Large NIH study to collect and share data on the impact on kids’ brains of screen time and other social, behavioral, physical and environmental factors

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NIH Study Probes Impact of Heavy Screen Time on Young Brains (Bloomberg):

“Brain scans of ado­les­cents who are heavy users of smart­phones, tablets and video games look dif­fer­ent from those of less active screen users, pre­lim­i­nary results from an ongo­ing study fund­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health show … That’s the find­ing of the first batch of scans of 4,500 nine- to 10-year-olds. Sci­en­tists will fol­low those chil­dren and thou­sands more for a decade to see how child­hood expe­ri­ences, includ­ing the use of dig­i­tal devices, affect their brains, emo­tion­al devel­op­ment and men­tal health…

Ear­ly results from the $300 mil­lion study, called Ado­les­cent Brain Cog­ni­tive Devel­op­ment (ABCD), have deter­mined that chil­dren who spend more than two hours of dai­ly screen time score low­er on think­ing and lan­guage tests. A major data release is sched­uled for ear­ly 2019 … Teenagers now spend an aver­age of 4 1/2 hours a day on their mobile phones, “60 Min­utes” reported.”

The Study:

ABCD study com­pletes enroll­ment, announces oppor­tu­ni­ties for sci­en­tif­ic engage­ment (Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health release):

“The Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health announced today that enroll­ment for the Ado­les­cent Brain Cog­ni­tive Devel­op­ment (ABCD) Study is now com­plete and, in ear­ly 2019, sci­en­tists will have access to base­line data from all ABCD Study participants.

There are 11,874 youth, ages 9–10, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the study, includ­ing 2,100 young peo­ple who are twins or triplets. All will be fol­lowed through young adulthood…

The study—being con­duct­ed at 21 research sites around the country—will use advanced neu­roimag­ing to observe brain devel­op­ment in chil­dren through­out ado­les­cence, while track­ing social, behav­ioral, phys­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors that may affect brain devel­op­ment and oth­er health outcomes.

Anonymized study data are being made avail­able to the broad research com­mu­ni­ty on a reg­u­lar basis. This will allow sci­en­tists to ana­lyze data and ask nov­el ques­tions that were not even antic­i­pat­ed in the orig­i­nal study plan­ning. Offer­ing these data while the study is in progress means that both ABCD inves­ti­ga­tors and non-ABCD researchers will have access to the datasets to pur­sue their own research interests…

Researchers inter­est­ed in access­ing these data can vis­it the NIMH Data Archive. As find­ings are pub­lished in var­i­ous jour­nals by both ABCD inves­ti­ga­tors and oth­er sci­en­tists, study coor­di­na­tors will con­tin­ue to post infor­ma­tion on the study web­site.”

The Study in Context: