Mobile Phone Use and Its Effects on Early Infant Development

Abstract

Excessive screen exposure in early infancy has been increasingly recognized as a potential threat to optimal developmental trajectories, with growing evidence suggesting that prolonged screen time may disrupt critical periods of cognitive, social, and language development, with long-term detrimental consequences in future. The current research is conducted to analyze the effect of mobile phone usage on early infant development from 6 to 18 months. In this study, the participants were the parents of infants, who helped in their assessment on three levels, i.e., (social, self-help, and cognitive). A repeated measure design was employed, assessing the same group of (N=50) infants at two time points, with 3-month lapse. Participants were collected from the daycare and vaccination centers across Lahore city, using time series sampling, where the parents filled the Urdu Portage Guide to Early Education’s (PGEE-U; Amjad & Shahid, 2003 [unpublished]) three domains i.e., social, self-help, and cognitive skills. The results revealed that infants aged 6-12 months (n= 17) exhibited significant mean differences in socialization skills (p < .001) and cognitive skills (p < .05), while changes in self-help skills were not statistically significant (p = .46), corresponding no learning of self-help skills at this age. On the contrary, infants of 13-18 months (n= 23) exhibited no significant mean differences in all the domains of socialization (p = .66), self-help (p = .14), or cognitive skills (p = .45) indicating stagnation in developmental progress. Whereas, infants with no exposure to mobile phones (n=10) showed significant improvement across all domains: socialization (p = .01), self-help (p = .02), and cognitive skills (p = .01). These findings suggest that mobile phone exposure may delay developmental progress in early infants’ global developmental functioning. The study underscores the need for awareness and adherence to screen-time guidelines recommended by health authorities for infants.