The Cyber Effect (46 page)

studying baby rhesus monkeys
: The Adoption History Project (n.d.), “Harry F. Harlow, Monkey Love Experiments,”
pages.​uoregon.​edu/​adoption/​studies/​HarlowMLE.​htm
.

Synapse formation for key developmental functions
: B. Worthen, “What Happens When Toddlers Zone Out with an iPad,”
The Wall Street Journal
, May 22, 2012.

During the first two months of life
: M. M. Haith (1980),
Rules That Babies Look By: The Organization of Newborn Visual Activity
(Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).

Eventually several studies backed up
: J. S. DeLoache et al. (2010), “Do Babies Learn from Baby Media?,”
Psychological Science
21(11): 1570–74.
   See also R. A. Richert, M. B. Robb, J. G. Fender, and E. Wartella (2010),
“Word Learning from Baby Videos,”
Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
164(5).

study claimed that these videos could delay speech
: F. J. Zimmerman, D. A. Christakis, and A. N. Meltzoff (2007), “Associations Between Media Viewing and Language Development in Children Under Age 2 Years,”
The Journal of Pediatrics
151(4): 364–68.

the videos had minimal to no impact on infant development
: J. Martin, “UW Battle over Baby Einstein Settled, Maybe,”
The Seattle Times
, June 30, 2011.

more effective…quieter shows, calmer formats
: K. Morelli, “The I-Baby: A Baby's Brain on Technology,”
sciencea​ndsensi​bility.​org
, April 11, 2013.

young children learn through gestures
: M. L. Rowe and S. Goldin-Meadow (2009), “Early Gesture
Selectively
Predicts Later Language Learning,”
Developmental Science
12(1): 182–87.

Quickly dubbed the “worst toy of the year”
: “Fisher Price Under Pressure to Pull the Plug on New iPad Baby Bounce Seat Aimed at Newborns over Claims It Is ‘Unhealthy,' ”
Daily Mail
, December 10, 2013.

Let's start with the fact
: In 2011 the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified the radio frequency electromagnetic fields of cellphones as a “Group 2B risk,” i.e., as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”: World Health Organization (2014),
Electromagnetic Fields and Public Health: Mobile Phones
,
who.​int/mediacentre/​factsheets/​fs193/en/
, reviewed October 2014. More recently, in 2013, a review of earlier studies and new research recommended that radio frequency exposure should be reclassified as a “Group 2A risk,” i.e., a “probable human carcinogen”: D. L. Davis, S. Kesari, C. L. Soskolne, A. B. Miller, and Y. Stein (2013), “Swedish Review Strengthens Grounds for Concluding That Radiation from Cellular and Cordless Phones Is a Probable Human Carcinogen,”
Pathophysiology
20: 123–29.

kittens…visual experiences at birth
: C. Blakemore and G. F. Cooper (1970), “Development of the Brain Depends on the Visual Environment,”
Nature
228: 477–78; see
YouTube.​com
(content may be disturbing for some). See also D. H. Hubel and T. N. Wiesel (1970), “The Period of Susceptibility to the Physiological Effects of Unilateral Eye Closure in Kittens,”
Journal of Physiology
206(2): 419–36.

But let's start with some things that are proven
: B. Keim, “It's Official: To Protect Baby's Brain, Turn Off TV,”
Wired
, October 18, 2011.

recommended against screen use
: American Academy of Pediatrics (2011), “Media Use by Children Younger Than 2 Years,”
Pediatrics
128(5): 1040–45.

review paper, “Cyber Babies”
: C. Haughton, M. P. Aiken, and C. Cheevers
(2015), “Cyber Babies: The Impact of Emerging Technology on the Developing Infant,”
Psychology Research
, 5(9): 504–18. DOI:10.17265/2159-5542/2015.09.002.

tablets and mobile phones…to placate and pacify young children
: L. McDonald and L. Colgan, “Experts Claim iPhones and iPads Are Now Being Used as ‘Virtual Childminders' for Kids as Young as Two,”
Evoke.​ie
, February 2, 2015.

“the Skinner box”
: N. Joyce and C. Faye (2010), “Skinner Air Crib,”
Observer
23(7).

Moving to Learn, who recommends
: C. Rowan, “Ten Reasons Why Handheld Devices Should Be Banned for Children Under the Age of 12,”
movingtolearn.​ca
, February 24, 2014.

British teachers report
: R. Ratcliffe, “Children Can Swipe a Screen but Can't Use Toy Building Blocks, Teachers Warn,”
The Guardian
, April 15, 2014.

“The Birth of a Word”
: D. Roy, TED Talk:
ted.​com
, March 2011.

Screen use can cause sleep disturbances
: On screen use before bed for adults: A.-M. Chang, D. Aeschbach, J. F. Duffy, and C. A. Czeisler (2015), “Evening Use of Light-Emitting eReaders Negatively Affects Sleep, Circadian Timing, and Next-Morning Alertness,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
112(4): 1232–37.
   On screen use before bed for children: L. S. Foley, R. Maddison, Y. Jiang, S. Marsh, T. Olds, and K. Ridley (2013), “Presleep Activities and Time of Sleep Onset in Children,”
BMC Pediatrics
131(2): 276–82.

true of all “light-emitting devices”
: E. A. Vandewater, V. J. Rideout, E. A. Wartella, X. Huang, J. H. Lee, and M. Shim (2007), “Digital Childhood: Electronic Media and Technology Use Among Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers,”
Pediatrics
119(5): e1006–15.

“Learning about solitude”
: S. Newman, “Are Screens ‘Drugging' Your Child's Brain?,”
psychology​today.​com
, September 2, 2014.

In one study involving 2,463 children
: S. Shur-Fen Gau (2006), “Prevalence of Sleep Problems and Their Association with Inattention/Hyperactivity Among Children Aged 6–15 in Taiwan,”
Journal of Sleep Research
15(4): 403–14.

connection between the rise of ADHD and screen use
: R. A. Friedman, “A Natural Fix for A.D.H.D.,”
The New York Times
, October 31, 2014.

Is it a coincidence
: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2015), “Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Data & Statistics.”
cdc.​gov
. For the full report, see S. N. Visser et al. (2014), “Trends in the Parent-Report of Health Care Provider–Diagnosed and Medicated Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: United States, 2003–2011,”
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
53(1): 34–46.e2.

The number of young people being treated with medication for ADHD
:
R. A. Friedman, “A Natural Fix for A.D.H.D.,”
The New York Times
, October 31, 2014. But see the statistics in S. H. Zuvekas and B. Vitiello (2012), “Stimulant Medication Use in Children: A 12-Year Perspective,”
The American Journal of Psychiatry
169(2): 160–66, especially Table 2.

orienting response
:
F. J. Zimmerman and D. A. Christakis (2007), “Associations Between Content Types of Early Media Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems,”
Pediatrics
120(5): 986–92.

“There is no eye contact”
: L. M. Oestreicher, “Re: The debate over digital technology and young people,”
bmj.​com
, August 25, 2015.

television…attention problems
: D. A. Christakis, F. J. Zimmerman, D. L. DiGiuseppe, C. A. McCarty (2004), “Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children,”
Pediatrics
113(4): 708–13; L. S. Pagani, C. Fitzpatrick, T. A. Barnett, and E. Dubow (2010), “Prospective Associations Between Early Childhood Television Exposure and Academic, Psychosocial, and Physical Well-being by Middle Childhood,”
Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
164(5): 425–31.

“The decorated classroom led to greater time off task”
: A. V. Fisher, K. E. Godwin, and H. Seltman (2014), “Visual Environment, Attention Allocation, and Learning in Young Children: When Too Much of a Good Thing May Be Bad,”
Psychological Science
25(7): 1362–70.

Sherry Turkle describes a parent
: S. Turkle (2012),
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
(New York: Basic Books), 294, 266. See also Sherry Turkle, “Connected, but Alone?,” TED Talk:
ted.​com
, February 2012.

half of all children under two
:
kidshealth.​org
, January 2015.

Beyond the Screens
:
plus.​google.​com
(2016).

Watching television can slow
: Associated Press, “France Bans Broadcast of TV Shows for Babies,”
Today.​com
, August 20, 2008.

Taiwan has taken a giant
: J. W. Simons, “Why Taiwan Is Right to Ban iPads for Kids,” CNN, February 4, 2015.

Canada and Australia have similar recommendations
: Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing (2010),
Move and Play Every Day: National Physical Activity Recommendations for Children 0–5 Years
. See also Canadian Paediatric Society (2003), “Impact of Media Use on Children and Youth,”
Paediatrics and Child Health
8(5): 301–6.

“capitalised blood of children:”
: K. Marx (1887),
Capital
vol. I, ed. F. Engels; S. Moore and E. Aveling (English trans.) republished 1959 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House), 756.

the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund
: UNICEF was created by the United Nations on December 11, 1946, to provide emergency food, clothing and healthcare to children in Europe and China after World War II. Since 1950 its mandate has been to address the needs of women and children in all developing countries.

(84 percent) of U.S. children and teenagers have access to the Internet
: American Academy of Pediatrics (2013), “Children, Adolescents, and the Media,”
Pediatrics
132(5): 958.

And as a marketing study shows
: “Survey: Majority of ‘tweeners' now have cell phones…”
nclnet.​org
, July 2012.

most American children get their first cellphone
: “Study Finds Average Age of Kids When They Get Their First Cell Phone Is Six,”
abc13.​com/​technology
, April 7, 2015.

refined small-motor skills and enhanced hand-eye coordination
: D. Gozli, D. Bavelier, and J. Pratt (2014), “The Effect of Action Video Game Playing on Sensorimotor Learning: Evidence from a Movement Tracking Task,”
Human Movement Science
38: 152–62.

a positive relation between texting and literacy
: B. Plester and C. Wood (2009), “Exploring Relationships Between Traditional and New Media Literacies: British Preteen Texters at School,”
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
14: 1108–1129. See also B. Plester, C. Wood, and P. Joshi (2009), “Exploring the Relationship Between Children's Knowledge of Text Message Abbreviations and School Literacy Outcomes,”
British Journal of Developmental Psychology
27(1): 145–61.

if your children are texting a lot
: G. Paton, “Text Messaging ‘Improves Children's Spelling Skills,' ”
telegraph.​co.​uk
, January 20, 2011. Pre-test spelling performance was also measured, making the slight improvements after the relatively brief ten-week texting experiment more notable: C. Wood, E. Jackson, L. Hart, B. Plester, and L. Wilde (2011), “The Effect of Text Messaging on 9- and 10-Year-Old Children's Reading, Spelling and Phonological Processing Skills,”
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
27: 28–36.

“Some [children] cannot even talk”
: E. Harding, “How Parents Who Use iPads to ‘Pacify' Their Children Are Impeding Their Speech Development with Some Starting School at Five ‘Unable to Talk' as a Result,”
dailymail.​co.​uk
, January 31, 2015.

mobile phones had become “virtual” babysitters
: R. Horan, “Psychologist: iPads are the New Childminders,”
98fm.​com
, January 31, 2015.

EU Kids Online
: S. Livingstone, L. Haddon, A. Görzig, and K. Ólafsson (2012),
EU Kids Online II: Final Report;
and (2014)
EU Kids Online: Findings. Methods. Recommendations
. (London: London School of Economics and Political Science),
lse.​ac.​uk
.

United States
: C. K. Blackwell, A. R. Lauricella, A. Conway, E. Wartella (2014), “Children and the Internet: Developmental Implications of Web Site Preferences Among 8- to 12-Year-Old Children,”
Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media
58(1): 1–20.

Four out of ten gave a false age
: K. Donnelly, “Four Out of 10 Children on Social Media Use False Age,”
Independent.​ie
, September 3, 2014.

Twenty million minors use Facebook
: “That Facebook Friend Might Be 10 Years Old, and Other Troubling News,”
Consumer​Reports.​org
, June 2011. Notably, Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, would like to see the minimum age requirement removed completely, to enable his company to begin educating children about the Internet from a much younger age: E. Protalinski, “Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Minimum Age Limit Should Be Removed,” ZDNet, May 20, 2011.

“a majority of parents…unconcerned”
: L. Magid, “Survey: 7.5M Facebook Users Below Minimum Age,”
CNET.​com
, May 10, 2011.

Setting the minimum age
: The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 (15 USC 6501-6506) requires a website or online service to obtain verifiable parental consent before it can make use of the data of those under the age of thirteen.

the story of Sarah Lynn Butler
: Y. Young, “Online Teasing Leads to Teen's Suicide,”
Kait8.​com
, November 24, 2009.

Let's look at how the numbers work on Facebook
: “Average Number of Facebook Friends of Users in the United States as of February 2014, by Age Group,”
statista.​com
.

Dunbar's number
: R. A. Hill and R. I. M. Dunbar (2003), “Social Network Size in Humans,”
Human Nature
14(1): 53–72.

Locard's exchange principle
: A. Rath, “Cyberpsychologist: Online, ‘Every Contact Leaves a Trace,' ”
All Things Considered
, National Public Radio, USA,
npr.​org
, March 8, 2015.

Nastiness online
: S. Rosenbloom, “Dealing with Digital Cruelty,”
The New York Times
, August 23, 2014.

Curt Schilling
: N. Golgowski and C. Red, “Former Red Sox Pitcher Curt Schilling Fires Back After Trolls' Violent, Sexual Tweets About Teen Daughter,”
New York Daily News
, March 3, 2015.

“made you feel uncomfortable”
: S. Livingstone, L. Haddon, A. Görzig, and K. Ólafsson (2012),
EU Kids Online II: Final Report
(London: London School of Economics and Political Science),
lse.​ac.​uk
.

Nearly ten thousand responses
: EU Kids Online (2014),
EU Kids Online: Findings. Methods. Recommendations
(London: London School of Economics and Political Science),
lse.​ac.​uk
.

4.2 million pornography sites
: E. Mangan (n.d.), “How to Block Explicit Adult Content on Your Child's Internet and Mobile Devices—A Digital Parenting Guide,”
DigitalParenting.​ie
.

2014
Cosmopolitan
survey
: “This Is How You Watch Porn,”
Cosmopolitan.​com
, February 20, 2014.

technology skills of their five-year-olds
: Ofcom,
Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report
, October 9, 2014,
stakeholders.​ofcom.​org.​uk
.

“hide their participation in risky”
: “McAfee Digital Deception Study 2013: Exploring the Online Disconnect Between Parents & Pre-teens, Teens and Young Adults,”
mcafee.​com
, May 28, 2013.

Terre des Hommes
: Terre des Hommes is a group of ten national organizations that works to further children's rights and equitable development:
terre​deshommes.​org
.

“The moment [Sweetie] got online”
: T. Ove, “Homeland Security Agents Tackle Growing Trend of Child Sex Tourism by Webcam,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, January 1, 2014.

“Cyberspace allows people”
: J. R. Suler (2015),
Psychology of the Digital Age: Humans Become Electric
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press).

When a sample of images
: NCMEC (2016), National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
missingkids.​com
.

emergence of younger online offenders
: M. P. Aiken, M. Moran, and M. J. Berry (2011), “Child Abuse Material and the Internet: Cyberpsychology of Online Child-Related Sex Offending,”
www.​interpol.​int/​Crime-​areas/​Crimes-​against-​children/​Internet-​crimes/
.

“early inappropriate sexualized event”
: D. Howitt and K. Sheldon (2007), “The Role of Cognitive Distortions in Paedophilic Offending: Internet and Contact Offenders Compared,”
Psychology, Crime & Law
13(5): 469–86. See also L. Webb, J. Craissati, and S. Keen (2007), “Characteristics of Internet Child Pornography Offenders: A Comparison with Child Molesters,”
Sex Abuse
19: 449–65.

the face of the man had been digitally swirled
: I. MacKinnon, “Thai Police Arrest Paedophile Suspect,”
The Guardian
, October 19, 2007; “Alleged Pedophile Taught at B.C. School 6 Months Ago,”
cbc.​ca/​news
, October 16, 2007.

The first recorded death by robot
: D. Kravets, “Jan. 25, 1979: Robot Kills Human,”
Wired
, January 25, 2010.

advisory group in Ireland
: B. O'Neill, M. P. Aiken, M. Caffrey, J. Carthy, R. Lupton, A. Lynch, and K. O'Sullivan (2014),
Report of the Internet Content Governance Advisory Group
, Department of Communications, Energy
and Natural Resources, Ireland. See also T. Bouquet, “The Real-Life Spook Behind CSI: Cyber,”
telegraph.​co.​uk
, November 3, 2015.

they had seen pornographic images
: The One Poll survey for the NSPCC U.K. involved two thousand people between twelve and seventeen years of age, of whom seven hundred were aged twelve to thirteen. See NSPCC, “ChildLine Porn Campaign Confronts Issue of Young People and Porn,”
nspcc.​org.​uk
, March 31, 2015.

Content moderators of the Internet
: A. Chen, “The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings out of Your Facebook Feed,”
Wired.​com
, October 23, 2014.

“5 Deadly Sins”
: M. P. Aiken, producer, “5 Deadly Sins,”
CSI: Cyber
, CBS, J. Bruckheimer and P. Veasey, executive producers, aired March 6, 2016.

hiding their online activity from their parents
: “McAfee Digital Deception Study 2013: Exploring the Online Disconnect Between Parents & Pre-teens, Teens and Young Adults,”
mcafee.​com
, May 28, 2013.

Slender Man
: A. Jones, “The Girls Who Tried to Kill for Slender Man,”
Newsweek
, August 13, 2014.

“This should be a wake-up call”
: R. P. Jack, “Waukesha Stabbing News Conference,”
Los Angeles Times
, June 2, 2014.

Resilence
: (n.d.) “The Road to Resilience,” American Psychological Association,
apa.​org
.

“a growing unease that the goal of risk prevention”
: E. Staksrud and S. Livingstone (2009), “Children and Online Risk: Powerless Victims or Resourceful Participants?,”
Information, Communication and Society
12(3): 364–87.

I raised this in an editorial
: M. Aiken, “Parents Alone Cannot Police Our Youth in Cyberspace,” Irish
Independent
, September 23, 2014.

Child abuse
is defined
: World Health Organization (1999), “Report of the Consultation on Child Abuse Prevention” (WHO, Geneva, March 29–31, 1999), 15.

The four main principles
: United Nations,
Convention on the Rights of the Child
(New York, November 20, 1989).

I formally proposed that a new amendment be considered
: M. P. Aiken (2015), “Children's Rights in Cyberspace,” The Hague Talks: Setting Peace and Justice in Motion. We, the People: The United Nations at 70—The Global Impact of the Digital Age (October 23), The Hague, The Netherlands.
   See also “Universal Children's Day announcement—Consultation period regarding proposed amendment to the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to incorporate the Cyber Rights of the Child,” November 20, 2015,
hague​justice​portal.​net
.