Screen Sense: How the Digital World Impacts Kids
Imagine the first thing you do when you barely wake up in the morning. I bet you take your smartphone to check your emails, Whatsapp or Twitter.
If you try not to do this one day, you’ll notice how unbearably difficult it is. Usually, we put up with these weaknesses when it comes to ourselves. But there is a category we consider to be much more vulnerable than us: our children. If we can’t resist this digital temptation, how could they?
With the rise of smartphones, tablets, and other digital devices, kids spend more time on screens than ever before. This trend has led to concerns about the impact of technology on children’s physical, mental, and emotional health and the development of what is commonly referred to as “tech addiction.”
In this article, I will consider how technologies affect children and how adults should act to prevent dire consequences.
Good or bad?
I was surprised that, technically, there is no such thing as internet or phone addiction. According to Matthew Cruger, PhD, a neuropsychologist and the director of the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Insititute, addiction means having a chemical that changes the way we respond, which leads us to be reliant on it for our level of functioning. “That’s not what’s happening here. We don’t develop higher levels of tolerance. We don’t need more and more screen time to be able to function,” he says in the Child Mind Insititute article.
More than that, many of the activities that teens engage in online are those we all used to do in the past, but offline:
- Socializing with friends
- Pursuing personal interests
- Shopping
- Listening to music
- Completing school assignments
- Watching movies or TV shows
After the digital world has become an integral part of our lives, smartphones, and laptops are just the gates children use to get there. They build new connections, meet with people worldwide, learn foreign languages and explore other cultures.
The real problem arises when the digital world or one of its parts substitutes others and leads to serious impairment in children’s lives. Studies reveal that for children who allocate less than one-third of their leisure time to screens, it’s actually mental health positive. However, for children who spend more than two-thirds of their time on screens, it negatively affects their mental and physical health.
So, it’s ok playing games or chat; it’s not ok when there is no diversity.
From that point of view, these are real issues that can have severe consequences as children may experience a range of negative impacts.
- Lack of mental effort. “Surfing” is a precise word describing how children interact with the internet and digital products. “People spend a lot of time looking briefly at things, not diving down,” Dr. Cruger says. “It’s easier to engage in constantly checking your phone or playing a game than tasks that require more mental effort, though those are ultimately more rewarding for a lot of people.”
- Decreased attention span. Constant screen time can cause children to become easily distracted and have a shorter attention span, making it difficult for them to concentrate on schoolwork or other tasks. It is scientifically proven that digital hooks like notifications, autoplay, and “likes” “compel us to watch, check, respond right now or feel that we’re missing something really important,” Caroline Knorr states in the Washington Post article. Experts who stay behind the games, apps, or social media platforms use techniques to “hijack” people. As a result, children are always distracted.
- Self-control issues. “Studies show that push notifications — those little pings and prods you get to check your apps — are habit-forming. They align an external trigger (the ping) with an internal trigger (a feeling of boredom, uncertainty, insecurity, etc.),” WP says, which is a pity because habit is one of the most powerful things on the planet. Children don’t even notice how they lose control of their own time and attention. More than that, compared to adults, kids also have a less developed ability to control their impulses.
- Physical health problems. I think it’s obvious. Excessive screen time can lead to issues such as headaches, eye strain, and back and neck pain.
- Multitasking guru (no). In 2009, a Stanford study looked into the information-processing abilities of multitaskers. The findings showed that individuals who were considered heavy media multitaskers had a more challenging time ignoring distractions in their surroundings, leading to lower performance on a task-switching test compared to those who were lighter multitaskers.
- Poor sleep habits: The blue light emitted by screens can interfere with children’s sleep patterns, leading to sleep deprivation and other health problems.
- Illusions about the real world. While technology has many benefits, spending excessive time on social media, playing online games, or chatting with friends online can create a skewed perception of how the real world operates. Moreover, the virtual world often presents an idealized version of reality, leading to unrealistic expectations and a distorted view of the world. For example, the highlight reels we see on social media can lead children to believe that everyone else’s life is perfect, causing feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.
What to do
Now let’s get back to adults. You can imagine that everything mentioned above works for us in the same way as for our children.
Of course, it is important for parents to set limits on screen time and encourage other activities that promote physical, mental, and emotional well-being. But, which is more important is to model healthy tech habits themselves. Children are much more likely to adopt positive habits if they see their parents setting limits and engaging in healthy non-tech behaviors like playing outside, reading, spending time with friends and family, and engaging in creative or artistic pursuits. Or they may start by not reaching for their phones just moments after waking up.
