Prevalence of delayed language acquisition with smartphone usage in toddlers in Erbil city-Iraq

Background & Objectives: Worldwide, speech delay is the most common developmental disorder in 3 to 6-year-old children. In the normal population, many children have speech delays, of which more than one-third of them will not resolve spontaneously and need further management.The aim of the study was to find any statistical correlation of speech delay with smart phone usage . Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted and data were collected from randomly selected 300 toddlers aged 12-36 months who attended two rimary health care centers in Erbil city-Iraq during the period from the 1st of January 2020 to the end of January 2021. A designed questionnaire was used to assess the speech delay in the toddlers and evaluate factors that may affect language development including (socio-echonomic state, hours of use, type of videos…etc) Results: The mean age of the study participants was 26.7months. Despite the higher percentage of speech delay in the user group (among which the delay was more in those watching non-age-appropriate videos than age-appropriate videos with percentages of 84%, 53.2% respectively) than the nonuser group, but it was statistically non-significant. The delay was more prominent among those using smart devices for four hours or more (76.1%).the percentage of delayed speech was higher in those who watch videos with same mother language (76.9%)with lower in those with other language videos (53.1%). Conclusion: Prevalence of speech delay was higher in toddlers using smart phone with significant increase in the percentage of delay associated with longer duration of usage.