News Investigation

« El consumo digital exacerbado devora todo lo emocional y lo cognitivo de nuestra humanidad » (La Nación interview)

Nov 2020 🇦🇷 La Nación

This long interview by Hugo Alconada Mon, one of Argentina's best-known investigative journalists, ran in La Nación as Michel Desmurget's book reached Spanish-language readers in late 2020. Desmurget repeats his most provocative contention — that today's « digital natives » may be the first children to test lower on IQ than their parents — and lists the outcomes he says the research literature most consistently associates with heavy recreational screen use: slower language development, disrupted sleep, weaker concentration, lower school results, and higher risk of excess weight. He frames the cumulative exposure in school-time terms: by his estimate, the hours a child spends on recreational screens between ages two and eighteen rival roughly thirty school years' worth of classroom time. The IQ-reversal claim is Desmurget's own reading of Flynn-effect data, contested by other researchers; TechKids relays it as his, not as settled science.

≈30 school-years' worth of recreational screen time between ages 2 and 18

Desmurget's own cumulative estimate, relayed in the interview, for the classroom-time equivalent of a child's total recreational screen hours across childhood.

~3 hrs/day at age 2 · ~5 hrs/day at age 8 · 7+ hrs/day in adolescence

The average daily recreational screen-time figures Desmurget cites in the interview, matching the framing figures of his 2019 book.

CITATION

Alconada Mon, Hugo. « Michel Desmurget: 'El consumo digital exacerbado devora todo lo emocional y lo cognitivo de nuestra humanidad' ». La Nación (Argentina), November 28, 2020.

REPORT A PROBLEM WITH THIS ENTRY

STAY CURRENT

Get new evidence in your inbox.

A weekly digest of what we added — studies, laws, films, hearings. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

SUBSCRIPTIONS PENDING — BUTTONDOWN ACCOUNT NOT CONNECTED

OR FOLLOW THE RSS FEED →