Can you be too young to play video games?

Since kids these days often have their own smartphones and are frequently expected to use the internet for school, asking this question can sound a little silly. There are even tons of games and other forms of interactive entertainment available for very young children, so you'd think a website about gaming would be arguing in favor of letting toddlers enjoy some screen time, right?

You'd be wrong.

Studies are showing that there are some parts of growing up that screens can't provide. Giving a toddler a smartphone may help keep them quiet, but it also does some real damage.

I'll explain why and how in more detail below, but the simple answer is that yes, you can be too young for video games.

You're probably aware that people possess at least five senses. While we can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste things, there are many more ways our bodies process information about the world - it's just that these other processes are handled subconsciously, so we don't need to actively think about them in order to benefit from them.

There's a catch though: some of these other senses don't automatically work. We need to learn how to use them, and that means practise. Your vestibular sense and proprioception are two of these senses, and many childhood milestones, such as a child's first steps, are the result of them starting to work together.

Unfortunately, neither of these senses are improved or exercised by video games or other types of screen-based media. In order to develop these senses, children need to move around. It doesn't have to be exhausting or strenous, as even a simple game of catch, doing the hokey pokey, or being swung around by an adult will work, but the bottom line is that children need to move.

When these senses aren't developed, people have issues with hand-eye coordination, keeping their balance, and a number of other avoidable problems.

As anyone who's had to enjoy spring allergies can attest, everyone has an immune system. This is a complex system of cells in your body that act like a little army, constantly fighting to prevent your body from being invaded by germs that could seriously harm or kill you.

However, we aren't born with a fully trained immune system. In order to fight disease, the immune system needs to understand what it's fighting, and the usual way for it to learn this information is through exposure.

Unfortunately, there is a growing amount of evidence that we've made our living spaces too clean. Thus, our immune systems aren't finding anything to study. In turn, this is leading them to overreact to anything they do come across, making allergies increasingly common and severe. There's also reason to believe that the immune system plays a significant role in serious adulthood diseases, like Alzheimer's.

Nobody wants their children to get sick, and I'm not suggesting that staying clean is a bad thing. But, it seems that the more we know about the human body, the more it seems that we were designed to play outside with other children. No matter how enticing our devices are, they just aren't a substitute for the real world.

If you'd like to read more about this, then try searching for the "hygiene hypothesis" via your favorite search engine. That's the fancy name for this theory.

Just a quick reminder: I'm no doctor and the above can't be taken as medical advice. I'm just a random dude who's trying to be honest about the protentional risks of playing video games, and these two points have been coming up in the parenting columns I follow for a while now.