Many social commentators posit that children’s social skills are declining as a result of exposure to technology. But this claim is difficult to assess empirically because it is challenging to measure “social skills” with confidence and because a strong test would employ nationally representative data of multiple cohorts. No scholarship currently meets these criteria. The authors fill that gap by comparing teachers’ and parents’ evaluations of children’s social skills among children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study 1998 and 2010 cohorts. The authors find no evidence that teachers or parents rate children’s face-to-face social skills as poorer among more recent cohorts, even when accounting for family characteristics, screen time use, and other factors. In addition, within cohorts, children with heavy exposure to screens exhibit similar social skills trajectories compared to children with little exposure to screens. There is a notable exception—social skills are lower for children who access online gaming and social networking many times a day. Overall, however, the results represent a challenge to the dominant narrative that social skills are declining due to technological change.

中文翻译：

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这些天的孩子：美国孩子面对面的社交技能下降了吗？

许多社会评论家认为，由于接触技术，儿童的社交技能正在下降。但这种说法很难凭经验进行评估，因为很难自信地衡量“社交技能”，而且强有力的测试将使用多个队列的全国代表性数据。目前没有奖学金符合这些标准。作者通过比较 1998 年和 2010 年幼儿纵向研究队列中教师和家长对儿童社交技能的评估来填补这一空白。作者发现，即使考虑到家庭特征、屏幕使用时间和其他因素，也没有证据表明教师或父母认为在最近的队列中孩子的面对面社交技能较差。此外，在队列中，与很少接触屏幕的儿童相比，经常接触屏幕的儿童表现出相似的社交技能轨迹。有一个明显的例外——每天多次访问在线游戏和社交网络的儿童的社交技能较低。然而，总体而言，结果对社会技能因技术变革而下降的主流说法提出了挑战。