An Unusual Boy: A One-Off Event or the Canary in the Coal Mine?

By Marion Blank, Ph.D. / New York City

Well before they can walk and well before they can talk, infants can hold objects.  For many, the 21st century has meant that one of those objects is a phone or device. Parents, with the best of intentions, use it like a “gift from God” that calms and educates their offspring. These benefits have made it an ever-available, powerful force in the lives of most children. Studies show that almost 90 percent  of kids exceed the recommended time for its use, with toddlers averaging three-plus hours daily, and some teens hitting eight-plus  hours. No other experience in their day has anything near this power.

Recently, I have had contact with Ben, a 6-year-old whose contact with devices may have led to some unique consequences. In my role as a psychologist, I am accustomed to working with learning disabled children who have severe memory problems. The difficulties they experience are unfortunate, but not confusing. They are grounded in known biological issues.

But Ben displayed a problem I’ve never seen before and never envisioned might be possible. He was referred to me because of his trouble in learning to read. That’s not at all unusual. For decades, government statistics from the highly regarded National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have shown that reading difficulties exist in about 60 percent of children in our nation—with 40 percent  showing almost no reading ability at all.

On testing, Ben exhibited none of the typically reported difficulties of poor readers. But in a play session, he displayed a most unusual behavior-- a behavior I have never seen in a neurotypical child. He seemed to have no memory!

For example, I showed him cards depicting common objects such as fruit, toy and people, which he easily identified. Then, when I placed a card out of view (e.g., an apple) and asked what he had seen, Ben would name something, anything (a car, a horse, a rabbit, etc.). Never was it the item he had just seen. Later, when I showed him the apple again, he easily recognized it, while showing no sign that he was surprised by its reappearance. It clearly was somewhere in his memory bank; he simply had no idea that the past tense question (“what did you see…?”) meant that he was supposed to call on that information. It also suggested that he had no inkling of the idea that he should intentionally put things into memory.

Further testing provided repeated examples of this pattern. They helped explain his failure in learning to read. The teaching of that skill steadily calls for conscious, directed memory (e.g., answering questions like “what sound does this letter make?”) Gradually I came to see what I believe is the way Ben sees his world. His is the universe that appears on his six-inch phone screen. After all, that experience is the one that occupies more of his time than anything else.

In that experience, when an image leaves the screen, it is gone! It is not hiding in some corner, or under a box, or anywhere else. He doesn’t expect to find it ever again since the screen keeps coming up with an endless variety of unrelated objects. This does not mean that Ben would be shocked were it to reappear. After all, those things do happen in the world of devices. Things appear out of the blue—but nothing links them to anything that came before nor to anything that might come after.

If the famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget were alive, he would be beyond shocked (or perhaps, he is spinning in his grave right now). “Object permanence” was a construct that he put forth as central to children’s thinking. In contrast to their behavior in the first few months of life, at about five to six months of age, babies realize that objects continue to exist even when unseen, unheard, or untouched. It seems possible that the hi-tech world may have totally changed the rules of the game for Ben.

In that world, the display of objects is dramatically different from the way we see actual objects that exist around us. When people, including infants starting at about six months of age, want to see an object in the three-dimensional world, they have to intentionally turn their heads and their eyes to bring that item into their line of vision. This “decision led” visual-motor coordination is totally different from the “non-movement” vision involved in simply staring at a screen.

Ben seemed to have transferred his processing of the content on the screen to what most of us over 30 years of age see as the real world. So, for him, just as what happens on the screen, when an actual object goes out of his view, it no longer exists. In other words, our brains lead us to think of the 3D world as being real, with aspects of it appearing in the world of devices; young children may hold the opposite view. They see the screen world as real, with aspects of it also appearing in the 3D world we all inhabit.

With these speculations in hand, let’s return to the (slightly modified) title: Is Ben a One-Off Phenomenon or the Canary in the Coal Mine? We can’t say, but it’s a question we should be trying to answer. In the meantime, perhaps it might be wise to follow the practice used by the following leaders (all but one being male):

• Evan Spiegel (Co-founder and CEO of Snap)

• Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google and Alphabet)

• Bill Gates (Co-founder of Microsoft)

• Mark Zuckerberg (Co-founder and CEO of Meta/Facebook

• Susan Wojcicki (former CEO of YouTube

• Chamath Palihapitiya (former Facebook executive)

• Chris Anderson (former Editor of Wired and CEO of 3D Robotics)

These experts have openly talked about the tight restrictions they impose to limit and even totally deny their children’s access, particularly their young children’s access, to the small screen that plays such a large role in our lives.

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Dr. Marion Blank is a developmental psychologist with a specialization in language-both spoken and written. Her research and clinical work over the course of five decades has led to her recognition as an international authority in literacy, especially for children with developmental challenges. She has held academic positions at Columbia University, Rutgers Medical School, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and as a Visiting Professor at Monash University, Hebrew University, and the University of London. As the creator and director of Columbia’s Light on Literacy Program, she pioneered innovative, evidence-based approaches to teach reading to children with autism—including those who were thought to be non-verbal. Dr. Blank is the recipient of numerous national and international awards for her contributions to education and child development. Her new book, Brilliance Unleashed, will be published in June 2026.