Why not all screen time is the same for children

Why not all screen time is the same for children

1. Screens are a fixture in children's lives from a young age, but giving them access to television, tablets or phones doesn't always mean it will have a negative impact on their development.

   • In her world, my phone was a part of me in much the same way as my shoes or clothes were
   • Realising this was a sobering moment, but it reflects the reality that screens are part of our everyday lives like never before.
   • My baby even knew – almost as if by instinct – that by swiping my phone, something would light up. Before he even turned one, he seemed to have picked up on this.
   • Screen time can come at the cost of reduced physical activity, increased BMI, and fewer family meals together.
   • Parents warned of square-eyed, TV-addicted, children.
   • Children who have a TV in their room have been found to sleep 31 minutes less per day

2. Educational TV content has been shown to help improve behaviour, literacy and cognitive skills for three to five year olds

   • all this seems alarming, but it turns out that not all TV is the same and watching some educational shows can actually benefit children
   • Children under two don’t generally benefit at all.
   • Children often consume media passively, and that is what can be detrimental.
   • Too much screen time and it could interfere with how they experience our three-dimensional world.
   • “If, however, it's watching the nightly news or some of the violent programs that we all have on our televisions today, it's pretty terrible for children.”
   • And educational TV content has been shown to help improve behaviour, literacy and cognitive skills for three to five year olds.
   • Interactive screen time, like video calls with relatives, being read a story remotely or watching shows whilst engaging with our children in the process, can be beneficial precisely because of this interactive nature.
   • Fortunately, some savvy producers have introduced learning elements to TV, Sesame Street being
   • Fifteen‐month‐olds can learn new words from tablets but then have difficulty applying this knowledge to real life.
   • the neural structure gets created in my brain, that enables me to reform that action internally without having done the action,”

3. Screens present information to our eyes and ears without engaging our other senses, like touch, taste or balance

   • The good news is, it’s very easy for parents to help children tap into their mental imagery skills while, at the same time, reducing their reliance on screens
   • Screens present information to our eyes and ears without engaging our other senses, like touch, taste or balance.
   • All we need to do is let them play, especially as mental imagery is the foundation of creative play, says Suggate.
   • This is important because alongside the rise in screen time, children are spending less time outdoors than ever before
   • The team found that all forms of screen time, both passive – like television – as well as more interactive – such as gaming – were linked with lower mental imagery development over the course of the year of the study
   • If we only watched someone swim on a screen, we couldn’t so vividly recall it.
   • “No se trata de juzgar o decirles a los padres que lo que estás haciendo no es lo suficientemente bueno, esa no es la intención, pero tal vez confiar en el instinto del niño para buscar y permitirle participar en estas ricas experiencias del mundo real. "

4. Children could benefit from virtual stories told over video calls and understood this as much as when read in person

   • Phones, tablets, TV and gaming all fall under the same blanket label of screen time.
   • Tablets have been around for little over a decade but they are already changing how the classroom and remote learning operates.
   • For instance, during lockdown, Hirsh-Pasek and colleagues studied how pre-schoolers responded to virtual storytelling.
   • THE team found that the children could benefit from virtual stories told over video calls and understood this as much as when read in person.
   • precisely because “it's adaptive and interactive, whereas most screen time is sit and listen,
   • THAT IF screens can tap into the back-and-forth interactive elements that we know are key for learning, they can actually be useful.
   • “We must create screens that become prompts for social engagement, not partners that substitute for social engagement.”
   • even in an educational setting, could impact our children’s ability to imagine the real world.
   • And while the live video was better than the pre-recorded video, four-year-old children could still learn from the recorded version, they just didn’t show as much engagement with it.

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