All forms of recreational digital consumption - whether on smartphones, tablets, game consoles or TVs - have skyrocketed in the younger generations. From the age of 2, children in the West clock up more than 2.5 hours of screen time a day; by the time they reach 13, it-s more than 7 hours a day. Added up over the first 18 years of life, this is the equivalent of almost 30 school years, or 15 years of full-time employment.
Most media experts do not seem overly concerned about this situation: children are adaptable, they say, they are -digital natives-, their brains have changed and screens make them smarter. But other specialists - including some paediatricians, psychiatrists, teachers and speech therapists - dispute these claims, and many parents worry about the long-term consequences of their children-s intensive exposure to screens.
Michel Desmurget, a leading neuroscientist, has carefully weighed up the scientific evidence concerning the impact of the digital
