SCREENTIME AND CHILDREN
Authored by:Dr.Subramanian M.D
In the present day lifestyle with almost all families becoming nuclear and both the parent’s working, TV and computers have become a powerful and influential tools in a child’s life.They combine audio with visual stimulation making them very attractive and spellbinding for most of our kids. As parents, we would like to give our child what they like. As we don’t find anything objectionable in the cartoons DVD and some game sites we allow our children to spend time in front of the screens early in life. This also keeps them occupied for a few hours giving the parents or many times the care givers time to do their other chores. But it is not without problems.
TV and Computer cause problems through two ways:
- They engage the child during which the child could have done some other more important activity.
- They directly cause effect by causing behavioral changes in the child.
Let us take each of these and see.
They engage the child during which the child could have done some other more important activity
- TV and computers occupy the child during the time when the child could actually have other human interaction. This is very important especially in a child less than two year. Brain growth and development is maximum in the first 24 months. Child’s brain is most receptive to ideas during this time window. As the child has more social interactions it grows more intellectually and socially, especially in areas like language and communications. When screens occupy this valuable time, this development is lost.
- In older children it prevents the child from having physical activity. It has been found in many studies that children with obesity spend significantly more time in front of TV or computers.
They directly cause effect by causing behavioral changes in the child.
It is very important to know that the content of what the child watches in TV and DVD is known to influence their behavior. There are many examples where it is known that screen exposure causes the child to have violent, accident prone and high risk behaviors. It also decreases or causes irregular sleep time causing lack of attention span in school and results in poor academic performance.
Thus it is very important that we follow at least a few general guidelines.
- Avoid screen time for children below 2 years.
- Above two years restrict the screen time to 2 hours per day.
- Avoid TV in the bedroom of the child.
- Keep a tab on the content of the TV or DVD program your child watches including the ads.
While parental influence is the single best influence and interaction for a child, it is also true that parents need a break. Try to find other methods of engaging the child so that you could do your daily chores or take your daily break from baby sitting through the day. This may include a few hours with grand parents, engaging the child in story telling sessions, workshops, art classes etc conducted by professional organizations.
We all aspire for our children to do well in life and try to do all that we can to make it happen. But in the urge to give our kids the best , at times we also overdo things. While we cannot expect our kids to have the same kind of lifestyle that we had as kids, the onus is upon us to strike a balance.