A new study claims that there is a steady decline in children's social skills because they have less time for face-to-face interaction. Much of their time goes to excessive use of digital media.

Patricia Greenfield from University of California said that people are forgetting the cost of digital media in education.

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In their study, they found out that children are losing the ability to understand emotions of other people because of displacement in personal social interaction.

Researchers found out that the children find it hard to recognize people's emotions in photos and videos.

Yalda Uhls, one of the researchers, explained that nonverbal emotional cues can be effectively learned in face-to face communication.

Uhls claims that if one doesn't practice face to face communication, one can lose important social skills.

Participating students explained that they watch television and play video games an average of four hours and a half a day.

Nationally, the time children use to engage in these activities could be higher, Uhls explained. 

Researchers believe that there is a need for more face-to-face interactions among children despite the use of digital media for social interaction.

They believe that spending less time on digital media can help students develop social skills and learn to read nonverbal cues.

According to researchers, they've developed a model of the advantages of face to face interaction to help students develop skills in understanding emotions of other people.

Uhls also explained that using emoticons is a poor substitute for face-to-face communication because people are social creatures.

There is a need for a device-free time, she added.

The research will be available in Computer Human Behavior in October but has been published online.