The screens that increasingly fill babies’ early days can shape how their brains handle uncertainty and stress later on, according to recent research.
The study found that the average baby spends more than two hours a day on screens from birth to age 2 and that this early exposure leaves traces in the brain that persist for more than a decade, influencing how quickly one makes decisions and how prone one is to anxiety while growing up.
The findings, published in eBioMedicine, come from one of the longest‑running studies to follow the same children from birth into their teens. The study links early screen exposure to brain changes that are, in turn, connected to slower decision‑making and mental health problems that show up years later.
Early experiences help shape how flexible and resilient the brain later becomes, Pei Huang, the study’s first author, said in a statement. When certain brain systems specialize too quickly, he said, children may be “less able to adapt later in life.”
From Altered Brain Wiring to Slower Decisions
Scientists followed 168 children in Singapore from birth to age 13, scanning their brains at ages 4 1/2, 6, and 7 1/2. They followed up with the children until they were 13.
On average, babies in the cohort were already spending more than one hour a day on screens at age 1 and more than two hours at age 2.
Children who had more daily screen time as babies showed a faster-than-typical change in how visual-processing regions of the brain connected with areas involved in planning, attention, and decision-making. Put simply, those brain systems appeared to mature earlier and faster than usual.
Babies with accelerated brain maturation had a higher risk of developing cognitive and behavioral issues in adolescence, the researchers found.
“Accelerated maturation happens when certain brain networks develop too fast, often in response to adversity or other stimuli,” Huang said.
Slower Decisions, Higher Anxiety
Early brain differences linked to screen time showed up in behavior.
At age 8 1/2, children with altered brain patterns took longer to decide when presented with a gambling task during which they had to guess which color box hid a token and how many points to bet on their choice.
The children weren’t making wrong choices, just slower ones.
By age 13, teens who had taken a few extra seconds longer to make decisions earlier in childhood reported more frequent or intense anxiety symptoms overall.
The authors posit that the link between accelerated visual-control network maturation, slower deliberation, and higher anxiety points to a plausible brain-based pathway. In their view, heavy screen exposure may push the brain’s sensory and control systems to organize differently than they would with less screen time.
Fast-moving, brightly edited digital images strongly stimulate the visual system at a time when the brain is still learning how to filter and prioritize information from all the senses. During typical development, brain networks specialize gradually.
In children with higher screen exposure, Huang said, networks involved in vision and cognition appeared to specialize faster—before the brain had built the “efficient connections needed for complex thinking.”
If visual information is harder to regulate, a child may take longer to feel confident enough to act—which could contribute to hesitation, worry, or anxiety when situations feel uncertain or overwhelming.
“This can limit flexibility and resilience,” Huang said.
The overall effect size was small, but developmental neuroscientists often note that small effects in early childhood can add up over time, particularly when they involve fundamental systems such as attention and emotional regulation.
Outside experts have said that the study does not establish cause and effect.
The study offers a thoughtful link between screen exposure and future implications on anxiety and decision-making, but it should still be interpreted cautiously, Kathryn Humphreys, a developmental neuroscientist and professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University, who was not involved in the study, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Brandon McDaniel, a child-development researcher and professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University Fort Wayne School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, told The Epoch Times: “This study suggests a link between infant screen use and later differences in brain development, but it cannot show that screen exposure itself caused those changes.
“It could be that infants in this study who were more frequently exposed to screen use also experienced fewer high-quality interactions with their caregiver.
“And we know that high-quality interactions between caregivers and infants are critical for healthy infant development.”
Genetics, temperament, parenting stress, and family mental health history could also influence both how much screen time infants get and how anxiety develops later on, the two experts noted. Still, the proposed pathway is useful for thinking about what infants’ brains need most during the first years of life, Humphreys said.
What Babies Experience Matters
The first two years are a period of rapid brain growth and reorganization. During this time, brain systems involved in attention, self-control, and emotional regulation are just beginning to form.
The developing brain learns best from live, responsive interaction—simple back-and-forth moments such as peekaboo, shared attention during play, or a caregiver’s responses to a baby’s sounds and expressions.
“My concern,” Humphreys said, “is that screens can unintentionally displace the frequency and quality of caregiver-infant exchanges—shared attention, language input, and co-regulation—that support early learning and later mental health.”
Moment-to-moment interactions help wire brain systems involved in attention and emotional regulation, which are still forming in infancy.
Related work from the same Singapore team has highlighted that screens are one piece of a larger developmental picture.
In a 2024 study published in Psychological Medicine, the team found that shared, interactive activities may help buffer some of the effects associated with screen time. Children whose parents frequently read with them showed weaker associations between early screen exposure and later brain differences linked to emotional regulation.
The Takeaway
Talking, singing, reading, cuddling, playing, outdoor time, and sleeping provide the kind of rich, real-world experiences babies’ brains need—experiences that nothing on screens can replicate or replace.
“Most families use screens sometimes, and context matters,” Humphreys said.
However, both she and McDaniel recommend keeping infant screen exposure low when possible and avoiding screens as a default way to soothe or distract babies, consistent with current guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
For babies younger than 18 months, the academy recommends avoiding screens other than video chatting. Parents who choose to introduce screens after that age are encouraged to watch together, help children understand what they’re seeing, and limit use to no more than an hour a day.
Both experts emphasized the same bottom line: Early relationships—being present, responsive, and playful—remain the foundation of healthy development.