Where’s the Outrage Over Screen Time?
The American Academy of Pediatrics released new position papers Friday on screen time for young children and teens. The bottom line? Guidance just got looser.
A hard and fast ban on screen time for children under two went out the window. Now the advice is no screen time under 18 months…unless it’s a video chat with grammy. And for good measure, parents should participate with the infant. Between 18 and 24 months, “letting children use media by themselves should be avoided.” But parents “who want to” can “choose high-quality programming” and “use them together with children, because this is how toddlers learn best.”
For kids two to five, the guidance is less than an hour per day of screen time per day. From age six, the advice becomes more qualitative. The Academy advises that parents should develop their own plan, taking into account the benefits and risks of different kinds of media. They even offer an interactive (screen time) tool for developing a family plan for screen time.
The risks of spending excessive time glued to a screen are clear enough. Diminished sleep time and quality, increased risk of obesity, learning issues, and developmental issues are real concerns. Regardless of those concerns, we land upon a bit of moral relativism. Writing in the LA Times, Deborah Netburn says:
On one hand, you know that capturing monsters in Pokemon Go or taking a portal to the Nether in Minecraft is probably not the healthiest way for your kids to spend the afternoon.
On the other hand, they are so happy and quiet when they are bathed in the glow of a smartphone, tablet or TV.
Moral outrage over sodas is relatively easy. Our tastes favor pumpkin spice latte. For those lovely glowing rectangles, the outrage is harder to find.
Click here and here for the position papers from the Academy. Click here and here for more from the LA Times. Click here for more from the Washington Post.
Before Screen Time, photograph © Snugg LePup / flickr
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October 22, 2016
October 23, 2016 at 6:38 am, James said:
This is a curious comment – “On one hand, you know that capturing monsters in Pokemon Go or taking a portal to the Nether in Minecraft is probably not the healthiest way for your kids to spend the afternoon.”
The number of overweight children I’ve seen out walking (most often with their fathers) to play Pokemon Go, even on a cold rainy afternoon makes me question whether this comment is based in fact or is unfounded.
According to the publisher of Pokemon Go, players walked 4.5 billion kilometers in the first 2 months after it came out. Curious how that could be bad, even if some of it is cheating.