No matter how great a baby sitter they may seem to be, too much screen time for young children appears to slow normal brain development. (This might explain a lot of the people we find on Facebook.)
A 2019 study of 69 children ages three to five concluded that more "screen-based media use" was correlated with lower language, executive function, and emergent literacy abilities, controlling for child age and household income. Children who spent more time in front of screens consuming media had slower mental-processing skills and lower levels of literacy than those who spent less time with screens.
A child's first five years are crucial for brain development. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under 18 months of age should have no screen exposure other than video chatting, and that those ages two to five be limited to one hour of exposure per day.
Dr. John Hutton, MD, one of the study's authors said, "As mobile digital devices linked via wireless connectivity are increasingly used by ever-younger children, this is an important public health issue. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement in 2016 based on research findings in rats, encouraging caution with mobile devices and that more research is needed."
Sounds like you can wait until more definitive research is in, or you can roll the dice with your children's future.
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