As technology continues to be used more frequently in everyday life, U.S. scientists are now claiming that smartphones and tablets have negative effects on early brain development.

An ongoing study that will last over several years and is being conducted by the National Institute of Health will monitor the development of children and their relationship to technology.

Early findings have discovered that children that spend seven or more hours per day in front of screens are also prematurely thinning their brain cortex.

The research has already worked with 4500 children to understand the impact technology has on them through the studying of their brain activity. The project is known as Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) and will cost in the realm of $400 million.

As few as two hours of screen time per day can still have an impact on the structure of kids’ brains. Those impacts include reduced memory and perception skills, cognitive abilities and IQ scores.

Over the next decade, over 11,800 children between the ages of nine and 10 will be studied in order to monitor their growth into early adulthood to understand impacts on emotional development and mental health. 

Also examined during the study will be 2100 young people who are twins or triplets.

Researchers believe that by early next year, they will have access to baseline results from the research.

Dr. Gaya Dowling, one of the study’s lead authors, says that additional work was needed in order to fully understand the preliminary findings from the initial 4500 participants. 

“We don’t know if it’s being caused by the screen time. We don’t know yet if it’s a bad thing,” Dr. Dowling said. “What we can say is that this is what the brains look like of kids who spend a lot of time on screens. And it’s not just one pattern.”