Screens

People would always get confused when such topic occurred. But I don’t. I personally think that with televisions, computers, video games, and cell phones, modern culture makes it difficult to escape time in front of a screen, especially for our newest generation of kids. Today, children six and under watch over 28 hours of television a week, nearly half of them have used a computer, and more than one in four has played a video game.

What does this growing exposure mean for our children's literacy development? Is it more harmful than helpful? Can parents and teachers use media effectively in their homes and schools? If so, how?

Questions like these that possess my mind when I see children, not only in Malaysia, but the whole world. Of course I can’t blame them; they are currently born in a technological world. But their parents were not. So, why should they expose their children on so many screens when they know that their children can be drowning into the cyber world?

There is plenty of evidence that sitting for hours at a time stores up health problems for the future. Sedentary behaviour is linked to rising risks of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke. But resourceful information also shows increases in blood pressure in children playing computer games and says that screen time is associated with unhealthy eating behaviour. Children respond to junk food adverts and eat in front of screens, which is such a distraction that it disturbs their memory of what they have consumed and they want to eat again.

More concerning to the parent who thought children's TV was educational and harmless are the studies that suggest screen time has an effect on a baby's developing brain. A US study found that those who watched TV at the ages of one and three years had a significantly increased risk of developing attention problems by the time they were seven years old. Then there is ‘Facebook depression’, reported by the American Academy of Paediatrics: an increased risk of disengagement and vulnerability to victimisation after high levels of screen time in early childhood, poor social skills and an impaired ability to express empathy. Screens effect on familial interactions, with children too absorbed in their screen world to greet a parent arriving home.

But blaming computers and TV may look like too simplistic an answer towards to many parents, who will have alternative interpretations of what is happening in an era of social as well as technological change, and none of the studies prove that screens can cause children harm. But they should have known better to limit the time for children in using screens too much. As they say, prevention is better than cure! (^_^)