{"id":276554,"date":"2020-11-25T01:51:53","date_gmt":"2020-11-25T06:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=276554"},"modified":"2020-11-25T01:51:53","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T06:51:53","slug":"distance-learning-stokes-fears-of-excessive-screen-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/11\/25\/distance-learning-stokes-fears-of-excessive-screen-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Distance learning stokes fears of excessive screen time"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After years of being warned by child development experts that limiting screen time is one of the keys to raising healthy, well-adjusted children in the digital age, parents are now being forced to ride herd on children for long days of Zoom school and online homework. (Pexels photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Christine Whalen has a spirited 5-year-old who started kindergarten in the fall. It\u2019s not going well. Ella gets so bored on Zoom that she quickly squirms, wiggles and tries to flee.<\/p>\n

One day when Whalen left the room for a moment, she came back to find her little girl lying on the ground, sticking her leg so high in the air that all the teacher could see was her tiny foot. Another day, Ella snuck out of the room entirely, leaving a Cookie Monster stuffed animal in her seat to fool the teacher.<\/p>\n

Although Whalen sees the humor in these events, she also worries that Ella is getting little out of kindergarten, and that\u2019s not all. Her bigger concern is one shared by many parents and medical professionals across California and the nation: All this enforced screen time is not developmentally appropriate for young children.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know the schools have a mandate to teach a certain number of hours, but I think that is at the expense of the kids\u2019 learning and, more importantly, their love of learning,\u201d said Whalen, an attorney struggling to get her own work done from her Oakland home while cajoling Ella to stare at a screen for two to three hours a day five days a week. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not good for our relationship because we have power struggles. It\u2019s difficult to enforce, because I don\u2019t think it\u2019s right. I know it\u2019s bad for her brain. It\u2019s really depressing. Like all parents, I want to do the right thing for my child.\u201d<\/p>\n

Family life has been disrupted in innumerable ways during the Covid pandemic. Among them is the nature of our relationship to screens. After years of being warned by child development experts that limiting screen time is one of the keys to raising healthy, well-adjusted children in the digital age, parents are now being forced to ride herd on children for long days of Zoom school and online homework.<\/p>\n

The strain of remote learning has exacerbated parental worries over a core question: How much screen time is too much for small children?<\/p>\n

Experts say too much screen time may have alarming effects on developing brains.\u00a0A landmark\u00a0National Institutes of Health\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a010,000 children\u00a0that began in 2018 found\u00a0that\u00a0those who spent more than two hours a day using screens scored lower on language and thinking tests.<\/p>\n

Some children with more than seven hours a day of screen time also experienced thinning of the brain\u2019s cortex, the area related to critical thinking and reasoning.<\/p>\n

Many parents also worry that their children will start foregoing physical and social activities for digital pursuits. Some also fear that too much screen time may suck the joy out of the educational experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany children live on their screens. In a majority of homes, the pandemic has only added to that. Add in that children doing remote or hybrid models at school may be doing a lot of screen hours per day,\u201d said\u00a0Richard Bromfield, a professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. \u201cThrow in cabin fever and what are children and parents to do? It\u2019s easy to get into never-ending control battles around your children\u2019s screens.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0American Academy of Pediatrics recommends\u00a0that children younger than 18 months avoid use of screens.<\/p>\n

For children ages 2 to 5 years, they suggest limiting screen use to one hour per day of high-quality programs. For children ages 6 and older, they advise \u201cconsistent limits.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for many parents, setting limits in a media-saturated and virus-laden environment is all but impossible. Remote learning can require up to four\u00a0hours of live instruction<\/a>\u00a0a day and that does not include the time required to do homework that must be completed on a computer.<\/p>\n

Many children also log a lot of recreational time on screens. Children ages 8-12 in the United States spend four to six hours a day watching or using screens on average, and teens spend up to nine hours, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.<\/p>\n

Some experts counter that given the myriad pressures families are under right now, excessive screen time should no longer be a major concern. Parents should be cutting themselves more slack, they say.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are living through a massive cultural shock. Families have enough stress to deal with, and counting screen minutes should be very low on the list of concerns for any of us,\u201d said Michael Robb, senior director of research for Common Sense Media,\u00a0a nonprofit group that reviews media content for children.<\/p>\n

Yet, for some parents, the pandemic has deepened misgivings they already had about screen time.\u00a0Liz Shipsides has long worried that her boys, James, 12, George, 10, and Louis, 6, spend too much time playing the popular online game Fortnite, for instance. But it was during distance learning\u00a0in the spring in Fremont Unified\u00a0that she was horrified to realize that screen time had started to dominate family life.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing glued to the screen for school made them more into other screens,\u201d said Shipsides, who recently moved her family from the Bay Area to Minnesota largely to be able to send the boys to in-person school. \u201cGeorge is now so addicted to TV that he sets his alarm to wake up to watch it.\u00a0They may have a tendency for screens already, but I think Zoom school accentuated it. I also think the kids are less healthy because of Zoom. They are less inclined to do anything physical. The kids have less stamina and they seem less able to focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whalen\u2019s greatest fear is that little Ella will start to hate school just when she should be discovering a love of learning. She fears that Ella\u2019s boredom with Zoom will mar her appreciation of school long after kindergarten is over.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the saddest thing about all of this for me,\u201d she said. \u201cShe keeps saying she wants to go back to preschool, and she doesn\u2019t want to go to Zoom class. She always wants to skip it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shipsides has also noted that all the increased screen time, coupled with social distancing, has made her sons more prone to emotional meltdowns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t bear to watch George cry out of the blue anymore,\u201d she said. \u201cI was having a really hard time with the emotional outbursts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Developmental experts agree that increased screen time can lead to greater emotional vulnerability in children.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs kids spend more time online, I would caution parents to watch for signs of anxiety, depression, stress and sadness as children deal differently with social isolation,\u201d said\u00a0Casey Gray, a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente Fresno.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, the dominance\u00a0of electronic communication and digital media may be among the causes of the rise in mental health issues today,\u00a0according to research<\/a>\u00a0published by the\u00a0American Psychological Association.<\/p>\n

During this period of social upheaval, with families coping with stress of living through a pandemic and an economic crisis, many parents are also anxious about whether this period of extreme immersion in screen time will impact their children\u2019s academic future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want education officials to realize how bad Zoom\u00a0Kindergarten\u00a0is for kids. I know how worried teachers are about a return to the classroom, but I want education officials to prioritize young children\u2019s return to in-person school. I wish the school districts had worked harder to come up with more creative solutions, such as outdoor pods with district teachers and aides,\u201d Whalen said. \u201cI think the toll this is taking on a lot of these kids is huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, as the virus surges across the country and most of\u00a0California returns to the most restrictive purple tier<\/a>, remote learning may be the ongoing reality for many students. Some school campuses that are currently open under a hybrid model may have to return to full-time distance learning and others are facing the prospect of a full year of remote learning.<\/p>\n

Even after the threat of contagion has diminished, health experts note that screen time will remain an important factor in children\u2019s health and well-being.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important to have rules around electronic device usage, when and where devices should be kept,\u201d Gray said. \u201cIn the past, I have encouraged parents not to have any electronic devices in children\u2019s bedrooms.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Children also learn by imitating their elders and experts say parents need to model the behavior they want to see.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we are constantly on our own devices, distracted and not engaged directly with our children, how can we expect them to behave differently?\u201d Gray said. \u201cThis is the time for parents to think outside the box, to put our devices away and to actively engage our children.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Christine Whalen has a spirited 5-year-old who started kindergarten in the fall. It\u2019s not going well. Ella gets so bored …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":265310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[604],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-education","mauthors-karen-dsouza","mauthors-edsource"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276556,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276554\/revisions\/276556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}