Screen time: is it time to switch off (again)?

Where the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) used to recommend that children should have no screen time at all before the age of two, and that older kids should have no more than two hours of screen time per day for entertainment purposes, experts were quick to change their tune in such unprecedented circumstances.

While staring at screens for too long can be bad for eyes and disrupt sleep patterns, it was important for children to find ways to somewhat ‘socialise’ in safe ways during lockdown and to be entertained while their parents were working. And so paediatric specialists and authorities started to push back against ‘screen shame’, with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even recommending that people “call, video chat, or stay connected using social media.”

A parent’s perspective

After being told for so many years that letting your kids watch a screen for too long is detrimental to physical and mental health, it is no surprise that a lot of parents felt guilty for loosening the house rules, as shown by the parents we asked below.

“I'm very wary of screen time with younger children. Screens are often used as babysitting tools by parents and teachers alike, and this reduces the opportunity for meaningful, high quality language development.” — Eryn, London (mother of 7 and 5 year old)

“Screen time has 100% changed. We were so strict with it, and now it’s just a matter of ‘you can have devices if it’s raining or if we have stuff to do!’ It’s a topic that myself and other mums talk about all the time and the guilt is huge.” — Barbara, Ireland (mother of 6 year old, 8 year old, 12 year old)

But not all screen time is equal…

The discussion around screen time is changing. Now experts say that it’s not the number of hours, but the quality of the content that parents should be thinking about. If content is educational, creative, interactive, and engages children in discussion about wider issues, then screen time can actually be a good thing.

As Common Sense Media writes: “Content which focuses on connection between people, critical thinking, creativity, and recognition of context with the wider world is very different from shooting zombies.”

Screen time isn’t going away any time soon, with adolescents spending on average 7.5 hours per day in front of the screen. But maybe we don’t need to be feeling guilty about it. Despite what we’ve been told in the past, it can be incorporated as part of a balanced life, and can actually strengthen relationships when tasks are carried out together.

The future of time online

Since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced his team’s plan to build a metaverse, the online world seemed to get a whole lot bigger. The platform creator demonstrated that there is more than just likes, selfies, and video calls in our futures. Now we will be exploring otherwise impossible-to-imagine worlds, some entirely fictional, and others very much like our own.

TALES, the production and publishing initiative behind this website, is working to connect the world through storytelling. This means meeting up with people from all over the globe to tell their own stories, unfiltered and rich with the histories from where they originated. It’s not just a case of meeting up online, it’s a chance for young people to learn about different terrains, social landscapes, and histories.

Enter, World of Us

In order to create a world that reflects our values, we need to work with the people that reflect our values. That’s why collaborations with AfroGames, activists, specialists, and practitioners are crucial. These collaborations expand our network, and our perspectives, to allow for a more holistic way that shows us sides of the story we may have never seen before. With this we also see young people desperate to share their stories and the stories told to them from their families. AfroGames has been an amazing way for us to connect with the young people of Rio de Janeiro and their lived experiences.

How far will this go? We can only hope it is beyond what our imaginations can fathom. There is more than just a physical world we need to understand. We need to create a digital world where human experience can thrive and take centre stage.