Kids are losing fine motor skills—and screens might be to blame
From zipping coats to turning book pages, simple tasks are becoming challenges for a generation raised on tablets. Here’s what parents need to know to help.
Amy Hornbeck can tell something is off the moment her students step into the classroom. Once, kids arrived with pockets full of rocks and trinkets collected during outdoor adventures. Now, they come with their eyes glued to a screen. And it shows: they can’t zip their coats, turn the pages of a book, or even hold a spoon properly.
Hornbeck isn’t alone in noticing these changes. A recent survey by Education Week found that 77 percent of educators reported young students having greater difficulties handling pencils, pens, and scissors. In comparison, 69 percent noted increased struggles with tying shoes compared to five years ago.
“It’s like they’ve never seen a block,” says Hornbeck, an instructional coach at Beverly City Public Schools in New Jersey, describing how kids fumble when asked to stack just three blocks. “The things they do with the block when you’ve just shown them what to do is boggling.”
Today’s children are losing critical fine motor skills—the small, precise movements required to tie a shoelace, write with a pen, or build a tower. Experts point to a complex mix of screen time, changing habits, and a shift in childhood experiences as the culprits. Here’s what parents need to know.
The pandemic’s role in delayed fine motor skills
It’s easy to blame the pandemic for this decrease in fine motor skills. A study of over 250 babies born in the first year of the pandemic found that they scored lower on fine motor tests at six months old than babies born before the pandemic.
Lauren Shuffrey, who performed the study and is now a professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, says it’s difficult to know if the results are from increased prenatal stress or the different environment pandemic babies experienced in their first months.
(Screen time is up—here’s how to refocus on reading.)
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Staying home with working parents also led to increased screen time for kids of all ages—a factor linked to delays in fine motor skills. “Parents did what they had to in less than ideal circumstances,” says Shuffrey.
However, Steven Barnett, the co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, believes this trend predates the pandemic. “It’s a long time coming,” he says, suggesting the pandemic may have accelerated an existing issue.
How screens are crowding out hands-on play
Time spent on screens—whether phones, tablets, eBooks, or TV—all adds up to time kids aren’t crafting, drawing, and building. While learning math or creating digital art can be educational, it doesn’t develop the fine motor control that comes from writing, cutting, or coloring.
(Here’s why handwriting still matters in the digital age.)
Outdoor play, crucial for fine and gross motor development, is also declining. “They’re not digging, collecting flowers, all of the interesting kinds of stuff kids could do just set off on their own,” says Barnett.
Convenience in parenting has also impacted skill development, says Hornbeck. Stretchy pants without zippers or buttons save time on busy mornings, and pre-packaged snacks eliminate mess—but these shortcuts deprive kids of opportunities to practice zipping, buttoning, or using utensils.
Kids’ preferences for toys have shifted as well, says Hornbeck. Magnetic tiles, which snap together easily, have replaced puzzles and wooden blocks, which require patience and precision. And in three of the four classrooms Hornbeck observed, not a single child ventured into the reading area during a three-hour span. “That’s a huge change,” she says. “In the past that was not the case that nobody ever wanted to go to books.”
This decline reflects a broader trend: reading for fun has become far less common among U.S. children, according to data from Pew Research. While turning the pages of a book might seem like a minor task, Hornbeck notes that the broader ability to focus and follow instructions—skills fostered by reading—are key to activities like zipping a coat or tying a shoelace.
(Screen time can have surprising benefits for kids—when done right.)
This shift not only impacts literacy but also has ripple effects on skills like attention span and focus, which are essential for fine motor development. “The level of frustration with simple tasks is just really rising,” says Hornbeck. “That’s making kids just want to give up and not do it.”
Barnett adds that kids’ decreasing ability to focus on a task, especially one requiring effort, is a key contributor to declining fine motor skills. Take puzzles, for example. Completing one involves strategy, flipping pieces, and trial and error. But Hornbeck says, “A lot of kids are just like, ‘Nope.’ They’re used to playing on a computer, which spins the piece for you.” She adds, “Tablets provide a lot more immediate scaffolding than happens in real life.”
How to rebuild fine motor skills
Hornbeck suggests that parents look for opportunities to challenge their children and insert fine motor activities into daily tasks. Cut coupons or cook together, look for stones on the way to school, pour cups, and squeeze sponges in the bath. Playdoh and a box of crayons will last a long time.
(Here are four ways to get more ”nature therapy“ into your kid’s schedule.)
And realize that these activities cannot compete with a screen. “You’re going to have more resistance if you turn the television off and say, ‘Now it’s time to read’,” says Hornbeck. To avoid the battle, do the activity first and don’t have the screen on.
Barnett agrees. “Get them off their screens,” he says. “Kids are trying to swipe books. That’s a tip off.”
