07 May 2025
Latest Evidence Regarding the Effect of Screens
Just a brief note but it is clear, the evidence never stops rolling in. A new report from France (Willsher, 2025) documents the fact that our screens, whether they be TV, tablets or smartphones are hindering and altering brain development, causing permanent damage. The experts from the societies of paediatrics, public health, ophthalmology, child and adolescent psychiatry, and health and environment, wrote an open letter calling for an ‘urgent rethink’ of public policies to protect future generations. “Screens in whatever form do not meet children’s needs. Worse, they hinder and alter brain development” causing “a lasting alteration to their health and their intellectual capacities.”
They observe that every day, health professionals and infant school teachers see the damage caused by regular exposure to screens before children enter elementary school: “delayed language, attention deficit, memory problems and motor agitation.” There are exactly the problems that Emery & Emery predicted in A Choice of Futures, 1976.
But these experts do not stop there, they report that exposure to screens, no matter how brief, also has a negative effect on children’s social and emotional development which affects all social groups but especially the disadvantaged, leading to greater social inequalities. Their recommendation was that children under 6 years of age should not be exposed to screens. They list activities which can be substituted for screen time which is the old range of activities for kids before we were hit with this technology.
While we were ridiculed and totally rubbished all those years ago, it is getting very late for those rubbishers to come up with any evidence to support their claims. So far, it has all been for us.
Willsher, Kim. (2025). Children under six should avoid screen time, French medical experts say. The Guardian. 1 May.
OST for the Younger Generations
It has come to my attention that some of the younger generations think OST is just another musty old bit of theory which eventually will die out with time, that it was time bound and, therefore, of little relevance today.
Contrary to these beliefs, OST is neither time bound nor is it merely a collection of old theories – every single concept, construct and principle is practical and applicable to research ventures large and small, just as much today as it has been over the last 70 or so years. When we say research, we do not mean just those projects that may officially by somebody called ‘research’ but more simple events like a community attempting to pull its fragmenting self together for a more vital future for its kids, or a small organization trying to decide how best to diversify in difficult times. Everybody does research. OST has devised methods using a comprehensive set of simple concepts that can be used flexibly to approach any task.
To illustrate just how practical OST really is, we have set up a new section under the heading From Theory to Practice. Here you will find a selection of key OST concepts followed by their translation into various practices. OST as a framework consists of many concepts and principles from the ubiquitous to the more specific.
We kick the series off with two of the most fundamental and ubiquitous concepts, that of the open system itself and the OST definition of people. Both have a cascading series of applications from the most direct to the more indirect: each is inevitably involved in every task simply because they are so fundamental: they colour every aspect of the work but we will feature only those which are quite specific. (One of the great strengths of OST is its internal consistency, you do not find the clashes of values or discordancies which can be apparent in other approaches: this consistency springs precisely from the way in which the basic concepts are applied.)
Many of the key concepts and principles have several different applications depending on the purpose of the user. Of course, some applications such as the Search Conference employ many of them but in the process of translating from theory to practice, we will unpack such methods to show the variety of ways in which a concept can be applied.
Other concepts and practices such as the rationalization of conflict and the community reference system are tools which can be used profitably in a wide variety of circumstances, not necessarily related to OST in any way. The rationalization of conflict for example can be applied any time a group runs into a disagreement or conflict, small or large. If used at the beginning of a process it can head off much more serious incidences of conflict further down the track.
The community reference system again can be applied in any situation where it is important to ensure that participation in any event is unbiased. Many organizations or events can come under pressure to prevent it being stacked by vested interests in an outcome. Again, it can prevent later conflicts. There are other tools within OST that can be similarly employed for such constructive ends – it is just up to the enterprise of the practitioner to perceive their value them and grab them.
Such demonstrations of practicality, with the added benefit of adaptability, should reassure the reader that OST is alive and well and just as relevant today as it ever was, if not more so.
Solving the Ultra Processed Food Puzzle
Research on ultra processed food (UPF) is vitally important for human health as it now unfortunately forms a major part of a lot of people’s diets. This latest research suggests the reason why it is causing large scale health problems turns out to be once again, because of open systems. Our bodies only recognize essential nutrients when they are embedded in their natural context, as part of natural whole foods.