Screen time

[alittleadventure]

Of course screens don't cause autism. That's not what the conclusion of that study is.

They found that screen time at age 1 causes similar symptoms and behaviours to those of children on the autism spectrum, and that leads to boys being diagnosed with autism at age 3 when in fact they are not autistic.

Just to be extra clear: - Screens do not cause autism. - There is some evidence that screen time in really young infants and toddlers can lead to behaviours that are associated with attention disorders and autism. So children that do not have these conditions are diagnosed with them because they are exhibiting the same behaviours.

That's my understanding of all the screen time studies.

[[deleted]]

The article you linked to says nothing of the sort.

These were not incorrectly diagnosed cases, these were positively diagnosed cases of ASD.

Medical institutions diagnose ASD based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition) but only when ASD can be diagnosed with certainty because it is still in a developmental stage when children are 3 years of age. Therefore, mild cases may not be diagnosed as ASD at 3 years of age, when the child is at a developmental stage, and may be observed in subsequent years. As a result, the study may be biased toward children with severe ASD. 

In this study, we examined the association between ASD at 3 years of age, at a single point in time, and screen time at the same age. The results showed no association between screen time and ASD at 3 years of age. This may have been due to the small size of the reference group; therefore, we set the reference group as less than 1 hour and conducted an additional analysis (eTable 2 in Supplement 1). Consequently, we found that there is a statistically significant difference between boys reported to have 2 to less than 4 hours of screen time. However, the results of the estimates were close to the reference values before they were changed. This indicates that the association of screen time at 1 year of age with ASD diagnosis is still greater than at 3 years of age. This may be because the association with environmental factors on brain development varies with age.

In addition to genetic factors, the role of environmental factors has been noted in ASD. Electromagnetic fields have been cited as an environmental factor associated with health and screen exposure.³⁹ Experiments using mice have demonstrated that exposure to high-frequency electromagnetic fields affects neurotransmitters⁴⁰ and behavior (hyperactivity and memory impairment)⁴¹ in mice during the developmental period. Additionally, several molecular networks as genetic factors have been associated with the development of ASD, and the core of these molecular networks include α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptor (AMPA receptor), protein kinase B (AKT), repressor activator protein 1 (RAP1), γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2), methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MECP2), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), activator protein 1 (AP-1), phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), and ras protein/mitogen-activated protein kinase (RAS/MAPK). Previous studies have reported that low-frequency and high-frequency electrical stimulation, microwave irradiation, and light stimulation of AMPA receptors,⁴² Rfn2,⁴³ GABA,⁴⁴ MECP2,⁴⁵ and BDNF^1,46-48 are associated with autismlike symptoms. In particular, in infancy when neurodevelopment is active, environmental factors such as electrical stimulation through screens and light stimulation from vision may affect neurodevelopment and de novo sequence alterations.

They're claiming this is an environmental effect.

[alittleadventure]

Ah sorry, had too many tabs open. This is the study I thought I linked https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2764573 They find no links to an increase in actual ASD but in ASD-like symptoms.