Colman Noctor: Growing up in a flatscreen world can flatline social skills

Time is finite and not renewable. Every hour spent online is an hour not spent doing something else, so when children spend large parts of their day online, something else gets sacrificed

Increasingly, screens are used as emotional regulators by children and adults alike. If you are bored, scroll. If you are upset, watch. If you are anxious, game. Picture: iStock 

MOST internet safety campaigns carry the same essential, well-meaning messages: monitor devices, set parental controls, talk to children about strangers, watch for signs of bullying, and protect privacy. 

This year, this safety feels more significant amid ongoing government discussions by Tánaiste Simon Harris about banning social media access for under-16s. These are important conversations. Necessary ones. But from a mental health perspective, they are only part of the conversation.

The real challenge facing children online is not just about safety, it’s about substitution. When a child spends hours every day in front of a screen, which developmental nutrients are being displaced? And what are the long-term effects of a play-based childhood being replaced by a screen-based one?

As parents, we are often guided to think in terms of risks such as harmful content, online predators, and exploitation. Yet the deeper and less often voiced concern is not what children might encounter online, but what they are missing offline.

If we frame internet safety purely as harm prevention, we miss the broader developmental picture. Avoiding danger is not the same as building resilience. Blocking online threats is not the same as fostering growth.

Not all children who use the internet are victims of its dangers, but just because this has not occurred, we should not assume all is well. A child can be perfectly “safe” online and still be developmentally undernourished.

Human development is shaped by friction, boredom, face-to-face interaction, physical play, awkward pauses in conversation, reading body language, negotiating rules in games, sitting with uncomfortable feelings, and learning patience through waiting. Screen communication, by design, removes this friction by smoothing the edges and delivering stimulation on demand.

Technology is designed to capture attention, reduce effort, and increase time on screen. Having our attention hijacked and being encouraged to become virtually dependent and physically distant are not side effects — they are intended outcomes. The issue is that many of the experiences screens are replacing are precisely the ones children need most.

Time is finite and not renewable. Every hour spent online is an hour not spent doing something else. This phenomenon is known as opportunity cost, or the unseen price of choosing one activity over another. Along with safety concerns related to online activity, we must recognise that when children spend large parts of their day online, something else gets sacrificed.

Let’s imagine that we eliminated all dangers from the digital world, a child could still spend eight hours a day watching videos of cats on skateboards. There is nothing illegal about this, and nothing unsafe is occurring. However, it is a poor use of their time, which has the potential to be damaging, especially during a phase of life when development is rapid, and the risk of missing crucial steps is high.

What is being sacrificed for screen time are experiences like unstructured play, face-to-face conversation, physical movement, creative boredom, reading, family interaction, imaginative exploration, and most importantly, community belonging. Few of these experiences can match the dopamine rush of digital stimulation. 

Traditional childhood activities like reading and imaginative play are slower, quieter, and less instantly gratifying. However, developmentally, they are priceless. A child building a fort, kicking a ball, and inventing a game exercises their cognitive, emotional, and social muscles that, if left unused, will weaken. The most exercised muscles children use while scrolling endlessly are just their thumbs.

The concern is not that children use technology, but that technology is increasingly consuming childhood, with serious consequences.

Experiential deficits

Some parents may not realise the seriousness of what is being lost here. I’ve often been told by parents that their child is “very social online”, that they chat, message, game, and interact constantly. But digital interaction is not the same as embodied socialisation.

In real-world social encounters, children learn to read facial expressions, interpret tone of voice, notice hesitation or discomfort, repair misunderstandings, tolerate awkwardness, manage rejection, take conversational turns and sit with silence.

These are vital developmental experiences that, when bypassed, will have consequences. Online communication is edited, delayed, filtered, and controlled. Mistakes can be deleted. Responses can be crafted. Conversations can be exited instantly. And while some will argue this reduces anxiety in the short term, I would suggest it also impedes essential growth.

Social confidence is built through repeated exposure to mild social discomfort. Remove the discomfort entirely, and you also remove the developmental gains. It’s akin to learning to swim without ever entering deep water.

Children need practice being around other people, not just their profiles or avatars. It’s not the child’s fault that they struggle to put down their devices. They are responding normally to systems built by some of the most sophisticated behavioural scientists in the world. 

Apps and platforms are engineered around psychological hooks such as variable reward schedules, social validation loops, streaks, and notifications. These engagement features activate dopamine pathways, the brain’s motivation and reward circuitry, which are especially powerful in the developing brain.

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Self-regulation takes time to fully mature, making children neurologically more vulnerable to compulsive engagement. We would not blame a child for struggling to resist unlimited sweets placed within arm’s reach. Yet we often expect them to self-regulate in a digital sweetshop open 24 hours a day.

Raising issues about how childhood is being rewired in an unhealthy way is not about blame. It’s about realism.

Another subtle shift happening in children’s mental health is how they are managing their feelings. Increasingly, screens are used as emotional regulators by children and adults alike. If you are bored, scroll. If you are upset, watch. If you are anxious, game.

Technology is becoming a fast-acting emotional distraction, meaning children never get to practice sitting with their feelings long enough to understand or regulate them.

Emotional resilience is not built through constant soothing; it is built through supported tolerance. When a child experiences frustration, boredom, or sadness and works through it with guidance, their neural pathways for coping are established and strengthened. When almost every uncomfortable feeling is immediately numbed by digital distraction, those pathways do not develop fully. So we are not just managing moods through digital distraction, we are shaping coping styles.

Intrusion of digital devices

Two of the most measurable impacts of excessive screen time are sleep disruption and attention fragmentation. Sleep is foundational to children’s mental health, emotional regulation, and learning capacity. 

Yet devices increasingly intrude into bedrooms and bedtime routines. Blue light exposure, emotional stimulation, and late-night engagement all delay sleep onset and reduce sleep quality.

At the same time, constant digital switching trains their brains to seek novelty and to reduce sustained attention. Fast-paced content changes how children expect information to arrive: quickly, visually, and with high stimulation. Classrooms, books, and conversations cannot compete with algorithmically optimised content streams. And they shouldn’t have to.

But we must recognise the mismatch we are creating between what children want and what they need. We are offering the convenience of technological contact over the labour of meaningful connection.

I see many young people who are constantly in contact with peers online, yet still feel deeply lonely. Real connection requires vulnerability, presence, shared experience, and emotional risk. Digital communication often filters these out.

I believe the biggest challenge to our mental health over the next decade will be loneliness. It will not be solved by providing more interaction— it is solved by more meaningful interaction.

Parents sometimes focus on how much their child communicates rather than how deeply they connect. Quantity is easier to measure, but when it comes to connection, it is quality that counts.

Instead of just asking “How do we keep children safe online?”‘, we also need to ask, “How do we keep childhood healthy offline?”.

Some practical steps could include:

• Keeping devices out of bedrooms at night;
• Protecting device-free family time;
• Valuing boredom as developmental space;
• Prioritising in-person activities and play;
• Modelling healthy adult device habits;
• Delaying personal smartphone ownership where possible;
• Treating screen time as a developmental issue, not just a behavioural one.

Children need guidance not only to stay safe, but also to choose what helps them grow and stay healthy. We are not raising children for a world without technology. We are raising them for a world saturated by it. Avoidance is unrealistic. But intentional use is possible.

Internet safety campaigns should remind us not only to build digital guardrails but also to protect the richness of real childhood experience.

The most powerful protective factor in a child’s life is not a filter, an app, or a parental control setting. It is a full, connected, emotionally supported, offline life that no algorithm can replace.

Colman will be discussing these views and more with Alex Cooney from Cybersafe Kids on their free webinar,
Essential Digital Parenting on Wednesday, February 25, at 7.30pm. 

• Dr Colman Noctor is a child psychotherapist