What Constant Screen Time Does to Kids’ Brains

Internet Exposure Can Improve Children's Learning—but It's Still No Substitute for Real-World Experience

An 8-year-old American child has never known a world without an iPhone. For today’s kids, smartwatches, video chats, and virtual reality aren’t harbingers of the high-tech future that adults have dreamed of for decades, but the simple accessories of an always-connected present. In kids’ eyes, the future is now. The first car they drive will probably be able to drive itself.

The glue that holds this connected world together is, of course, the internet. And while many adults came of age at a time when getting onto the internet involved …