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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
Screen Time and Your Child's Brain
The modern parental dilemma unfolds in restaurants everywhere: restless children, exhausted parents, and the easy solution—a glowing screen that instantly pacifies. But what's actually happening in those developing brains when screens become our go-to solution?
This deep dive into the science of screen time reveals startling connections between digital exposure and childhood development. We examine how the first two years of life—when the brain grows from 25% to 80% of its adult size—create a critical window where screen time can significantly impact language acquisition, emotional bonding, and neurological pathways. The research is sobering: delayed speech, weaker white matter development, disrupted sleep patterns, and even symptoms mimicking autism that researchers have termed "virtual autism."
Beyond toddlerhood, we explore how screens systematically replace essential developmental friction in children ages 2-6. Unlike real-world interactions that teach empathy, boundaries, and emotional regulation through natural consequences, screens deliver passive entertainment without requiring social negotiation. This absence of healthy resistance creates downstream effects on attention spans, frustration tolerance, and peer relationships.
Perhaps most provocatively, we challenge the notion that boredom is a problem to be solved. What if those empty spaces in a child's day are actually developmental superpowers—the exact conditions where imagination, creativity and problem-solving flourish? From family dinners to bedtime routines, we examine how screens have quietly displaced critical learning environments and offer practical, guilt-free alternatives for modern parents navigating digital terrain.
Whether you're struggling with tantrums when screens disappear or simply questioning if your family has found the right balance, this episode provides evidence-based guidance without judgment. Try our screen-free dinner challenge this week and discover what happens when we create space for connection in our increasingly connected world.
Learn More at: www.Redefine-Fitness.com
Hello and welcome to Health Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen, and today we got another great episode for all of you. Today, before we dive into today's show, we are moving forward with the idea we presented a couple weeks ago and, for those just listening, we're going to make a podcast studio inside one of our locations over in Mount Sinai and start doing more interviews with customers, our trainers, local businesses, and really bring this podcast and the company both together to give you an unedited, unscripted version about who we are and why we do what we do. But without further ado, let's dive into today's show.
Speaker 1:Today's show is going to be all about screen time, what it means, why is it important? Should I care? And different theories we have about it when it comes to kids and being in front of a tv. So just imagine you're sitting at a restaurant, your kids are restless, they're jumping around, they're being kids. The couple next to you hands their five-year-old an ipad. They say behind you, everyone's on the screen, even the baby. I mean, I've seen it as far as one-year-olds, two-year-olds, infants, everywhere. Does that sound familiar? The question really depends like like is this harmless? Is it harmless to give your kid an iPad or to put your kid in front of a TV, or are we actually rewiring our kids to behave differently later in life?
Speaker 1:In this episode we're going to unpack the research what screens are doing to language learning, focus, mood and social skills. We'll explore myths about autism, creativity, boredom and how something as simple as not handing a screen can change your child's future. So let's start with what screens are replacing, because that's what the real cost of what screens are. Screens are an inherent evil, right, they're not made to make us bad people, but what they do do is they replace normal interactions. So what I mean by that is eye contact, conversations, unstructured play and emotional learning. They don't just fill time and get rid of those boredom gaps that parents think or try to give parents a break, but they actually displace development.
Speaker 1:So if we go to early, like when kids first born, we look at the first two years of life, and these are probably the most pivotal first two years of your child's life, as they're learning literally everything. Reason being baby's brains grow from 25% to 80% of its adult size within the first two years of their life, so that means it's the most critical things for language, emotional bonding and social awareness. So what happens when we present screens pre two years old? Well, a lot of research has showed that there's delays in speech development, weaker white matter development in the brain, which has been tied to language and literacy and proven through scans, disrupted sleep and less bonding with caregivers. Some kids even develop symptoms and behaviors that look and represent like autism. So this means less eye contact, this means delayed speech and social withdrawal. So not understanding how to handle certain social cues, not understanding how to interact with certain behaviors of how people are acting. That's why research has termed this virtual autism in some countries. But it's not screens that we can inherently blame for, but it's the kids' interactions being more digital instead of being more real-life oriented. The good news about all of this, before everyone starts panicking like oh my god, I can't watch TV, many of the symptoms disappear when screen time is drastically reduced and real-life connection is restored. It's proven to a point that kids under the age of two shouldn't look at screens, period.
Speaker 1:Now I like to put at a special wording to this. I'm going to go intentional screen time on this, as opposed to just screen time. Intentional screen time means that your purpose in giving your kid TV or an iPad and put it in front of them. Unintentional screen time would be things you can't avoid, right? You're at a restaurant, there's a thousand TVs. At a bar, there's a thousand kids. Just happens to glance over at a TV. You're on your phone, your kid's glancing over. There's actually nothing wrong with that. So I don't want people to point out like, oh my God, there's a TV in a restaurant, everyone panic and hide it and turn it off. My kid's going to be developed. No, that's an overreaction to a very simple problem, nothing to worry about. Same thing if a kid's glancing at your phone, reaching for your phone. They want it because you're on it. Right? My kid is seven months old. Everything I touch he wants. He doesn't want anything. I just give him. He wants everything I have, the sharper, the better, right, just reach for it, grab it for each other, pull it out of your hand because they know that they can't have it.
Speaker 1:But my favorite point that I bring up is a lot of kids, a lot of parents, sorry will put kids in front of educational shows. This is, I think, the trendiest ones right now are like Miss Rachel or Bluey. There's a lot of shows that are actually designed for kids under the age of two and parents talk about how it helps kids learn behaviors, help kids learn different words, help kids learn to environment. You'd be shocked that actually kids learn more from just being around you and watching your facial cues and learning how to interact than they do in front of these behavioral and educational shows, because a TV can't interact with them. Somebody popping up on YouTube talking and going over about the alphabet isn't the same as a kid watching you talk to them and really learning and understanding it. And those kids actually the ones that are in front of the TV learn significantly less than those that learn it directly from their parents.
Speaker 1:I feel like there needs to be a balance where sometimes a parent needs just a break. Right, we have tolerant levels. My kid didn't sleep for three months, super colicky. But sometimes you just need to put a TV on in the background just for noise, because you just need a mental break, because you haven't slept in three months. Right, you have to prioritize yourself before you take care of others. It's the oxygen mess theory on planes Take care of yourself before you can help others. But to the extent, stop opting for the easy way out.
Speaker 1:I feel a lot of parents don't even want to be bothered by the kid because they want to get wrapped inside of their own lives. So they put kids in front of their TV instead of actually interacting with our child, which is the way it should be. Like right, when I'm home with my kid, my wife and I split days because of our work schedules, but I try to just interact with them all the time we're hanging out, having fun, and it really helps with bonding, as opposed to me trying to get free time now that I'm off and putting the kid in front. It really has helped us grow, especially in the last couple months, when these son understand what's going on. So I think it's just important as a parent to understand like it's going to be hard to their kids, and that's kind of the point and it's your job as a parent to make those sacrifices, to spend as much time with them as possible and not just those screen times. Screen in front of them because you want free time.
Speaker 1:That's the beauty of part of results. Get mean hard things, give the best results. Owning a business is hard, but it gives you the best results. Working out is hard, but it gives you the best results. Everything in life is correlated to hard. Usually the easy way out is the wrong way. So doing things the right way and doing things the hard way is always going to or usually is going to give the best results in life.
Speaker 1:So what about kids older? What about ages 2 to six? This is where children literally learn how to be humans. Literally, they're learning everything. So they're going to learn things like empathy, boundaries, tone of voice, how to wait their turn, how to share All these things. Do real life friction right? Especially sharing, if you think about it. You can't share with a TV screen, but when you put them in front of another kid that age, they kind of fight over it and then realize that they want to work together and figure it out. So it's all that friction and light, the things that come back at you.
Speaker 1:A kid wants a toy at a store and they don't understand why. And you have to explain to them why you're not buying them every freaking toy at the store, why they can't just steal it, right, they just think they can take a look out of it. So it's teaching them all these things through friction, things that are going to help. But screens don't do that. They take the friction away from things and they give the kid everything they want and the kid just more, becomes a passive receiver of that information. So there is no social pushback, there's no misunderstanding to work through. There's no misunderstanding to work through. There's no need to compromise. And that leads to real world consequence consequences. Right, they're going to get no more temper tantrums. They're going to realize well, I don't understand. The tv gives me everything I want, it shows me my favorite categories and everything like that.
Speaker 1:Attention spans out the window. I mean, you see this with adults now. Adults can't even function with attention spans anymore because they're so addicted. So imagine what it's doing to a kid, like we were talking to each other. And I see just people on dates, like both looking at their phones at a restaurant I know talk to each other. They're so distracted in their lives they want to get that little dopamine hit by scrolling the facebook. I suppose they're talking to someone across away from them just because they've been married for so long, just because it's not the first date and it's not as exciting anymore. There's no, there's poor peer relationships. They don't know how to communicate with friends, families, loved ones and they don't really gotta foster and build those relationships because they're not forced to. They're just instead building fake relationships with things they see on tv screens may seem calm on the surface, it may seem that it's helpful, but instead the child's brain is creating pure chaos.
Speaker 1:Now, why is this important? A lot of people want to feel and get rid of what we call boredom. Right, that's what parents hate hearing is I don't want my child to be bored. I mean, we don't really want ourselves to be bored, but I actually think this is a very powerful segment. I might do a full episode on boredom in and of itself, but boredom is a superpower, right. It's a space where imagination, problem solving and creativity are born. This is how we foster things in are day-to-day life.
Speaker 1:You look back to pre-screens. A lot more people were figuring out different ways to do things. A lot more people had a lot more hands-on skills. As example, like farmers learn how to adapt on the field, learn how to change stupid things to make the crops grow better, or they learned how to do things around the house, learn how to fix the cars. People just knew more day-to-day stuff, but not anymore, because now we have screens to just fill those gaps, as opposed to having boredom to create things and move things. I think if you took a percentage right, obviously there's more people in the world, so there'll be more, even though the percentage is lower, that there's less entrepreneurs. There's less people creating things at a percentage level, because people aren't inherently bored Like.
Speaker 1:Imagine trying to create electricity now, if there was none, you wouldn't have a year to sit there and figure out a thousand ways to not create a life. We'll be getting bored. You have to think about it 24 seven and adapt 24 seven. So having boredom actually is a super hard something that needs to be taught. You need to teach your kids to be bored so they do, in fact, become more creative and light.
Speaker 1:So kids left without screens are forced to invent games, characters and explore. Like there's always imaginary friends or there's different games that we used to come up with as kids that we used to play all the time. That was created through boredom, right? We didn't want TVs to run as big. When I was a kid they were round, but they weren't crazy big. So we were forced to create all these fun games and interact and get outside and get active right, activity through boredom. So screens get the brain created. Boredom forces us to cook a real meal. So maybe just next time you're at a restaurant, look around. Kids are on screens at every table, especially ages 5 to 15, I think is the most predominant ages. But meals are one of the last natural classrooms. That's where kids learn conversation, flow, listening, ask questions and sitting with stillness. When we hand them screens, we rob them of these micro-moments, repeat it over time. Those losses add up.
Speaker 1:I think what I've noticed, especially my age, is I'm of that generation where half the kids were forced to have family bonding time over the dinner table and then, as I'd meet friends and met people, the other half had dinner, tv dinners, and I've noticed that those that have forced that family dinners, like myself, are way closer and know way more social cues and we know how to interact in the environment than those that had tv dinners and did some mindless eating. And I'm a firm believer and even though I know as a kid I gave my parents slack all the time Like I don't want to sit down and do dinner. That's BS and they would make us turn the TVs off, makes us put our. When we had phones we'd have to put our phones away and they forced conversation beyond.
Speaker 1:Just how was school today? Right, it was an opportunity to really learn, understand. I make the joke that I didn't need to study for my real estate exam when I took it, because I learned everything at the dinner table. I just heard my parents over talking. You know, part of the reason of this is that's. The reason I wanted to be an entrepreneur is because I really get to watch my parents like pin ideas off each other and I just over time just naturally like absorbed those stuff, like oh, I can do this on my own. Like understanding them made me realize that there's things I can do to help move forward. I'm one of four and me and my sister both own a business and my parents. So I think it's just something just got absorbed from watching and learning and understanding and maybe that's why we have a better hand on being conversationalists and being able to hang out with people, because we had less screens, we were forced to spend time together and maybe that fostered also a sense of closeness inside of your immediate feeling. I mean, I would just say as a whole, if you're doing screens with your kids and iPads or whatever, even out of restaurants and stuff, you don't want them to cause a fuss, but I think it's a great opportunity to learn and force them to experiment.
Speaker 1:I remember being at restaurants and experimenting with food, right, you would get so bored. You would just take certain condiments or things that are around you and just mix them. And you would get so bored. You would just take certain condiments or things that around you and just mix them and you would force each other to drink it as a kid, as a joke. 90 of it was disgusting, but you learned how different things interacted with each other and, at a certain like, at a deeper level, it taught me a little bit of kind of how to cook and what had mixed certain things and try certain things because we just did it, because we're just straightforward, at a table, instead of throwing an ipad and not being involved in any was did a conversation because our parents don't want them to do with us. So maybe just try like one less meal, uh, with screens just, or force maybe just every sunday, like dinner time is four o'clock, everyone has to be there, no tv period and see how that goes and see if that changes the dynamics between yourself and your kids. So maybe it will change things, maybe it won't, who knows. I mean move on to tweens and teens. The risk shifts from screens, from language to mood, and we all know this.
Speaker 1:Heavy screen use, especially social media and gaming, is linked to anxiety, depression, sleep disruption, body image issues. Gaming is linked to anxiety, depression, sleep disruption, body image issues. One study found that kids ages 9 to 13 who use more screens more than four hours a day have significantly higher depressed symptoms that if they're not just what they're watching, it's what they're missing. They're not hanging out with friends, they're not playing board games, getting to know each other, they're not bonding with their peers. I mean, I will argue a little bit that there's gotta be a difference between kids that are interacting with people audially, meaning playing a shooter game or whatever, but also talking to their friends, as opposed to those just mindlessly numbing watching TV. Those that are interacting, those getting something out of it, they're getting improved hand-eye coordination.
Speaker 1:But I do agree, like anxiety, depression, sleep, body image issues and behavioral issues, especially from lack of sleep, having a cutoff on time of day, you can play video games and not doing it right before bed, knowing that there's limits to what you can do. I'm not saying make it zero, I don't think that's realistic. But do it to a point where you're putting some kind of restrictions on what that kid's doing with the screens. Four days is a shit time. Maybe drop that down to just one or two hours a day with an understanding of like, hey, you get to do this because of this. When I used to play some sort of video games at that age, there was okay, you could play after you did your chores, you could play after you finished your homework. So at least there was some kind of do something and get rewarded with it later on, right? So you're getting the reward for doing the work at the end. Get rewarded with it later on, right, so you're getting the reward for doing the work at the end. So it's some kind of teaching moment involved with it.
Speaker 1:I think it's important to really understand and I know I keep going back to this, but autism as a whole and how screens can relate to autism and know, before anyone says anything otherwise I don't think screens cause autism at all, period. Let's clarify that. But symptoms of screen overexposure can mimic things related to autism. It can reduce eye contact, especially for social skills, which can lead to an over-diagnosis of ASD, especially when you don't consider screen history when giving diagnoses and a lot of people interact on a lower level with a kid, meaning they'll just talk to them like, oh, they're autistic, look at where they're acting, as opposed to intervening first by cutting their screen time, fixing diets, exercising and that will fix most of our ADD, adhd, asd issues that we see with kids and why they're being at a higher rate because it's overdiagnosed as a whole. Do I think autism is increasing overall, meaning more kids are being diagnosed? Absolutely, I think there's a relationship, but I think it goes beyond screen time.
Speaker 1:I just think it's important to note that, even if your kid is asd or has add or adhd, to understand that maybe the screen time is making it worse. Right, you're taking the easy route, putting the kid in front of screen because you think it will calm them down, and maybe it will for a second, maybe when you break, it's fine. But find a way to go without it, find out with something that's different, try to exhaust all other options before you go right for a screen and maybe you'll see an improvement in the symptoms. I can tell you from first-hand experience. Of all you know this is a clientele we work with. Often.
Speaker 1:Exercise has been shown to decrease the symptoms related to asd, and taking a kid away from screen time for that 45 minutes to an hour and having them doing some productive and burning energy, interacting, engaging in the gym will help improve symptoms, as opposed to making them worse and causing more temper tantrums that are put in just directly in front of a screen. It's just important to know that maybe kids just need less digital input and more human connection to rebound and be more and learn more and engage more in their society. So what can you do? Right? There's got to be takeaways associated with this for parents so they have an understanding of what to do when they have a kid and how it relates, because there's a lot of different things and as we progress, there's more research is going to come out about this. It's a heavily talked about conversation. I would say, starting with kids under the age of two, like we first talked about in the beginning of the show.
Speaker 1:Absolutely no screen time. As far as intentional screen time you can can keep it at a bare minimum. It's absolutely necessary. I don't know if there's anything wrong with you put a half an hour TV show on once a week, once every other week, just as like a little something. I don't think that's going to cause any issues. It's too far spaced out. But every day is when you start running into issues.
Speaker 1:There is something really interesting as a caveat to this where video chatting even though that is considered screen time actually research shows it has no negative effects to it because the kids still picking up the Predominary issues as far as like visual cues and verbal cues. So they're still watching and they're still listening to the person the other side of the video chat that's interacting with them. It's not mindless engagement. They have to be mindful because they're experiencing with someone else. So things like facetime, skype zoom, maybe skype I'm dating myself but those kind of things actually have had positive effects and are good replacement to screen time. So if you want to, if you want to replace and get away for a little bit, maybe the caveat instead of putting on Miss Rachel, it's video chatting Grandma, grandpa and having the kid have a conversation with Grandma, grandpa via video chat so you get a break, but now they're also getting the interaction and getting the positives. So it's like a win-win for both. So that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1:I would limit screen time to use under an hour a day for kids ages two to five, uh, and add it to be have more of attention around it so you can start teaching at that age. As far as you're going to get this because of this, you're going to get the hour of your show that you want to watch because you did your laundry or maybe they're too young for that, but because they did something, they were behaved when you went out and they it's like a gift, like getting ice cream, like remember, you're gonna get ice cream because you did so well today, right, so little things like that. To teach good behavior is a good option for screen time, but just make sure it's limited and don't do it directly for bed. I wouldn't do a screen time period for anyone directly before bed. No screens on top of that besides before bed, but at meals and bedrooms. I mean, we've talked about blue light exposure, having TVs in bed for adults, I bet it for, imagine, kids. And then, just importantly, and yet again, if you want me to do a full episode on boredom, and then, just importantly, and yet again, if you want me to do a full episode on boredom, I'm more than happy to.
Speaker 1:But boredom helps people invent, innovate, change their lives, change the situation. It helps them realize that they can do better and you need to create boredom and as boring as that sounds, dad joke, I think it's important not just for kids but for parents I always talk about. But it makes sense now. I do my best thinking on vacation because I get out of the monotonous routine of everything and I'm not jumping from one thing to the next. So part of me is getting bored even though I'm away. It gets my brain to really start thinking and functioning and I usually come up with my best ideas for business and helps me concentrate a little more on things when I just take time away. I know on cruises when we were kids especially, we turned our phones off for the entire week because my parents didn't want to pay the exorbitant fees for it and everything I'm going to say.
Speaker 1:You start feeling a feeling, a difference. After like two days you start feeling better and your brain fog kind of drifts away, especially someone like me who kind of suffers from ADD. It's just like you feel a difference when you put it away, turn it off, and I notice that you become addicted to your phone. You're always looking for it, wondering where it is. You think it's in your ghost phone. You think it's in your back pocket but it's not. Looking for it, wondering where it is. They continue ghost phone you think it's in your back pocket but it's not. Or you think it's gone but it's there. Or you're on it and you think it's gone. That's happened a couple times, but that's true signs of addiction to something.
Speaker 1:So maybe just even for yourself, take a break. You're spending time with your kid for an hour. Turn your phone off, see what happens. Do you really need it on? Is it really? Maybe it's just a good way to understand how to function. Like, I don't sleep with my phone in the room. My phone's downstairs, I'm upstairs, I own two businesses and have a kid, so to me, my sleep was my priority, because my sleep helps me get up in the morning, helps me get to work, helps me show up to work when I'm there and be the person I need to be to function, and I don't want a phone distracting me from that. My staff can figure out whatever happens at work between those hours. It's totally fine, but my priority is me to make sure that I'm ready to go for the business, so I show up and be the best boss that I can be.
Speaker 1:And then, most importantly for a parent, is to be present. Your voice, your eye contact, your attention. Those are the best teachers for your kids as they age. So even if your kid's not looking at a phone, make sure you're not just scrolling which I've been guilty of once in a while, but just trying to understand that we're all human, we all make mistakes, we all zone out and do things that were like why did we do that? Why did we just not miss a screen on the phone for 20 minutes, 30 minutes? That was whoops. But just come back to yourself and realize that maybe next time you're not going to do that. Then be more attentional.
Speaker 1:Understand that screens themselves aren't evil, but left unchecked, they rob our kids of boredom, curiosity, creativity and connection. The brain needs quiet, the mind needs fiction and our kids. They need us real, present and unplugged. So if this episode hit your home, share with the parent you care about and, if you're ready, take the challenge One screen-free dinner this week and let us know how that goes. Let us know if we see improvement and hopefully this episode has been eye-opening. Share with a friend, guys, it's the only way we grow. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Don't forget, hit that subscribe button and join us next week as we dive deeper into this ever-changing field and remember fitness and medicine. Outro Music.
