New podcast episode: What screens do to your brain
Louisa Kulke explains that even babies can tell the difference between the real and virtual worlds. In experiments, her team showed that even three-month-old children notice that people interact differently with people on screen than with real people. Babies show interest but follow social rules; for example, they don't stare at strangers in real life, even though they might be curious.
Young children do not learn from screens – not even with “Peppa Pig” in English. Only real social interaction enables language acquisition and learning. This “media deficit” decreases with age. At the same time, Kulke warns that digital media can be addictive, especially when the brain – still in development – has not yet fully mastered self-control.
In her research, Louisa compares real social interactions with video calls and virtual scenarios. The result: even video calls or virtual reality do not achieve the emotional depth of real encounters. The brain reacts differently, and social rules such as mutual eye contact or nonverbal signals hardly work digitally.
Louisa Kulke describes how the brain adapts to digital stimuli. When children or adults constantly watch 30-second videos, the brain gets used to short attention cycles – the “endurance run” of long texts becomes more difficult. Nevertheless, she warns against alarmism: every new technology – from printing to television – was initially demonized. The key is to critically examine what is true, whether on TikTok, ChatGPT, or Aunt Erna.
Children should only use digital media under supervision. She advocates early media education: children should learn to question digital content and use it creatively themselves. Her outlook: in the future, she wants to investigate how social interactions with robots work and whether machines will ever really be able to understand human rules.
Watch/listen now and gain exciting insights:YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Dezer