Excessive screen and smartphone use harms children
I know you worry about the impact of the digital world on your kids. Despairing about smart phones at the dinner table, late night texting and use of chat rooms, interrupted sleep patterns and children unable to stop gaming. This is real, and it impacts hugely on family life and physical and mental wellbeing.
“I’ll stop in a minute – I just need to finish this level.”
Last week the Education Committee published its Fourth Report, Screen time: impacts on education and wellbeing and the key findings were:
· A 52% increase in children’s screen time between 2020 and 2022,
· 25% of children and young people use their smartphones in a way that is consistent with a behavioural addiction.
· Screen use has been found to start as early as six months of age.
· One in five children aged between three and four years old have their own mobile phone, increasing to one in four children by age eight and to almost all children by age twelve.
· The amount of time those aged 5–15 years old spent online rose from an average of 9 hours per week in 2009, to 15 hours per week in 2018.
The Chair of the Education Committee, Robin Walker MP, said:
“Whilst there can be some benefits from the online world and sharing information or interests with their peers, ready, unsupervised and unrestricted access to the internet leaves children vulnerable, exposing them to a world they are not equipped for. Their safeguarding and protection must be our priority.”
“Parents and schools face an uphill struggle and Government must do more to help them meet this challenge.”
In my coaching work, every week I have parents asking me for tips on how to manage screen time, and this question hasn’t changed since I started this work in 2005. Parents have struggled for decades with screens and will continue to do so, unless they are given real support and guidance.
The Online Safety Act of 2023, (which has still not been implemented) is designed to make platforms safer for children with a robust digital age of consent. Yet even when it does come into force, I believe that this will not be the panacea everyone is hoping for, and at the end of the day the key to ensuring your child is not the 1 in 4 children suffering a behavioural addiction, lies in parental awareness and education.
My view is screens are and can be hugely beneficial, but like everything it’s a question of balance and learning how to moderate.
The key to managing this is keep it simple and start by asking yourself two questions:
· What needs to happen first, before my child goes on screens?
· What are they missing out on when they use screens and smartphones?
Then get clarity on how important it is for you to help your child have good physical and mental wellbeing. Ask yourself these two questions:
· How important is sleep hygiene?
· How important is it that your child exercises and keeps fit and healthy?
If you found the questions easy to answer, then you have real clarity on your values. Most of you have real clarity on the value of ensuring your child wears a seat belt whenever they get into a car, as for health and safety reasons, not buckling up is just not an option. During COVID, many parents started to get real clarity on the benefits of washing hands when coming in from outside, or when eating a meal, in order to protect their child from the virus. With that clarity comes consistency, but when it comes to screens despite having the clarity of the benefits of helping our children manage screen time, we often give in and give up, as it all seems just too difficult and challenging.
So, what can you do?
Be in charge positively, consistently and firmly, whilst also giving your child autonomy and power. The key lies in creating positive rules, giving your child that structure they all benefit from, so you can scaffold them as they navigate managing their digital usage.
1. Understand how rules work. In order to have success with helping your child manage screens, you will need clear, positive, realistic rules. And in order to have rules that work, you’ll need to work on the connection and communication piece, as without connection rules often lead to rebellion and resentment and that’s where many parents fail
2. Involve the children - Include the children rather than imposing the rules from on high! Including them shows you are interested in their views; it is respectful to seek their opinion. It works best with children over 8 if you outline what your values are and acknowledge what they would like at the outset. Then ask how you can accommodate both sets of needs. They will probably have some good ideas. They won’t like all the rules – empathize with that and reiterate why you need to have them.
3. Get clarity –as an example, if you are clear about sleep hygiene, then set up a rule that at bedtime all gadgets are placed in a drop zone. In order for this to work the rule needs to be complete with rewards and consequences. There needs to be motivation to follow the rule, and the child is clear what the outcome is if the rule isn’t followed. If you are clear about the importance of exercise, this needs to happen first before screens are used.
4. Write it down. I invite you to organise a family meeting and download my Free Family Technology Contract | The Parent Practice, and discuss it as a family. By doing this you will have a very clear set of rules, and by having them codified and signed off in a contract, both children and parents are saying they respect the rules. It also de-personalises things, with both sides needing to respect and follow the rules.
Don’t rush this process and by getting clarity on what your values and rules are, you set up your children for success, and help them develop good digital habits. This is too important a topic, to just hope for the best.
5. Keep it positive. Don’t have negatively-phrased rules such as:
“no mobiles upstairs” or “no gaming after 7pm”
but rather
“mobiles are used downstairs”
and “you can game after homework, chores and dinner and before 8pm.”
Your child is then effectively in charge of how much screen time they have in the early evening. No longer are you the bad cop, this is just the rule you’ve all agreed and if they are efficient and effective at getting everything completed timeously, they will be rewarded with more screen time. Procrastination and delaying tactics, will sadly result in less time available for screens if the drop zone kicks in at 8pm.
6. Keep it simple -many parents manage screen time by restricting the quantity with a limit of say 1 hour a day of gaming after homework. The problem with this is that many children have a black and white interpretation, and if for whatever reason they have not been able to have their 1 hour of gaming time, they will argue that it is their right and be adding it on the next day or eating into their sleep time. Suddenly it all becomes very messy.
7. Follow through. Often, we start by thinking of what we should do when they mess up! But really, we should be deciding what to do when they get it right. Adults rarely notice when children get things right. Do comment when they follow the screen rules. The positive consequence of following the rules, or the motivation is earning the right to use screens again the next day.
If you are interested in exploring this topic further see our publication ‘Parenting in a digital world’, packed full of ideas and skills you can implement immediately.
If you found these ideas useful please share them with friends and family and to find out your parenting style, try my free quiz here and get a personalized report.
And if you’d like more tailored bespoke support, book a parent support session today and together we can create your parenting toolkit.
Happy parenting and here’s to more screen time sanity!
Elaine