SCREAM TIME

Are you screaming for the kids to get off their screens? Australians spend almost 17 years in their lifetime staring at a screen. Globally, people average almost seven hours of screen time per day - that's roughly 40 percent of their total waking hours. The inaugural ‘Great Australian Switch Off’ took place on Sunday 4 December, with people across the country encouraged to embark on a ‘digital detox’ by switching off their screens for 24 hours.

Dr Sarah Hanieh (MBBS, FRACP, PhD), creator of The Great Australian Switch-Off, came up with the idea to start an important conversation about the harmful effects of excessive screen time in today's society and to raise awareness about how screen time may displace other important moments and opportunities in a child’s life.

And it’s not too late to incorporate The Great Australian Switch Off’s principles into our daily lives on a regular basis. There are many ways we can keep things entertaining and fun over the summer break by minimising our screen use and making the most of downtime with loved ones.

Track your daily screen time

When we are casually scrolling through Facebook, TikTok and Instagram it's not hard to become fixated on your screen. A good way to keep track of your daily scrolling habits is to identify how much screen time you are actually getting each day, and then create a family screen time plan together that outlines how each family member will use their screens. It’s really important to have a whole family discussion and ensure that everyone understands the rationale behind creating boundaries around screen time.

Once you've established a screen time limit that's suitable to your lifestyle, sit down with your children every week and talk together about how they plan to use it. This can help create that perfect screen time to family time ratio, and also create a sense of autonomy and control over screen time decisions.

Switch off while you’re with family and friends

Family relationships are an important part of a child’s development. Children look to their caregivers and the connection they have to others to gain a sense of belonging. Excessive screen time can damage the opportunity for children to develop the crucial connections and personal interaction skills they need.

When parents are engaging with a screen, children may feel the need to compete for attention. So, by setting down your device, children will feel their parents are more emotionally available. This small step can help strengthen your family bond.

Screens down during meals

According to The National Library Of Medicine, there is evidence that eating meals while watching TV is an obesogenic factor. This may be as a result of decreased physical activity and more sedentary behaviour, increased exposure to junk food advertisements, as well as interruptions to sleep patterns. Moreover, the association between media exposure and childhood obesity has been supported by research over the past several decades, with the pattern of screen use during meals beginning early and persisting through to adulthood.

Having the television (or other screens) on during meal times is never a good idea. Once this becomes a pattern, it can be hard to reverse. A great way to break the habit is by choosing one meal where you will switch off all devices. Once you start weaning your child off screens, don’t stop there. Every two to three days you can choose another meal to go screen-free until eventually the screen meals stop all together. A simple ‘no devices allowed at the table’ rule can surprisingly bring your family closer together during dinner time.

Get active

Children are naturally curious and long for the outdoors. Instead of spending time glzued to your devices, encourage yourself and your family to try new outdoor activities, especially over the Christmas break. Go for a bike ride or walk, visit a park, have a beach day or explore a local nature trail. Playing and being outdoors is so important for a child’s physical and cognitive development, as well as their social and emotional well-being.

It is widely known that screen time contributes to negative physical health effects including increased obesity, lack of physical activity and poor posture. So switch off your devices to switch on to the outside world and all it has to offer.

Remove social media apps from your device

While social media can be a great way to connect and communicate, there is a fine line between us being in control of our social media use, and social media being in control of us. It’s no secret that these platforms have worked out specifically how to keep us coming back for more. They know how to keep us checking and scrolling, and because this works on a deeper psychological and neurochemical level, it can be difficult to fight the compulsion loop that has been created to keep us checking and scrolling.

The key is to be aware of how they work, and to limit their use where possible. Delete any toxic apps from yours or your child’s phone, particularly those that add nothing to your life, but only create anxiety, division, or low self-esteem.

A 2021 study by ‘Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking’ involving 132 people found that limiting social media use for a week improved well-being by preventing sleep problems. However, the authors note that adolescents who were already heavily engaged with social media may have chosen not to participate in the study because they were unwilling to reduce their use.

By blocking access to your social media apps at a specific time, such as before bed, or even removing apps for a dedicated day of the week, you may notice increased sleep, more quality family time, and even a reduction in anxiety and depression.

Look for other ways to get that dopamine hit that you might be getting from social media. There are so many other ways to create a natural dopamine surge in your brain, such as being outdoors in nature, exercising, listening to your favourite music, challenging yourself to do something completely different or new for the first time, and achieving a goal.

Finally, consider signing up to ‘The Social Deedia Project’. This new initiative by Dr Hanieh is asking whether you could give up social media for ‘good’? “We are creating a platform where we are asking you to swap out a portion of the time you spend on social media every week, to instead do something ‘good’ for someone else.”

Learn more about The Social Deedia Project here: https://thegreataustralianswitchoff.com/ the-social-deedia-project/