The Impact of Screen Time on Children's Mental Health

[digitlparenting]

The increase in screen time has raised significant concerns regarding its impact on children's mental health. Some psychological effects of excessive screen time include attention problems, sleep disruptions, reduced physical activity, increased anxiety and depression, and diminished social skills. Understanding these impacts is crucial for parents, educators, and policymakers who are trying to balance the benefits of technology with healthy development. How should this issue be handled, and what are your thoughts on it?

[hnthrowaway0328]

I have a 3.5 years old boy and we grant him some 30-35 minutes of TV plus a handful of minutes of videos played on the mobile every day. He sometimes demand more time but we never gave in and he seems to be fine with that.

TBH I prefer that amount to be zero, but unfortunately his grandfather opened the door for him a year ago. I will for sure not increase his TV time until he is well into primary school, when we won't have much control anyway. The school will show plenty of videos and his friends' parents probably won't be as against screen time as we do. But definitely he is not to own a mobile or pad until he has to -- most likely from middle school.

Both of us follow a sedant life style. We prefer to stay at home. I plan to change this and introduce hiking and camping into our life. Naturally one does not watch TV while hiking or camping, so I'll increase the reading time. This also may lead to star gazing and fossil collecting. My wife is particularly not interested in outdoor activities so it's probably going to be just me and him -- well till I know how to setup a tent at least.

[Mansoori87]

Yes, i absolutely agree with you. I have noticed a significant rise in depression, sleep disruptions and anxiety among kids that use mobile phones for a longer duration. I believe that controlling the screen time of the kids is necessary as an excessive screen time can be dangerous for children. I think this addiction can be cured by using a kid control app, wherein what kid uses on the phone and for how much time they can use the phone can be set by the parent. Once the parent take control over the usage of smartphones by the children, then only the urge of using phones can be curbed. One of the best software's that i have come across is Kidfirstphone which is very effective in dealing with such issues.

[atmosx]

From my experience, depends on the kid. Some kids have all the access in the world and are even "skilled" with the TV and YouTube (tablets) but don't care. They prefer playing with cats, dogs and birds outside, mess up the garage, get dirty playing in the mud, etc.

There are other kids that won't see a computer until the age of 18. But when they do, they're gonna install linux and end up leading SRE teams without a degree in CS.

There are high level patterns, but humans are unique and require different amounts of supervision.

[Spooky23 → atmosx]

This. You need to monitor and mentor. My kiddo is a Fortnite and YouTube addict until baseball season, then is outside.

Encourage a healthy relationship with computers and they’ll start doing cool stuff. My son and his buddies are making 3D printed novelties and selling them now!

[shrimp_emoji → atmosx]

Yep. To me, nature seems way more dominant than nurture in how things pan out. A kid is just an archive self-extracting before your eyes. Making sure that process happens smoothly is the best you can do.

[neeloor2004]

I have seen an MDM based android application managment called Kid First Phone. com this will block internet, social media, youtube games, more like true me or family link

[neeloor2004 → neeloor2004]

https://kidfirstphone.com/