Victor from Vienna. What the clinic taught me.

In eighteen years of clinic, I have seen one child whose screen use I would describe as clinically problematic in isolation — one child for whom the screens themselves were the primary cause of a developmental difficulty, rather than a contributing factor to something else. One.

I have seen hundreds of children whose screen use was a concern for their parents. In almost every case, what I found when I looked carefully was that the screen was not the cause of the problem. It was the symptom, or the coping mechanism, or the substitute for something that was missing.

The child who watches ten hours of YouTube on weekends is often a child who has no other reliable source of calm. The adolescent who cannot put down the phone at dinner is often an adolescent who has no other reliable way to feel connected. The five-year-old who melts down when the tablet is taken away is often a five-year-old who has not yet developed the emotional regulation to tolerate frustration — and who was given the tablet partly because of this, which makes the regulation harder to develop.

I am not saying screens are fine. I am saying: when you see a screen problem, look past the screen. The screen is usually showing you something else.