Science

The study concludes that the evidence suggests that genetic factors influence a child’s screen time, not the other way around :)

This raises the possibility that long screen time is not a cause of ASD, but rather an early symptom that ASD individuals are more attracted to objects than to people. Conversely, the ADHD-PRS was found to be associated with changes in screen time during the observation period. ADHD-PRS was associated with increase in screen time, which was potentially thought to be associated with ADHD subjects' susceptibility to gaming addiction.

Parents of children with neurodevelopmental disorders are often criticized for allowing their children too much screen time in order to reduce parenting difficulties, which may deprive the children of opportunities to acquire language and social skills (Lissak, 2018; Trinh et al., 2020). To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that genetic risks for neurodevelopmental disorders may affect the length of screen time in children. Thus, caregivers of children with neurodevelopmental disorders should be helped and offered alternative behavioural management strategies.