STUDY! Screentime impacting brains of young kids

 A new study reveals that excessive screen time is changing the brains of young children.

From BQ: 

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, according to a report on Sunday by “60 Minutes.”
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 developmentand mental health.
In the first round of testing, the scans of children who reported daily screen usage of more than seven hours showed premature thinning of the brain cortex, the outermost layer that processes information from the physical world.

The studies director did caution its findings however

NIH study director Gaya Dowling cautioned against drawing a conclusion from the early findings.
“We don’t know if it’s being caused by the screen time. We don’t know if it’s a bad thing,” Dowling said in Sunday’s broadcast on CBS. “It won’t be until we follow them over time that we will see if there are outcomes that are associated with the differences that we’re seeing in this single snapshot.”

Gaya Dowling may warn of the validity of the studies finding but it is shocking to me she would. It is clear that these kids saw a change in there brains and claiming it might not actually be bad is nonsense.