Every additional minute your toddler spends on a screen, they hear about 7 fewer words from you. By age 3, they also make 5 fewer attempts to talk back and lose one back-and-forth exchange with a parent. That’s from a 2024 JAMA Pediatrics study that put speech-recognition
Anish Moonka threads several pediatric studies arguing toddler screen exposure is associated with language-development delays, while clarifying rhetoric: evidence supports "delays" more than permanent "damage" in many cases. Main mechanism cited is displacement of parent-child conversational turn-taking (serve-and-return), with dose-response patterns and some reported reversibility after screen reduction.
