Toddlers and TikTok: Like replacing the babysitter with 'sugared candy'

Sharlene Herd has been teaching kindergarteners for 30 years but she's never before seen so many kids with problems concentrating.

"It just seems to be that they haven't got the same coping mechanisms," the Newcastle teacher says.

"Pre-COVID, it didn't seem as hard or difficult to establish the routines."

Other early childhood experts who have been observing games since well before the popular online craze Roblox was invented are confident high levels of screen time are doing toddlers no favours for learning how to talk, play and cope with change.

A child psychology professor has gone so far as to say that the impacts of screen time and social media on pre-schoolers, though not fully known yet, can be likened to cigarettes or sugared candy.

"Technology is more attractive to you because it gives those instant, quick rewards," Dr Rachel Hogg says.

"It's like the fast food of social connection."

Short-form video platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Instagram hit kids with dopamine and are the most addictive forms of media, according to research published in Frontiers in Psychology.

But Australian children as young as one are accessing these platforms via their own screens or their parent's devices.

But as the federal government moves to introduce an age limit on social media, these children may need to find other forms of entertainment.

Regular "brain breaks" to eat crunchy carrots, lift heavy things, and dance have become part and parcel of Ms Herd's kindergarten schedule.

In her class of 23, all but a small handful are often anxious, almost half have speech issues and around three or four will end up in tears if there's ever any change.

"There is a lot of ADHD coming through, it would be crazy for you to have a class where it was not present," she says.

"Even today, I've probably navigated around seven to eight children and their needs because they have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder."

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects up to 10 per cent of Australian children and diagnoses have been on the rise, a senate inquiry into support of people with ADHD heard in 2023.

Doctors and psychologists are still unsure what causes ADHD or why there has been an increase in cases.

Medication prescriptions for the condition increased by an average of 16.7 per cent each year from 2013 - 2022, according to the inquiry.

But during the pandemic between 2020 and 2022, the increase was 26.7 per cent.

Ms Herd believes more screen time and isolation during lockdowns have transpired in the learning challenges she's seeing today.

"With COVID, there was an exceptional amount of opportunity for young children to be using devices and watching screens ... to give them focus and concentration," Ms Herd says.

"When those things are absent, it's just not easy to have that focus and concentration that you would expect young children could just innately do."

But experts believe social media and screen time can lead to dopamine addiction and anxiety issues when taken away from a screen.

When dopamine is released into the brain, people feel pleasure and reward.

"The withdrawal from dopamine is usual to withdraw socially," Dr Hogg says.

"If they've withdrawn from their iPad when they go to school, they might be more reclusive and anxious in school."

While short-form video platforms are a source of the endless scroll, educational apps or popular gaming platforms like Roblox are also an outlet for addiction and allow children to play against real people.

Four in five under-seven-year-olds use YouTube, spending an average of more than one hour per day watching videos, according to Griffith University researchers.

"It's amazing how literate they are; I look at kids playing with phones and they know exactly how to get into things," she says.

"Snapchat features a lot, there are a lot of filters which are appealing to young children."

Any time spent absorbed in a screen means time missed engaging with the real world, an opportunity cost Dr Hogg says can cause major developmental delays.

"One-year-olds who were exposed to more than four hours of screen time per day had problems problem-solving at the age two and four," she says.

"The more screen time one-year-olds had, the more developmental delays in fine motor skills."

Australian guidelines recommend no more than one hour of screen time per day for kids between two and five, while those up to 17 years are recommended no more than two hours of recreational screen time.

But estimates found that only 17 - 23 per cent of preschoolers and 15 per cent of kids between five and 12 met these guidelines.

Speech pathologist Karen Trengove has been in the industry for 30 years but like the kindergarten teacher, she is helping more children than ever who are struggling with conversational skills.

She believes some kids are losing out on conversations because their parents are addicted to social media and fail to have enough "tennis match" chats with their young children.

"Are we sitting looking at the screen while we're watching the television and having a conversation?" Ms Trengove says.

"Are we chatting to our child whilst we're also scrolling through Instagram?"

If three-year-olds have one hour of screen time per day, they could miss out on up to 68 conversation turns, according to a study by a Telethon Kids Institute report.

When these conversations are regularly missed, Ms Trengove says children struggle to ever catch up to their peers who may be meeting development goals.

"They [toddlers] need lots and lots of exposure with a caregiver - lots of exposure that feels like tennis matches ... you can't get that from a screen, nothing will replace that," Ms Trengove says.

"Those first few years are the most crucial."

By the age of two, children should have a "rich vocabulary" and be able to make simple phrases.

Four-year-olds should be able to have back-and-forth conversations with their parents and, by the time they begin school, children should be able to recount a story.

"The kids who start school with rich vocabulary, great conversational skills [and] good listening skills, pick up reading quite well and just take off. The kids who don't tend to shut down," Ms Trengove says.

Paediatric occupational therapist Tara Clark believes scrolling and screen time is stalling kids from knowing how to play.

Ms Clark practises in Wollongong, NSW, and has also noticed attention deficit disorders "skyrocket" in the past 12 to 18 months.

"It's just unbelievable. I do feel like screen time and scrolling have to play a part, for sure," she says.

"That scrolling of our attention is only a second at a time, then we scroll to the next one and the next one."

Short-form videos haven't been around long enough for conclusive evidence about lifelong effects, but developmental delays in the preschool years are known to persist into adulthood.

"It can be detrimental for the rest of their lives," she says.

"The lack of experience ... is creating a flow-on effect when these little people get into preschool or school."

The flow-on effect of dopamine addiction and habits formed in early childhood can lead to social media addiction in later life.

Teenagers are spending an average of more than two hours online each day, with the number of social media platforms increasing as they get older, the eSafety Commissioner found.

However, the jury is still out as to whether too much screen time is causing academic delays.

Meanwhile, iPads and laptops will continue to be important tools for learning according to Ms Herd who introduces devices to her kindergarteners from term two.

"I think in our world we do need to be able to access these devices because they're a way we resource ourselves," she says.

"I think that families do need to provide that for children in any educational setting."

Though Ms Herd is concerned about screen time among her class, she believes it's the school's role to teach parents about the impacts and benefits linked with devices.

"Where there lacks education, it's important for schools to provide that opportunity for families to be able to understand the balance," she said.

Ms Herd educates parents about the importance of teaching children to listen and understand without looking at a screen.

Experts including a neuroscientist have been invited to teach parents about how they can keep their children safe on screens.

"I certainly don't think that the use of technology and screens is going away," she says.

"I do see iPads as a really valuable tool."

When my parents forced me to deactivate my Instagram account when I was 13, I felt like they were destroying any hope I had of social prowess.

But my FOMO began to peter out as I gradually watched my friends care more about getting the perfect selfie than the views in front of them. I became a conscientious objector.

But fast forward to my 20s, when I finally redownloaded Instagram, and social media has become more than a comparison fest between "friends".

It's an endless scroll of anything you want (or don't want to admit you want) and I'm just as addicted as the rest of my generation.

I know it's bad, I can feel my attention span deteriorating, but I simply can't stop.

The thing that scares me most is, perhaps, I don't even want to.