Children are on screens for up to 8 hours a day. What are the negative consequences and how can parents help their child reduce their amount of screen time?
The typical American household has 22 connected devices, according to Deloitte. That includes televisions, computers, tablets and smartphones. With census information stating there are 2.28 people per household on the low end of homes and 3.09 per household on the upper end, you can do the math: each family member has access to up to seven devices in the normal American home!
That is a lot of screens for the four to six eyeballs in each home.
And as we usher in the month of May – and the end of the school year here in Florida – that means even more time for children to be seeking out those easily found devices and logging hours glued to them.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that children ages 8 to 10 spend an average of 6 hours per day in front of a screen, kids ages 11 to 14 spend an average of 9 hours per day in front of a screen, and youth ages 15 to 18 spend an average of seven-and-a-half hours per day in front of a screen.
The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that kids ages 8-18 now spend, on average, a whopping 7.5 hours in front of a screen for entertainment each day, over four hours of which is watching television. Over the course of a year this equals… 114 full days a year staring at a screen for fun! This does not include screen time for educational purposes at school or completing homework.
What the heck are they taking in for all these hours?! It is a combustible mix of video games, television programming, social media consumption, Youtube, and texting with friends. And of course these same businesses use a sophisticated and eerily successful set of algorithms that keep the kids online and coming back. Whether it is links to other content or suggestions for more viewing, these apps are addictive.
Negative consequences of too much screen time
And like most things that are addictive, there are a host of negative consequences. The National Library of Medicine reports that too much screen time can:
- Make it hard for your child to sleep at night
- Raise your child’s risk for attention problems, anxiety, and depression
- Raise your child’s risk for gaining too much weight
Even the youngest children need supervision with screen time. In a study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, the results suggested that using electronic devices to calm youngsters when they’re upset may inhibit their ability to learn to soothe themselves, leading to more frequent, intense emotional outbursts. When children spend too much time on screens it leaves less time for play, where children learn creativity and how to interact with others and develop social skills and learn non-verbal cues.
If all this is not enough to convince parents to monitor screen time, Healthmatters, a publication of NY Presbyterian Hospital, Dr. Jennifer Cross, a child behavioral expert, shared results from a study: “Early data from a landmark National Institutes of Health (NIH) study that began in 2018 indicates that children who spent more than two hours a day on screen-time activities scored lower on language and thinking tests, and some children with more than seven hours a day of screen time experienced thinning of the brain’s cortex, the area of the brain related to critical thinking and reasoning.” Looking back at the screen time reported by the CDC, many children’s brains could be in trouble!
What are kids watching
While there is a plethora of positive programs available to watch both on traditional television and streaming services, many kids are seeking out potentially dangerous content. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry shares the following possible types of online content:
- Violence and risk-taking behaviors
- Videos of stunts or challenges that may inspire unsafe behavior
- Sexual content
- Negative stereotypes
- Substance use
- Cyberbullies and predators
- Advertising aimed at your child
- Misleading or inaccurate information
And social media is another whole topic, but according to the Cleveland Clinic some negative consequences of these sites include:
- Cyberbullying
- Online predators
- Sharing too much information
- False marketing
- Dangerous viral trends
Of course children are going to be online and consume content, so the question becomes: how do parents help protect and teach their kids digital safety?
Helping your child navigate the online world
There are many tools and strategies available to parents to help them guide their children to make good decisions around screen time. Raising Children has some suggestions about how to navigate screen time transitions:
- Set expectations before screen time session begins
- Choose timing to get off screens smartly: end of a show or end of a level of a game
- Give your child a warning about time is about to be up
- Allow them to save what they are doing
Other ways to help your child navigate the digital world include:
- Co-watch a program with your child to help add context and discuss the shows plot lines and character interactions.
- Make mealtime, bedtime, and family time screen free
- Employ active screen time – as a family perform exercises during commercial break: push ups, jumping Jacks, etc.
- Limit your own phone and screen time… modeling digital wellness behaviors for your child is a win-win!
- Emphasize sleep, nutrition, and exercise.
- Monitor your child’s media usage to ensure that content is safe and age-appropriate. This list from Parents: suggests the best apps.
Final thoughts
The numbers are staggering. Children are spending hours upon hours on screens. Whether it is playing video games, watching videos on Youtube, or scrolling through social media sites, children are glued to devices. And the research on the consequences of all this screen time is frightening, including a variety of health issues and even brain deterioration. Parents, we need to take control: setting limits, modeling positive screen time, and monitoring what our child is consuming.
Engage the Brain encourages all parents and students to practice proper digital citizenship and positive use of electronic devices.