The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
How watching screens is damaging your children
Parents are risking their children’s health and development by allowing them to watch too much television and play too many video games. Stefan Morkis hears why experts believe such a sedentary lifestyle could have dire consequences.
WHEN IT was announced last week that the BBC is moving its children’s programmes from BBC1 onto a dedicated channel there was widespread dismay that iconic programmes such as Blue Peter are being shunted off into the digital television hinterlands.
What was not discussed, however, was whereas children were once given no more than an hour or two’s dedicated programming every day, they now have a plethora of channels offering them entertainment from the moment they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed.
Throw in the rise of television systems like Tivo that allow viewers to record hundreds of hours of programmes at the touch of a button and it becomes clear why some children can spend so many hours in front of the box.
Even when there is nothing on, children still have entire worlds available to them without leaving the comfort of the sofa: from video games on the X-box 360 and Playstation 3 to laptop computers, ipads and iphones, children have more sources of entertainment than any generation before them.
But this entertainment does not come without consequences.
Scotland has one of the highest rates of childhood obesity in the western world with 22% of six-year-olds now classed as overweight and 9% clinically obese.
Now it has been claimed that children could also suffer psychological problems in addition to obesity-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Dr Aric Sigman, who spoke at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health’s annual conference in Glasgow yesterday, has advised strict limits on how much time children spend in front of a television or computer screen.
He said: “Whether children or adults are formally ‘addicted’ to screen technology or not, many of them overuse technology and have developed an unhealthy dependency on it.”
Dr Sigman said that children have access to an average of five screens at home and may use more than one at a time, such as using their smartphone or laptop while watching television.
The psychologist added that parents who let their children spend so much time in front of a screen may be indulging in a “benign form of neglect”.
“It is always the principle of caution in children, except for screen time,” he said.
He also said there are concerns that playing computer games may change the way some people’s brain’s works. Scans have shown difference between the brains of gamers and non-gamers, although it is not known if playing games is responsible for this change or that people are more likely to be drawn to games because of the way their brain works.
However, Dr Sigman said the release of dopamine in the brain when a child watched television or plays a game could lead to permanent changes in the brain’s circuitry that are similar to substance abuse.
He is now calling for parents to set an example to their children by spending less time in front of the television screen as well as enforcing tough limits on how much they should be allowed to watch.
Dr Sigman said that children up to the age of three should be banned from watching television altogether while children up to the age of seven should only be allowed up to an hour and a half each day. He claims children should be limited to two hours a day until they are 18.
Dr Laura Stewart leads the Paediatric Overweight Service Tayside (POST), NHS Tayside’s specialist service for overweight children, said around one in five children are now overweight or obese.
She said: “It is a combination of societal problems that has made it easier for us to do nothing. If you think about 20 years ago nobody had computers in their home and now everybody does.
“Parents may be indulging in a ‘benign form of neglect’.” Dr Aric Sigman
“It is a generational change and it makes it harder for people to follow a lifestyle that will keep them healthy.”
Like Dr Sigman, POST recommends limiting how much television children should be allowed to watch in order to help them lose weight.
“We always talk about the three positive changes in lifestyle that people can make. People have to be careful about the energy they are putting in – what they are eating – and we talk about doing some sort of activity and we also talk about limiting the screen time.
“For a lot of children, that is the hardest part.”
She added: “Our general lifestyles have changed and our children’s lifestyles have changed. There are more programmes on television than there were and now there are also video games and mobile phones, although it tends to be teenage girls on them.”
Dr Stewart added that parents must make a conscious effort to improve their lifestyles and, perhaps more importantly, those of their children.
“It is something people need to think about. They need to think about switching off the television, switching off the computer and doing something else as a family.”
THE NEWS that Facebook is likely to lift its ban on under-13s was greeted with merriment in my household. As a senior employee of the company said, there is “reputable evidence” that younger kids use it anyway and lie about their age.
Gathering more of that evidence from the reputable sources sitting beside me on the sofa, I worked out that roughly 80 per cent of my 11-year-old’s class were Facebook users, and perhaps 50 per cent of the year below.
In raising the subject, Facebook, which was floated on the stock market last week, seems to accept that the age restriction is a futile gesture in protecting children from online dangers.
The new shareholders obviously have a vested interest as they would make even more money from a fresh tranche of recruits, but is their position morally defensible?
Simon Milner, the head of policy in Britain for Facebook, said some underage children are creating profiles on the site with their parents’ help, which suggests they would not object if the social network changed its age rule.
I didn’t help my youngest child set up a Facebook account but she did help me set up mine and then extracted permission for her own, ostensibly to keep in touch with her sister who was abroad on a school exchange trip.
Although un-savvy about such media, I had some experience of the pitfalls and had gone over the dos and don’ts when her sister signed up at 13. They didn’t have to share their passwords with me but if they quickly shut down their pages when I entered the room – or if I had any other grounds for suspicion – their accounts would be deactivated.
Apart from a few minor scare stories (one of their friends put “in an open marriage” in the status field and another, aged 13, “not currently in a relationship but looking for one” until her mother exploded), Facebook has brought neither shame nor disruption to my family.
My main concerns have centred on time wasting rather than inappropriate use.
I like to think this is because my daughters are (relatively) sensible and have been well coached by their school in the etiquette of online behaviour, but in the younger one’s case it probably has more to do with her not having her own computer or her own email account.
We know when she has been on Facebook because my husband receives dozens of “you are my bff, luv u” emails from people called Poppy and Cutie.
It is he who has to pass on messages to her such as, “You have three friends with birthdays in the next week, help them celebrate”.
One of her 10-year-old pals turned 21 on Monday.
The flip side of this harmless banality has mercifully eluded us, so far, but I know, from talking to other parents and to teachers, of the potential hazards in allowing immature users on to Facebook.
Posting tasteless photographs, taking part in collective bullying, spreading rumours and using profanities are common Facebook activities among some children from nice homes.
Schools (and occasionally the police) intervene only when someone completely oversteps the line, someone notices, and there is a complaint.
More vigilant parents try to police their own children.
An American author who saw her 12-yearold posing on Facebook with a bottle of vodka made her post a public apology on the site declaring she was “not ready for social media”.
Maybe Facebook in this instance did some good by alerting the mother to a much more serious issue than online delinquency.
And perhaps that is the point. Children who are bound to misbehave can now do so through another forum. Banning them from Facebook won’t cure them of mischief.
For those of us who will never understand the attraction of any social media, our best hope is that Facebook will become a victim of its own tedium and die of boredom.
As one user said recently: “Twitter is better, Facebook is too slow and you are ‘stuck with just your friends’.”
Not the words of an under-13, by the way, but an adult, which makes me wonder if it is really the kids who are the problem.