In the meantime.....more screen time?
- Leigh Choate
- Aug 3, 2020
- 4 min read
As we enter into this school year with many unknowns, one thing is for certain, with the majority of our schools opening up in distance learning, there comes with it an increase of screen time for us all.
We often hear about what is,or is not, an appropriate amount of screen time for people in general, or about the damage and affects that screen time can have on a person, especially our youth. We hear that we need to pay attention to how much we are on our screens, by choice, or due to school/work constraints, and that we need to shut it down at least one hour before bed so that our sleep patterns are not interrupted by the damaging effects of the blue light.
The questions that I continually ask myself are; how does a large amount of screen time affect our kids and are we doing anything to monitor our children and/or limiting their screen time?
As adults,it is our responsibility to monitor ourselves. On our smartphones specifically, this can be done in numerous ways. Either by using apps on your phone to curb usage such as the Moment app, having your phone shut off specific apps or entirely after a certain amount of screen time has been reached in a day as specified by you in the phone settings, and monitoring your weekly screen time by evaluating your weekly screen usage. However,this only seems to work when you care, and lets me honest.....some people do not care.
For teenagers and young adults, this becomes a much more difficult task or habit to break. With the surge of the socials, most specifically, Snapchat, Instagram, and Tik Tok, combined with the impending school screen time, I am worried that our kids are just spending too much time staring at a screen. What is even more of a concern is that anxiety and depression in our kids has been linked to increased smartphone usage. (as cited by Elhai, J.D., Levine, J.C., Dvorak, R.D., Hall, B.J., 2016). Pair this with the COVID 19 pandemic, sheltering in place, typical lack of motivation by teenagers, and distance learning, we find ourselves in a perfect storm. "With comparatively little alternative, non-electronic entertainment available to them during lockdown, many young people have spent increasingly more time gaming and on their devices, to the point where can such habits can become addictive, or even destructive” (teachwire).
But let's just not take just one doctor’s word for it, Dr. Alan Delamater, director of the division of clinical psychology in the department of pediatrics at the University of Miami Mailman Center for Child Development states that
“numerous studies have shown that too much screen time in kids leads to stress, depression, poor development of social skills and lower levels of academic achievement. He says that the average amount of recreational screen time per day among teenagers is seven hours and that pre-adolescents (ages 8 through 11) average about 3.6 hours a day and two hours a day is the upper limit of guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization” (Miami Herald).
Now that we have the answer to how screen time is affecting our kids, what are we going to do about it? While the focus here is on what we can do as a district to help, the majority of the lifting to keep kids off their screens will come from home.
In recent encouraging news, in an effort to keep our screen time down, our district is trying to align our homework policy and screen time to be no more than three hours total outside of the regular school day. This along with monitoring at home is just a small step in the battle of screen time.
If you are looking for creative ways to monitor your child’s screentime, just search phone monitoring in the app store on your phone, change the password on your wifi to put boundaries on when it can be accessed, and set time limits for all screen usage. Not only can and should you monitor your child’s screentime, pay attention to what they are looking at when on their screens. I would guess that the phone and the bill belongs to you, so do not feel like it is not something you can monitor as a parent. While I know this is difficult, it should be an important part of phone usage rules for kids. Don’t worry, we will talk about how to do that and what to look for at another time.
I realize that this is all easier said than done, but our children’s future and well-being depend on it. In the meantime, it is up to us to be the role models and leaders and set our own phones down, shut down our screens, turn off the tv and unplug. Get outside and move around a little while we get some fresh air and spend some quality screen-free time together.
What do you say? Can we all unplug a little more?
~leigh
References
Elhai, J.D., Levine, J.C., Dvorak, R.D., Hall, B.J. (2016). Fear of missing out, need for touch,
anxiety and depression are related to problematic smartphone use. Journal of Computers in Behavior, 63,509-516. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563216304125?via%3Dihub#!
Aldous-Goodge, C. (2020, July 23). Always on- post-COVID, are teens getting too much screen time? Teachwire. Retrieved from
Granfield, C. (2020, July 27). How kids and teens are coping with screentime as they learn
during COVID quarantine. Miami Herald. Retrieved from https://www.miamiherald.com/living/health-fitness/article244131382.html
Komentarji