A few weeks ago, we saw a surge of articles saying that excess
screen time can cause early puberty in kids. hat's a
pretty frightening prospect, and the claim naturally received a lot
of press attention. The study that prompted all of the articles,
however, doesn't show any such thing.
First, it was a study of rats, and only 18 of them. It is true
that rats have similar development to humans and studies provide
helpful information. However, as one of the study's authors
said, very far down in the press release in an easily overlooked
section, we can't draw exact parallels. Similarly, the study
looked at only 18 subjects, meaning that we need to see replication
in larger samples before we start drawing conclusions. Furthermore,
the paper was presented at a conference, which has a lower
threshold of validity than peer-reviewed journals.
