I have often come across the term ‘Productive Screen Time’, and I really wonder if there is anything productive about screen time for young children especially under the age of eleven.
Children learn by observing, exploring, and experiencing everything in their environment. For each of these they use all their senses (auditory, visual, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile) which is nothing but a highly meditative state. So, for children a state of learning is a state of meditation during which information gets converted to knowledge through one simple act of experience.
There is enough being said about how most programs or media, whether for children or adults is designed to be addictive. But that is not the only thing we need to be concerned about. Screentime engages only two of the senses – visual and auditory, of which the visual sense is predominantly used causing overstimulation. Screentime also inhibits connection that comes from children spending time in natural environments with real people. Connection is extremely vital to help the child feel safe, secure, and loved which in turn builds the ability to reason! Overstimulation increases restlessness and reduces attention span. This along with disconnection can create depression, anxiety, behavioural problems, and reduced capacity to learn (mainly cognitive impairment, speech delay and difficulty with problem-solving and creative thinking).
Yet another issue with screen time is the level of perfection that is portrayed through video edits or the level of lack, and violence portrayed on news channels. There seems to be nothing on screens that portray normal reality. If this could deeply impact adults imagine the level of impact, it can have on young children. I was reminded of this through an incident - One three-and-a-half-year-old friend of mine had watched Coco Melon’s ‘Old McDonald Had A Farm’ during his online school. After a real farm visit, when his mom asked him whether he liked it, he said ‘No!’ because the farm on Coco Melon had perfect white sheep, lush green farms, perfectly painted black and white cows and the like as compared to a real farm.
Another big issue is the safety aspect with the internet allowing access to people who could potentially hurt children. This is especially true for slightly older children with exposure to video games and social media without adult supervision and the understanding of how to keep themselves safe and from what to keep themselves safe. This combined with the lack age appropriate sex education and safety measures could leave children vulnerable to harm.
Other issues include negative impact on sleep cycle, obesity due to reduced physical activity, lack of social skills, eyesight issues, and neck and back problems (especially with portable devices).
Here is how we can reduce and/or avoid screen time:
Explain to the children why screen time is not healthy in an age-appropriate manner and agree with them on how best they’d like to reduce/ manage their screen time including the duration, what programs they are allowed to watch, when they’d like to start. This conversation works best when the child feels connected with the parent and they are included as equal participants in the conversation.
Identify with them what else they would like to do with the time based on their interests. It would help if the parents were involved with the children initially in these activities to help them make the shift from screen time to the other activities.
It would also help to include outdoors time, physical activity, and free play time every day. Play helps in building imagination and creativity, fosters cognitive growth, helps in emotional and behavioural regulation, increases ability to learn, promotes physical health and encourages independence – literally reverses all the negative impacts of screen time!
Model the no screen time behaviour to children. It really helps for children to implement something when the people in the environment have similar habits. So as parents it would really help if we were able to reduce our screen time, get outside and indulge in play with them. While this can be difficult for parents whose work predominantly involve screens and do work from home, parents would themselves benefit from scheduling some screen free outdoors time!
Avoid introduction of screen time if you haven’t already introduced it. Children up to the age of five require at least three hours of physical activity and children between five to eighteen require at least an hour of physical activity. Hence, it is important that the focus for children up to the age of five should be play, physical activity and experiential learning. For children between the ages five and eighteen screen time should be considered in the time after physical activity, play and experiential learning. Although I personally believe it is best to avoid screen time till the age of twelve!
We really hope this helps you manage screen time for yourselves and your children!
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With AJ two rules are non-negotiable irrespective of who she spends time with ‘no screen time’ and ‘no junk food’. We sincerely hope and pray to keep it that way for as long as possible.
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