Screen Damage

All forms of recreational digital consumption - whether on smartphones, tablets, game consoles or TVs - have skyrocketed in the younger generations. From the age of 2, children in the West clock up more than 2.5 hours of screen time a day, by the time they reach 13, it's more than 7 hours a day. Added up over the first 18 years of life, this is the equivalent of almost 30 school years, or 15 years of full-time employment. Most media experts do not seem overly concerned about this situation: children are adaptable, they say, they are 'digital natives', their brains have changed and screens make them smarter. But other specialists - including some paediatricians, psychiatrists, teachers and speech therapists - dispute these claims, and many parents worry about the long-term consequences of their children's intensive exposure to screens. Michel Desmurget, a leading neuroscientist, has carefully weighed up the scientific evidence concerning the impact of the digital activities of our...

The cheapest new copy of Screen Damage is £19.99 at BookKind. Prices checked 9 Nov 2026

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