Just 10 more minutes?

And kids, important point.

If you’re a busy parent or a grandparent trying to get stuff done, tell me if any of these scenarios sound familiar:

• Your kids beg for “just 10 more minutes” on Roblox because they’re “almost at the next level.” Their friends are also all playing together right now. You cave, because honestly, you need to finish an email.

• They’ve been pushing for social media accounts, and you want to put it off. But you realize that when they say that all their friends are on it, and it’s how most of them communicate with one another. It’s not an exaggeration.

• It’s 10 p.m., and you’re finishing a newsletter installment on your laptop while an NHL game plays silently on the TV across the room. You interrupt your work 10 times to text back and forth with a friend on your phone. You realize that when it comes to screen time, you might not be setting the best example.

Nobody’s perfect. But a massive new study out of Japan just gave us more reason to think about the examples we give our kids and whether all that extra screen time costs them more than we realize.

Researchers tracked nearly 12,000 kids over two years. It found that more screen time not only correlates with worse ADHD symptoms, but actually appears to change how kids’ brains develop.

Scientists at the University of Fukui analyzed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study in the United States, one of the largest brain development studies ever. The study followed 11,878 children initially aged 9 to 10 over two years.

They used advanced MRI scans to track actual brain structure changes alongside parent-reported behavior assessments.

Results? Kids with higher screen time showed measurable differences in both brain volume and thickness in several key areas. Those differences help explain why they also exhibited more severe ADHD symptoms.

The need to control screen time

Here’s what the researchers discovered:

• Longer daily screen time at age 9 to 10 years old predicted increased ADHD symptoms two years later, even after controlling for how severe the kids’ symptoms were at the start. The effect held up regardless of initial symptom levels.

• At baseline, higher screen time was linked to smaller total brain volume in the cortex and reduced volume in the right putamen, a brain region involved in language learning, reward processing, and addiction-related behaviors.

• After two years, kids with more screen time showed slower development of cortical thickness in areas vital for cognitive functions—specifically the right temporal pole and parts of the left frontal gyrus, regions involved in working memory, language processing, and attention.

They also found that total cortical volume partially explained the relationship between screen time and ADHD symptoms. In other words, excessive screen exposure may contribute to a pattern of delayed brain maturation that’s often observed in children with ADHD.

“Our work provided some evidence toward growing concern about the association between digital media exposure and children’s mental and cognitive health,” explained study author Masatoshi Yamashita. “The results provide some neuroscientific evidences for the need to control screen time.”

Caveats:

• The effect sizes were relatively small. The researchers themselves acknowledged that “the clinical impact of screen time on ADHD symptoms may be marginal, and these findings should be interpreted with caution.”

• Also, this study doesn’t establish causality. It’s possible that kids predisposed to ADHD symptoms are simply drawn to more screen time, rather than screen time causing the symptoms. The researchers were careful to note that “multiple factors could influence ADHD symptom scores.”

• Finally, the study tracked kids aged 9-10 over two years, so we don’t know if these effects persist into later adolescence or adulthood, or if they’re reversible with reduced screen time.

Earth to research team

That’s cool, research team. This really does make sense. But do you have any idea what we’re up against here?

Even if we wanted to go full digital detox, how would that work? Send our kids to a remote camp in Vermont where they lock phones in a safe for the summer?

Still, you’d be fighting against every other kid’s parents, every algorithm designed to be addictive, and basically the entire structure of modern childhood.

So, what’s a realistic approach?

All part of the job

I’m not suggesting we eliminate screens entirely—that ship sailed about a decade ago.

But this research shows we need to be more intentional about limits, especially during the critical 9- to 12-year-old age range, when brains are developing rapidly. Maybe that means:

• Setting actual timers instead of “just five more minutes” that turns into 45.

• Having designated screen-free times: dinner, car rides, the hour before bed.

• Modeling better behavior ourselves, even when it’s inconvenient.

Oh, and finding activities that genuinely compete with screen time’s dopamine hit.

The truth is, telling our kids “no more screen time” is going to be harder on us than it is on them.

But then again, maybe that’s part of the job.

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7 other things

• Paramount Global made a $108 billion all-cash offer to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. It would appear to significantly outstrip the deal worth $83 billion that Netflix and Warner announced just last Friday, although that agreement is solely for Warner’s streaming service and studios. The Paramount deal is partially backed by a private equity firm founded by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law; Trump told reporters he expects to “be involved” in deciding which company wins. (NPR, New York Times)

• The Supreme Court announced that it will decide next year whether President Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States - can go into effect. Under Trump’s executive order, people born in the United States would not be automatically entitled to citizenship if their parents are in this country either illegally or temporarily. (SCOTUS Blog)

• Home sellers are giving up and ‘delisting’ at an ‘unusually high rate,’ says a new Realtor report. Home delistings in October were up 45.5% year to date and up nearly 38% from October 2024. (CNBC)

• American households are nearing the end of the year feeling a lot more dour about the economy than they did at the beginning, even as they keep spending. High prices, a fragile job market and anxiety about President Trump’s tariffs have helped drag consumer sentiment, as measured by the University of Michigan, down near historic lows this year. The latest numbers were slightly improved from a previous reading freighted by government shutdown disruptions, but barely. (WSJ)

• A viral image of San José, California high school students forming a human swastika while lying on their school’s football field has roiled the Silicon Valley community and prompted an outcry from the Jewish community. The picture was posted on social media, accompanied by an antisemitic 1939 quote from Adolf Hitler. The post has since been deleted and denounced by local leaders. (LA Times)

• 401(k)s Are Minting a Generation of ‘Moderate Millionaires’: Many Americans are peeking at their retirement accounts and cheering higher balances. (WSJ)

• The days on the job are numbered for a Michigan grocery store worker - but for good reason. Ed Bambas, an 88-year-old veteran who works full-time at a Meijer outside of Detroit, was given an oversized check for a whopping $1.77 million, which was the result of an extraordinary fundraising effort by a social media influencer. Bambas had retired from General Motors in 1999, but in 2012, he lost his pension due to the company’s bankruptcy measures. (NBC Chicago)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments!