86 HAWAII PARENT May/June 2025 directly affect a child’s ability to focus on their work. But attention and focus are not the only concerns here. Excessive screen time can also affect early learning. Infants, toddlers, and young children learn best by interacting with the real world, such as touching objects, manipulating materials (e.g., blocks, toys, textures), and communicating with their caregivers. These experiences are crucial for young children to build skills that screens cannot replicate or provide, regardless of claims made by technology or educational software companies. In fact, too much unsupervised screen time, especially for children under two, has been linked to lower design,” based on Dr. B.J. Fogg’s research at Stanford University. Is excessive screen time really that bad? As entertaining as screens may be for our children, the negative impact of excessive screen time can no longer be ignored. Research shows that too much screen time can affect children’s attention and concentration because the constant notifications distract a child from what they were doing. Dr. Gloria Mark, a researcher at UC Irvine, has often been referenced for her finding that it takes about 25.5 minutes to return to the original task after an interruption. While this may be an estimate, it is no surprise that constant distractions can Screen time can negatively affect children’s social relationships. “Excessive screen time distracts children, making it harder for them to concentrate and learn effectively.”
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