DEVICE OR VICE

Findings by the Pew Research Centre in the United States suggest parents are cutting off access to their children’s digital world in order to punish them. About 60% of parents take their teenagers’ access to technology away when kids do something wrong. At the same time, it’s also common for parents to limit access to technology, regardless of conduct. 57% of parents report regulating their children’s use.

Being digitally grounded

DEVICE OR VICE?

BY SIMON HARDING

Screening ‘screen time’ and finding balance is probably a good thing, for everyone.

When many RGS parents were growing up there was a rotary telephone on a table in the hall, the television had just five channels, and the compact disc revolutionised music. And if you were lucky enough to have a computer in your house, it was probably not that useful. These days electronic devices, computers, telecommunication and media have converged and have become entrenched in our lives, especially those of our native e-generation children.

A moderate amount of screen time has been shown to be good for our children. The Office of the eSafety Commissioner considers the use of electronic devices to benefit learning, social interaction and creativity, as well as to support literacy and improve numeracy skills. Likewise, moderate game playing can be beneficial too. Leading psychologists have associated it with increased resilience and lower levels of stress and anxiety in children.

But moderation is a key according to researchers and policy analysts. Too much time online has been shown to cause sleep deprivation, anxiety, and to have a negative impact on school performance. The advice from the Office of the eSafety Commissioner is to stay involved, set time limits and encourage other activities. After all, whatever time our children spend looking at a screen for entertainment during the week will feel much better to us – and hopefully them – if it is balanced by their time spent doing other things.

The Department of Health is concerned about the link between physical inactivity and seven diseases – diabetes, bowel and uterine cancer, dementia, breast cancer, coronary heart disease, and stroke – and has published Australia’s Physical and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines. In them, it adopts the recommendation of the American Society of Paediatrics that children between the ages of five and seventeen spend no more than two hours per day entertaining themselves on screens.

Australian Market Research firm, Roy Morgan, has been tracking children’s television and online viewing behaviour since 2008. According to their research, 2016 was the first year in which children spent more time online than watching television. That’s probably because – according to a poll by Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital – almost all Australian teenagers, two-thirds of primary school children and a third of pre-schoolers, now have their own mobile device.

The same RCH survey reports that Australian children aged between six and thirteen spend nearly 32 hours per week looking at screens, whether at online content or television. This figure is more than double the time recommended by the Australian Government. These huge numbers are mirrored around the world. A report from Ofcom – the UK’s communications industry regulator – showed that 94% of children aged 12-15 went on line for nearly 21 hours per week on top of nearly 14.5 hours per week of television. For many parents, that’s almost equivalent to a full working week.

Of course, managing the watching – or playing – is only half the battle for us parents. Stopping each session has become something of a battle ground. US magazine, Psychology Today, suggests that interactive screen time is more likely to cause mood and cognitive issues than watching television because the level to which children are absorbed in it can cause hyperarousal and compulsive use. Try wrenching your children away from the screen and they’ll most likely

be moody and argumentative, and according to the RCH, a third of all children were reported as displaying oppositional behaviours when challenged about their screen usage by parents. The RCH reports that 80% of Australian parents are concerned that children spend too much time looking at screens, and that many believe screen use is impacting on their child’s well-being. But the same survey also shows that despite the level of concern, more than half of parents with teenage children place no restriction at all on the time spent on screens, or the content viewed.

So what actions can concerned parents take to reduce the amount of time spent on screens? ReachOut, an Australian online mental health organisation for young people and their parents, suggests the following to support your teenager: 1 Undertake a family screen audit. Reducing screen time is not only of benefit to your children, and you may be surprised at the extent of your own viewing. The RCH poll drew the conclusion that there was a link between the amount of time parents spent on screens, and that of their children. So a family audit not only brings you together as a unit, but also involves everyone in the compromises that will undoubtedly need to be made if the decision is taken to reduce screen time.

2Set screen time rules: Decide as a family what is acceptable. Set times of the day when screen usage is not allowed – like meal times and before bedtime.

3Balance active time and screen time. ReachOut makes a number of suggestions for ways in which children and families alike can get active.

The Office of the eSafety Commissioner states the almost 1 in 3 teens are accessing the internet between 10pm and midnight, and up to 8% are surfing into the early hours of the morning. It recommends locating any devices in a shared or visible place in the home. Data from the Department of Health is not quite as current but their advice, based on research and recommendations from the American Society of Paediatrics, is to keep the television set and any internetconnected electronic devices out of children’s bedrooms.

A simple search on Google shows that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs – whose vision of the future shaped the digital revolution – were very careful to manage their own children’s exposure to technology. Gates, for example, imposed screen time limits on his children and didn’t allow them a smartphone until they were fourteen, and it seems well documented that Jobs – who, at the iPad’s 2010 launch, described it as “a truly magical and revolutionary product” – refused to allow his kids to use one at home. Perhaps they were ‘visionary’ parents, in this respect, as well.

If you would like to access further resources to work out how to deliver the right balance for your child, the Office of the eSafety Commissioner is a good place to start, with articles and videos that will help you to make decisions. There are also smart-device applications out there that can help you and your children manage the amount of time spent looking at screens. bit.ly/2HsgAoa

South Korea fears an overdependence on smartphones and the Internet causes physical and emotional problems and increasingly leads to accidents and antisocial behaviour. The answer? The Korea Internet Addiction Centre, which was established way back in 2002. It “supports your relaxation” with counselling and what it calls prevention discipline. According to The Economist, the centre is passionate about protecting children from the internet, and above all, smartphones. Parents do not understand how dangerous the internet is, according to the Centre Manager. The Centre has a lot of on-line tools for parents including tests to help diagnoses addiction and overdependence. And yes, you have to go on-line to use them! Translate the website and self-diagnose or use its English language pages.

iapc.or.kr

Resources

esafety.gov.au Related news: Only 1 in 20 adolescents is meeting recommendations for sleeping, physical activity, and screen time, according to new research by The University of Texas Health Science Center at bit.ly/2HsgAoa