Personal Health
Screen Addiction Is Taking a Toll on Children
Excessive use of
computer games among young people in China appears to be taking an
alarming turn and may have particular relevance for American parents
whose children spend many hours a day focused on electronic screens. The
documentary “Web Junkie,”
to be shown next Monday on PBS, highlights the tragic effects on
teenagers who become hooked on video games, playing for dozens of hours
at a time often without breaks to eat, sleep or even use the bathroom.
Many come to view the real world as fake.
Chinese doctors
consider this phenomenon a clinical disorder and have established
rehabilitation centers where afflicted youngsters are confined for
months of sometimes draconian therapy, completely isolated from all
media, the effectiveness of which remains to be demonstrated.
While Internet
addiction is not yet considered a clinical diagnosis here, there’s no
question that American youths are plugged in and tuned out of “live”
action for many more hours of the day than experts consider healthy for
normal development. And it starts early, often with preverbal toddlers
handed their parents’ cellphones and tablets to entertain themselves
when they should be observing the world around them and interacting with
their caregivers.
“Many parents seem to
have few rules about use of media by their children and adolescents,”
the academy stated, and two-thirds of those questioned in the Kaiser
study said their parents had no rules about how much time the youngsters
spent with media.
Parents, grateful for
ways to calm disruptive children and keep them from interrupting their
own screen activities, seem to be unaware of the potential harm from so
much time spent in the virtual world.
“We’re throwing
screens at children all day long, giving them distractions rather than
teaching them how to self-soothe, to calm themselves down,” said
Catherine Steiner-Adair, a Harvard-affiliated clinical psychologist and
author of the best-selling book “The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.”
Before age 2, children
should not be exposed to any electronic media, the pediatrics academy
maintains, because “a child’s brain develops rapidly during these first
years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not
screens.” Older children and teenagers should spend no more than one or
two hours a day with entertainment media, preferably with high-quality
content, and spend more free time playing outdoors, reading, doing
hobbies and “using their imaginations in free play,” the academy
recommends.
Heavy use of
electronic media can have significant negative effects on children’s
behavior, health and school performance. Those who watch a lot of
simulated violence, common in many popular video games, can become
immune to it, more inclined to act violently themselves and less likely
to behave empathetically, said Dimitri A. Christakis of the Seattle Children’s Research Institute.
In preparing an honors
thesis at the University of Rhode Island, Kristina E. Hatch asked
children about their favorite video games. A fourth-grader cited “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” because “there’s zombies in it, and you get to kill them with guns and there’s violence … I like blood and violence.”
Teenagers who spend a
lot of time playing violent video games or watching violent shows on
television have been found to be more aggressive and more likely to
fight with their peers and argue with their teachers, according to a study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Schoolwork can suffer
when media time infringes on reading and studying. And the sedentary
nature of most electronic involvement — along with televised ads for
high-calorie fare — can foster the unhealthy weights already epidemic
among the nation’s youth.
Two of my grandsons,
ages 10 and 13, seem destined to suffer some of the negative effects of
video-game overuse. The 10-year-old gets up half an hour earlier on
school days to play computer games, and he and his brother stay plugged
into their hand-held devices on the ride to and from school. “There’s no
conversation anymore,” said their grandfather, who often picks them up.
When the family dines out, the boys use their devices before the meal
arrives and as soon as they finish eating.
“If kids are allowed
to play ‘Candy Crush’ on the way to school, the car ride will be quiet,
but that’s not what kids need,” Dr. Steiner-Adair said in an interview.
“They need time to daydream, deal with anxieties, process their thoughts
and share them with parents, who can provide reassurance.”
Technology is a poor substitute for personal interaction.
Out in public, Dr.
Steiner-Adair added, “children have to know that life is fine off the
screen. It’s interesting and good to be curious about other people, to
learn how to listen. It teaches them social and emotional intelligence,
which is critical for success in life.”
Children who are heavy
users of electronics may become adept at multitasking, but they can
lose the ability to focus on what is most important, a trait critical to
the deep thought and problem solving needed for many jobs and other
endeavors later in life.
Texting looms as the
next national epidemic, with half of teenagers sending 50 or more text
messages a day and those aged 13 through 17 averaging 3,364 texts a
month, Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Research Center found in a 2012 study. An earlier Pew study
found that teenagers send an average of 34 texts a night after they get
into bed, adding to the sleep deprivation so common and harmful to
them. And as Ms. Hatch pointed out, “as children have more of their
communication through electronic media, and less of it face to face,
they begin to feel more lonely and depressed.”
There can be physical
consequences, too. Children can develop pain in their fingers and
wrists, narrowed blood vessels in their eyes (the long-term consequences
of which are unknown), and neck and back pain from being slumped over
their phones, tablets and computers.
This is the first
of two columns on electronic media use by children and adolescents. Next
week: Parents’ role in children’s use of electronics.
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