Screen, Baby – Let’s Look at Evidence, not Trends

Joint post by Nawal Abboub, PhD, & Sho Tsuji, PhD

French version here

Who hasn’t heard that “Children under two years of age should absolutely not be exposed to screen media, no matter what!” – maybe accompanied by the reasoning that “Screens will hinder the development of children’s intelligence.”

Why does the topic of the effect of screens on young children, especially with regard to their brain development, evoke so much controversy and fear? And should we actually think of all types of screen media as equal? What can scientific research teach us?

How to use Twitter for networking in academia

Within the span of two months, I’ve been asked to give essentially the same talk three times. The topic: how to network on Twitter (and other social media). How did this happen? Well, first a group of Parisian post docs organized a day-long workshop and apparently my tweeting is good enough to warrant inviting me back to my former home. Because I was invited, I took some care to prepare, and I think I did a decent job – decent enough, at least, to get some audience members to tweet about it and putting into practice what I just told them.

Shouting from the ivory tower: SciComm for beginners

This week, I am tweeting not from my own account, but from the science communication “rocur” (rotating curator) account realsci_DE, the German version of realscientists. This is the latest instance of a few experiences in talking about science and my work as a scientist to a non-expert audience, and I’ve learned a great deal from and about this in the past. So I thought I’d share a few insights that I had along the way (fun fact: there are no natural born communicators, it all needs practice).

First tell me how this helps scientists!