathy, and self-esteem developed through diverse social interactions and physical activities. If children become overly reliant on one or the other, it could distort their overall development. This is what the teachers are concerned about.

 

More than 33% of one-year-olds use smartphones.

So, what is the frequency of smartphone use among children in Japan?

According to the Ministry of Children and Families’ ‘2023 Survey Report on the Internet Usage Environment of Youth,’ the internet usage rate for children exceeds 58.8% by the age of two. For infants aged zero, it is 15.7%, and for one-year-olds, it is 33.1%.

By age two, children are just beginning to utter words. Given this, it can be said that many children are familiar with smartphones even before they start speaking Japanese.

Among the nurseries surveyed for this report, there are findings regarding children’s smartphone usage time and its characteristics. The director shares the following surprising discovery.

“The longer the smartphone usage, the more irregular the child’s daily rhythm becomes, such as staying up late. Moreover, there is a significantly higher incidence of difficulties interacting with peers and causing troubles. It seems that overall communication skills are problematic.”

A similar observation can be seen in a paper by Professor Shinichi Kuriyama and colleagues from Tohoku University’s Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization. In a study of 7,097 children, it was found that the length of screen time experienced by one-year-olds leads to developmental delays.

According to the paper, children with screen time of over four hours are 4.78 times more likely to show delays in communication development and 2.67 times more likely to have delays in problem-solving abilities at age two compared to children with less than one hour of screen time.

If these issues are evident at age two, they may become more pronounced by ages four and five. In this sense, the results of the survey at the aforementioned nursery are quite plausible.

The director continues:

“Another observation is that children who are perceived as having stronger developmental characteristics tend to have longer smartphone usage times. It is unclear whether stronger developmental traits lead to longer smartphone use or if longer smartphone use exacerbates developmental traits. However, this was consistently observed across all our affiliated nurseries.”

Some psychiatrists point out that long-term smartphone use can lead to traits similar to developmental disorders. They suggest that rather than being a congenital developmental disorder, similar issues may arise due to developmental hindrance caused by smartphone use.

For more details, please refer to the book. According to the nursery staff, these trends are not only persisting but accelerating. In the follow-up article, “Report on Parents Relying on App-Based Parenting,” we will look into the reality of how parenting is being replaced by ‘apps.’

 

Part 2: 2-Year-Olds Using Smartphones for 6 Hours a Day Report on Parents Relying on App-Based Parenting and Surprising Claims of English Education Before Learning Japanese