Researchers at Harvard University Uncover Compelling Secrets to the Brain Anatomy of “iPad Kids.”

Eight-year-old Shaden Dillard sits on his family’s couch, eyes glazed over while watching an anthropomorphic baseball bat clobber people over the head. After 1.3 seconds, he scrolls to a video of spinning sharks intermittently screaming the word “mustard.” Six hours pass more or less the same.

Shaden is one of many youth known as iPad kids, children codependent on their electronics. Until recently, experts believed that iPad kid attention spans were waning due to their diets of short-form content, rendering attention an unnecessary skill. However, researchers at the Harvard Department of Neuroscience have stumbled across clues that paint a much deeper picture.

Dr. Brayne of Harvard Neuroscience explains the discovery. “We decided to test and see if kids who have more than 16 hours of screen time per day show any changes in brain anatomy.”

“We brought in our first participants,” says Dr. Thalaman, a professor at the same university. “Identical twins, Gunner and Rifle Dillard. Their parents have twelve kids in total, so they were thankful they could rent these two out to us for extra money.”

Dr. Brayne shows us the room where they conduct the MRIs. “Since they’re ten years old, and much of their foundational brain development is already fixed, we wondered how profound the impact of social media addiction would be. So, for six months, we gave Gunner grade level books as entertainment, while Rifle got free rein on an iPad. At the end of that period, what we found was shocking.”

Indeed, brain scans after six months of iPadism reveal something the scholars would have never guessed. Visible from the black and white photo is a severe malformation of the brain tissue, configured into the shape of a mouse.

FIGURE 1: MRI of Rifle’s brain after six months of nonstop iPad use

“We’re still figuring out why this happened,” says Dr. Brayne. “We even asked Rifle himself. He said the mouse was a hear-me-out. I don’t know what that means.”

On the other hand, Gunner displayed vast cognitive improvement after reading books for six months. “I’ve never seen him read the words ‘nonchalant,’ ‘chopped,’ and ‘aura’ without laughing before,” says his mother. “Come to think of it, I’ve never seen him read at all. Hope it doesn’t turn him into a heathen.”

Brayne, Thalaman, and their colleagues tested these findings on Gunner and Rifle’s other siblings, including Shaden, as well as other volunteers from around the country. All the brain scans reveal major shifts in the anatomy and composition of the frontal lobe and elsewhere in the cerebrum, generally taking abstract, perplexing forms.

The neuroscientists at Harvard haven’t yet figured out what’s causing these anomalies, but they can guess what it means for the younger generations.

“The Idiocracy is already upon us,” warns Dr. Thalaman. “If kids don’t stop watching this content, their brains will suffer unknowable damage. For example, most people make 35,000 decisions a day, but the average child addicted to short-form videos only makes 6 or 7. We need to curb these behaviors before they affect the majority of the population.”

FIGURE 2: Abnormal brain anatomy see in Sprayden and Prayden Dillard, age 3