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The basic idea of the study is very simple. The authors asked mothers how much screen time their 12-18 month old kids got, and then checked back a year or so later using a scale developed to assess autism-like symptomspic.twitter.com/OdHc5QOf2H
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They found that kids who had been exposed to more screens at 12 months (but NOT 18) had a tiny increase in their average autism-symptom scorepic.twitter.com/5ov8fiIGin
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What does this mean, in practical terms? Well, they used a modified M-CHAT scale, which gives you a 0-20 score. Given that the average score for this scale is pretty low (<10), a 4.2% increase would be a fraction of a point Pretty meaningless stuff, that
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It's also worth noting that, while the study did control for some demographic factors, they didn't look at many I can think of ~dozens~ of other things that may have contributed to potential ASD symptoms in kidspic.twitter.com/cvmipnP7os
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On top of this - and not reported in the press at all - is the fact that the authors actually conducted TWO analyses One was linear (we'll get back to this) and positive. The other looked at a yes/no autism-consistent score for diagnosis
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Everyone reported the positive linear analysis, but no one noted that actually, in terms of A CLINICALLY USEFUL DIAGNOSIS OF AUTISM, the study was entirely negative No association between screens and autism at all!pic.twitter.com/aPb02ebRaI
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Somehow, it gets worse The measure of "screen time" used in the study? Turns out it...wasn't great
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Specifically, they asked people "Does your child watch TV/DVDs?" as a yes/no answer, and then asked "“Over the past 30 days, on average,how many hours per day did child watch TV and/or DVDs?” In 2010-2012
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Now, I'm no childhood autism researcher, but I'm pretty sure that asking only about TV and DVDs in 2010-12 would've missed a huge swathe of potential screen time For example, the first iPad came out April 2010
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But this isn't the last huge potential issue here Remember when I mentioned the LINEAR regression that spat out all the positive results? Yeh, about that
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The variable that they were using this linear model to predict was a 0-20 numerical scale made up of integers (+1 for every 'yes' answer), likely clustered around low values This is not an ideal target for linear regression
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It's essentially an ordinal outcome - an ordered scale from 0-20 indicating autism risk - and without any transformations (which were not reported) it's unlikely that the linear model used was appropriate for this analysis
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It's also worth remembering that this study DIDN'T LOOK AT FORMAL AUTISM DIAGNOSIS Even the more clinically useful variable was yes/no on a relatively arbitrary scale of autism risk
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The only real take-home from this study is that the children of parents who report that they watch more TV/DVD may have a tiny increase in their risk of autism-like symptoms but who knows because the stats were a bit dodgy anyway
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TL:DR - study wasn't great - didn't show that screens cause autism - barely even showed an association - don't worry about screens and your kids too much, there's a pandemic on
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End of conversation
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