While it is the go-to solution for most parents or caregivers at home, regularly allowing a child access to screen time during meals as a distraction, to finish quickly or to simply keep them occupied has long-standing detrimental effects. Instead of enhancing their language or social skills as most parents assume, since in the short run, the child seemingly picks up vocabulary almost instantly from the video on screen, daily extended exposure to artificial media in the early years child will significantly diminish cognitive, linguistic and socio-emotional abilities. The negative effects continue to manifest even in adulthood for prolonged exposure during childhood.
For an early years child under 2 years of age, there should be no screen exposure at all. For children above the age of 2 years going up to 6 years, screen time exposure to suitable content not exceeding 1 hour is acceptable.
TYPICAL OUTWARD SIGNS A CHILD MAY BE EXPOSED TO TOO MUCH SCREEN TIME
Uninterested and disconnected from their immediate surroundings
The child, over-stimulated by the typically accelerated pace of the simultaneous audio and visual components of most media, will be underwhelmed or under-impressed by the unfolding of natural occurrences around them or the natural pace of two-way communication of human beings. They will constantly seem bored or uninterested, wanting to get back to the artificial world of screen content. In school, they will not want to hear their teacher, see what the teacher is demonstrating or play with the group. While communicating with others, they tend to avoid eye-contact.
Distorted perception of reality and speech
The child’s understanding of the real world is strongly coloured by their perceptions from media entertainment. Their verbal responses and physical reactions to everyday situations may be quite inappropriate based on what the protagonists of the shows they watch, do or don’t do. As young children are extremely impressionable they may pick up aggressive speech and behaviour in the manner portrayed on screen.
Addiction to device with severe tantrums if withheld
The craving or feel-good chemical dopamine released by the brain when the child is entertained by a gadget, sends a signal to their brain for more of what felt good, that is, more exposure to the electronic device. Thus, it becomes a vicious cycle that is difficult to come out of. The child will get more and more addicted to screen time. Their brain starts interpreting it as necessary for them to feel happy and the child becomes increasingly uninterested in real-time activities that could keep them gainfully occupied in a more wholesome manner.
Lack of interest in food, poor taste differentiation and inability to classify typical foods
If gadgets are used as a regular distraction as a means to increase food intake during early childhood, the child will not develop an appropriate sense of taste for different foods or mindfulness while eating. They will not develop a proper understanding of the different types of food they are consuming. Chewing is also affected with the child sometimes swallowing before chewing properly. They will not learn to understand on their own when they are full. An unhealthy association with food is likely to develop over time with issues like binge eating and eating disorders in adulthood. To reassure parents of the early years child, since instinctively, a child will eat when the body needs food, such practices to ensure more food intake are unnecessary.
Delay in going to bed at night
Children addicted to gadgets will delay in going to bed on time. Their brain remains in an over-stimulated state and hence they do not appear to feel sleepy during the recommended bedtime. The blue light emitted from screens is also known to disrupt sleep which is why it is generally recommended to avoid exposure to screens and gadgets one hour before bedtime.
Eyesight and blurry vision
Fixating the eyes too much on mobile device screens without blinking, often with the screen being held too close than optimal viewing distance may result in symptoms like blurry vision from eye locking, headaches, squinting, dry eyes, myopia and more. Since children may not be able to express the discomfort or even understand that their vision is getting impaired, it may go undiscovered until a later moment in time, for example, when the student now in their primary years discovers they cannot view writing on the whiteboard of the classroom while their classmates can.
HOW SCREEN TIME AFFECTS CHILDREN
Affects attention span and ability to focus
Since the content on the screen is usually too much input at a time for a child’s mind to process, prolonged absorption starts affecting their ability to pay attention and focus on even simple tasks to do with their hands. With audio-video content they don’t get enough time to process the stimuli as they would when they are narrated a story in person or have a real conversation with others. The normal pauses to absorb, think and respond are completely bypassed when watching content on screen. Essentially, the children won’t develop the habit to concentrate long enough to understand what’s needed of them in a situation.
Hinders imagination, creative flow and impulse control
When constantly satiated by an external screen medium, children won’t learn to rely on themselves and their inner abilities to discover, create or form associations with others for recreation. They are unlikely to develop healthy ways to manage impulses. They may often resort to destructive behaviour as an outlet for unspent energy.
Social skills development is slow
In usual two-way communication, humans will read faces and non-verbal cues along with the words spoken. Children learn empathy in this process of face-to-face communication. When they view more of artificial communication on screen, they don’t learn to read cues in real time. This affects the development of their social skills. This is likely to carry over into adulthood with impaired interpersonal functioning.
The above is only a brief representation of the hazards of excessive screen exposure for small children. Studies still continue in this field to understand ramifications but what is certain is that in the early years, too much exposure to screen time is definitely more harmful than beneficial.
- Blog By
Sumita Sen Mazumdar
Principal – Erode KG Campus
The Indian Public School – Erode.
August, 07 2024 | In Blog 
