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

Experts say that it’s not the number of hours, but the quality of the content that parents should be thinking about.

CULTURE

TECHNOLOGY

4 MINS READ

DATE

JULY 6, 2023

AUTHOR

Anna Fleck

Anna is a journalist with a background in international news and storytelling. Her focus became environmental and social justice issues, which she is now learning how to approach through a lens of data journalism.

IMAGE

Viewers wearing 3-D glasses during the first screening of “Bwana Devil,” the first full-length, color 3-D movie on November 26, 1952, at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood (J.R. Eyerman/Life Pictures)

At the peak of the pandemic, children were watching screens 52% more than they were before. Lockdowns forced the world indoors and with few other options, screen time was on the rise. Fast.

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…

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