[scott00]

It seems like they collected 5 screen time data points[0] but only present analysis of the first, collected at 12 months of age.

Did I just miss the other analyses?

Assuming I didn't, is it too cynical of me to infer that they ran the numbers for the other data points but found no relationship? Suggesting that screen use after age 20 months or so is substanitially less harmful?

[0] Quoting from the paper: "When their child was aged 12 months, parents were asked to report the amount of time on average that the child spent on screens ... . Parents were asked the same question on their child’s screen time at 5 time points between ages 12 months and 54 months."

[giantg2]

I also didn't see anything about the type of programming consumed. I would think this would play a big role in things like attention.

A lot of the programming for kids is extremely low value - nothing of educational value, poor dialog, poor social skills/manners or violence, etc. There are even problems with the pacing a lot of times where it seems like the show is so fast compared to real life. No wonder you can't pay attention in a slow paced classroom when you're conditioned to have a 10 second attention span. I can even see some of this with my wife. She can't stand any sort of slow burn or intellectual movies, documentaries, etc. She just can't focus for that long if it's not fast paced. You can even see the general difference in pace from older movies or TV shows (like black and white old) and today.

[ProjectArcturis]

Not at all cynical. Well, it's cynical but warranted. That's absolutely what they would have done. And because negative results don't get published in important journals, they wrote the paper emphasizing the positive result they did find.