Screen time advice makes me scream

DON’T BE depressed by this and don’t stop going out for fear of the sky falling in on you, but today is the day for an unusually high rate of deaths – every year. More people have died on January 6 than any other day between 2005 and 2017, with an average of 1,732 compared to the overall daily average of 1,387.

The Office for

National Statistics also says July 30 is the least likely day to die, with 1,208 deaths on average, 13 per cent lower than the daily rate.

Could it be something to do with the weather? There’s meant to be an icy blast over the coming week with the return of the Beast from The East (what the meteorologists call a “triple polar vortex”), with plunging temperatures and snow for many. It’s set to go as low as -11C in some areas.

So perhaps we should all stay indoors with our woolly hats on never mind the date.

FRIDAY was FatCat Friday when the average executive of a FTSE 100 company – only back behind his or her desk for a couple of days – had already earned the equivalent of an average worker’s annual salary. Apparently, they’re paid 133 times more than a typical member of staff. After a couple of 12-hour days and a few meetings, they were walking home with £29,000 deposited in their bank accounts.

It didn’t used to be this bad. Twenty years ago, top bosses earned only 47 times the average worker’s salary. Now they take home the same as that of 386 minimum wage workers. We are told that they deserve it because of their talent, hard work, verve and innovation. But it’s just not right. A report by the High Pay Centre thinktank said excessive pay and the culture of “superstar” bosses was hitting trust in business leadership. And TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “We need to redesign the economy to make it fair again.” Just make them pay it back, or demand philanthropy in return.

Or threaten a Corbyn government – because that’s what they’ll get if they don’t clean up their act.

ARE YOU becoming allergic to experts on this and gurus on that telling us what to do, changing their advice, and using statistics to deny the blinking obvious? There were a lot of very vocal experts over the festive season, with their edicts on curing the obesity epidemic, advice on alcohol consumption, smoking, sugary drinks, exercising, reading aloud to our children and singing nursery rhymes.

Now comes more advice on how to deal with the Scourge Of Our Modern Digital Age... “screen time”.

Well, I had thought it was a scourge – we’ve been warned for years about letting our children have too much. But now we’re told those fears are unfounded.

Calm down, everyone. Screen time is OK. We parents shouldn’t be so hung up about it.

Well, I beg to differ. For any household with teenagers, all you have to do is look around your living room to see the detrimental effects of too much screen time.

My tech-addicted teenagers have grown into adults but I remember when they would sit on sofas in front of a huge TV, all with mobile phone screens in one hand and many with a laptop or tablet on the go as well.

At the time, it was called “second screening”. Well, mine were into third and fourth screens. Me too. I would sit there worrying about it, while googling it on my tablet to research the awful effects.

We were told that our children would become addicted to the dopamine hit they get from playing online games such as Fortnite and Overwatch. That alone would be hard for parents to fight.

We were told that 70 per cent of the content our children would watch on YouTube was not what they chose to watch, it was what YouTube fed to them.

We were told parents should get together to make a pact, for us all to agree that our youngsters should be restricted to a certain number of hours each week, to reduce the peer pressure to play for longer.

We were told we’d have to learn how to build in safety features such as blocks and passwords.

All of this was scary stuff, especially for technophobic parents. Now the latest reports appear to both confirm our worst fears and dismiss them.

What’s a parent to think?

First, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, in its new guidance on screen time, announces boldly that there’s no evidence of a damaging effect on children’s health at any age.

It does add, however, that there are risks if “too often it replaces positive activities” such as socialising, exercise and sleep. Well, duh.

It then adds that 41 per cent of children report that screen time is affecting their playtime or fun, and that 35 per cent said it had a negative effect on their mood or mental health.

They want mothers and fathers to ask themselves four key questions:

Is your family’s screen time under control?

Does it affect what you as a family want to do?

Does it affect sleep?

Are you able to control your children’s snacking when they’re using a screen?

Then they add a key Mary Poppinstype instruction – ensure your children don’t use their digital devices for one hour before going to sleep.

Doesn’t all of that concern rather blow right out of the water the “no evidence of a damaging effect” headline of the report? Or at least, if there’s no scientific evidence, there is perhaps still enough suspicion of a harmful effect to ask those questions and seek the evidence? So despite the reassurances, maybe I was right to be a worried parent, finding the whole matter scary?

Next we have a study reporting that girls’ use of social media is causing depression of almost epidemic proportions.

The University College London report has found that teenage girls are twice as likely to show depressive symptoms linked to social media than male counterparts. Campaigners are urging the Government to do more to recognise the risk of apps like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Now that is both frightening and fascinating, and perhaps shows that it’s not screen time that’s the issue.

Because it underlines what my sons have been trying to tell me for years. That the scourge of the modern digital age is not the screen time itself. It’s not the TV, phone, tablet or laptop. It’s what’s ON the screen, and what you are doing with it.

I watch a lot of Netflix, iPlayer and Amazon Prime video on screens big and little, and I don’t think many of us would argue that they’re inherently bad for my health (except perhaps encroaching on proper sleep time!)

But maybe some apps are causing problems that must be investigated. Well, there’s no maybe about it. Clearly, and particularly for young girls, some interactive apps are extremely harmful.

As a mother myself, I can honestly report that screen time, for all my worries, doesn’t seem to have had ill effects on my sons. Maybe they were right to nag me about it and tell me to chill.

Maybe the biggest fear of “screen time” is the fear itself.

‘Maybe I was right to find the whole matter scary’