Protection, Paranoia & Parenting

Some articles I read years ago, and this one from Common Sense Media more recently have a habit of continually popping back into my head, every time the inevitable web scare rears its ugly head.

There is a paranoia associated with the web which can easily be exaggerated, for example parents who are profoundly uncomfortable at the thought of a photo of their child being viewable online, even if the image is buried in a website with an extremely obscure URL, a proverbial needle in a digital haystack. Yet this same parent will almost certainly allow their child to walk down Orchard Rd, Fifth Avenue, Oxford Street, knowing that they can be seen (perhaps even photographed unawares) by the general public? Not to mention the ever increasing presence of CCTV cameras watching our every move. Could this same parent be in the habit (as I am) of regularly posting images of their children on social media? ... The fact is that without an associated name and detailed localising data, such as an address, it is almost impossible to track down one child based on the image of their face alone (in the extremely unlikely event that someone wanted to).

So, like the concrete jungles of our cities and towns, the Wild Wonderful Web is an amazing place, but it is a metaphorical jungle, and, as it happens, the wild wild web has a great deal in common with a jungle—not too many leaves—but many wonderful opportunities and yes, many dangers; dangers that, with a few basic precautions, can be avoided.

The first Article makes a few controversial but critical points, which could be broadly summarised as:

Less monitoring more mentoring

The expectation of constantly monitoring children and teenagers on the Internet is an impossible ideal. Who has time to stand over the shoulder of your kids for the entire time they are online? Children’s freedom to roam in the physical world has been radically curtailed. While previous generations could ride bikes or walk to school or play outside unsupervised till dinner time, this generation is watched all the time. They have lost that thrill of being on their own until they are much older, and, for them, the Internet can provide that open space, to test and explore and try out the outside world—while being a lot less painful than ... say ... falling out of a tree, a risk that was commonplace in my childhood. In fact a shiver runs down my spine when I consider some of the risks I routinely took as child, with n'ere a parent, or even an adult in sight or sound. There is educational value in this kind of risk, this exploration even if it is online, perhaps even because it is: a lot of the work kids do is apprehending the social world, and for them, much of this work is done online.

Less restrictions more responsibility 

The important thing is to give kids the ability to handle choices, assess risks, and take strategic, or calculated risks. You want, in other words, to create the kid who can handle the Internet without you. And how can they become that kid if you are watching them all the time, if you are always hovering right there next to them? You don't just throw a 5-year-old out on the streets and tell them to figure it all out. The same is true online. But, accordingly, you can't expect to put them under surveillance and control every action they make until they're 18 and then magically assume they'll be fine at university, and the world 'beyond school' (I dislike the use of 'real world' to describe life outside school—school life is real life too!) when they haven't had any experience managing their own decisions.

Pain is a powerful teacher

Pain is a powerful teacher, sure, it's not kind, but it certainly is effective. Parents need to face up to the idea that they cannot protect their children from every potential negative experience, online, or offline, this is an impossible fantasy; there is no way to seal your children off from awful or painful or frightening things. This is nothing new, think back to your own childhood, bad things happened, you got over it, hopefully you learned something from it.

A caveat...

With great power comes great responsibility, not anonymity

A huge part of responsibility means ceasing the dubious practice by many, well meaning, but poorly informed parents, of allowing their kids to create social networking accounts in anonymity, based on the notion that this somehow protects their child. STOP! All this does is remove all responsibility, and in far too many cases actively encourages irresponsibility, as far too many children wreak havoc online from behind the veneer of a name like Puff the magic Dragon, with an Avatar of an aardvark or ... a pineapple ... or, you get the idea... Like no paedophile has ever thought of doing that? It is important to note here that online predators are far less likely to be paedophiles, and far more likely to be your child's own 'friends' and acquaintances. All you've done is encourage a situation where your anonymous child is forced to socialise with other anonymous people online, strangers, because they are similarly anonymous, oh, but they SAY they are your child's best friend ... . If you're going to let your kid 'play outside'; make sure they are playing as themselves, no disguises, no anonymity, their name, their face, and they should make sure to only socialise with people who do likewise.

The point, is not to create a safe world, but a safer world. 

Tim Elmore wrote an article more recently on this subject,  Three Huge Mistakes We Make Leading Kids…and How to Correct Them - a great article, and again, if you will permit me, it can be summed up similarly and thus:

Over-protection is damaging our children—

We Risk Too Little

“If you’re over 30, you probably walked to school, played on the monkey bars, and learned to high-dive at the public pool. If you’re younger, it’s unlikely you did any of these things. Yet, has the world become that much more dangerous? Statistically, no. But our society has created pervasive fears about letting kids be independent—and the consequences for our kids are serious.” (Gever Tully)

The truth is, kids need to fall a few times to learn it is normal; teens likely need to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend to appreciate the emotional maturity that lasting relationships require. Pain is actually a necessary teacher. Over-protecting our young people has had an adverse effect on them, we are failing miserably at preparing them for a world that will not be risk-free.

We Rescue Too Quickly

This generation of young people has not developed some of the life skills kids did thirty years ago because adults swoop in and take care of problems for them. We remove the need for them to navigate hardships. This may sound harsh, but rescuing and over-indulging our children is one of the most insidious forms of child abuse. It’s “parenting for the short-term” and it sorely misses the point of leadership [parenting]—to equip our young people to do it without help. Just like muscles atrophy inside of a cast due to disuse, their social, emotional, spiritual and intellectual muscles can shrink because they’re not exercised.

We Rave too Easily

Praise effort and persistence, not ability. Carol Dweck (Mindset) tells us that our affirmation of kids must target factors in their control. When we say “you must have worked hard,” we are praising effort, which they have full control over. It tends to elicit more effort. When we praise ability 'you're smart/clever/awesome!', it may provide a little confidence at first but ultimately causes a child to work less. They say to themselves, “If it doesn’t come easy, I don’t want to do it.”

A helpful metaphor when considering this challenge is inoculation. Inoculation injects a vaccine, which actually exposes you to a dose of the very disease your body must learn to overcome. It’s a good thing. Only then do we develop an immunity to it. Similarly, our kids must be inoculated with doses of hardship, delay, challenges and inconvenience to build the strength to stand in them.

So let them fail, let them fall, and let them fight for what they really value. If we treat our kids as fragile, they will surely grow up to be fragile adults. We must prepare them for the world that awaits them. Our world needs resilient adults not fragile ones.

Internet Filtering & Parental Controls

I am regularly contacted by parents for advice about software they can install on the devices their children use at home that will enable them to filter out or block inappropriate content, usually based on the assumption that we must use some sort of monitoring software on campus. Often these parents are surprised to discover that while we do have filters to block the most egregious of content, it is fair to say that our college filters are not as strict as many might expect. We do use a commercial filter on our internet traffic to block inappropriate sites, however, such filters work on the basis of keywords and blacklists and neither of these methods are foolproof. So why do we take the risk?

Our college policy regarding parental controls goes a long way to explaining this:

In general the College has an ethos of developing personal responsibility in students and ultimately we believe that it is essential for students to develop the skills and attitudes necessary to survive and then thrive in a digitally connected world.

The sentiment behind this policy statement is very similar to the description of 'e-safety' as defined by Becta:

The term e-safety covers a broad range of issues around the need to ensure that children's and young people's experience and engagement with technologies is a safe and positive one. While parents, educators, government and industry all have a role to play in keeping children and young people safe, supporting them to become independent in online environments is critical to nationwide, effective e-safety. ‘Independence' does not mean here that they are expected to deal with every incident themselves: it means that they develop social skills (including resilience); that they know how to identify and manage risk; that they understand their rights and responsibilities and know how to access help and advice if needed. (Becta's Contribution to the Rose Review, 2009)

When we teach our kids how to use the internet, we do so from a position of preparing them for the 'real world' of internet access that most will encounter at home. While there are a minority of families who use some form of filtering software, the reality is that few families have internet filters of any kind on their home connections. This is not a criticism, I have not installed any filtering software at home either. This situation reflects the norm in my experience, a norm that we need to be teaching our students to operate effectively and responsibly within.  For example, you cannot guarantee that even walking down Orchard Road you are not going to see images or overhear a conversation that you feel is inappropriate for your children. So in addition to the filters, arguably, more important than filters is the need to teach our children the skills they need to navigate the internet safely, and how to react appropriately if, or should I say, when something occurs.

This policy very much underpins our approach and throughout the Primary School, where, even from K2 (in K1 teachers use Guided Access), all students are effectively 'administrators' of their devices. This applies all the way through the iPad grades (K1-G3), and then on through from Grade 4-5. All students receive their own laptop in G6, where we leave the decision about admin controls up to parents, although we encourage parents to make their child admin if at all possible—or at least to try it. From G7—all the way through to grade 12 we expect all students to have admin rights on their laptop. This means that for most of their school years our students are already accustomed to using and managing their laptops as an 'administrator' whether or not they were even aware of this, which is possible, as we treat this as a 'normal' operating environment. This is an arrangement we encourage all parents to maintain, unless of course a situation arises where you feel that you need to withdraw the privilege of an admin account, in this (hopefully rare) situation, we encourage parents to ensure that this is a temporary arrangement.

"Nearly half of 10 year olds say they have the skills to hide what they're doing online from their parents." (Sky News, Swipe, 2017)

It's worth noting as a practical point, that the process of imposing parental controls is not a simple one, this is mainly because the process of setting the 'tightness' and 'looseness' of controls is a tricky balance to find. If your main concern is distraction rather than access to inappropriate content, there are a range of strategies we encourage at school that you can also model at home, and encourage your children to practise as well. The other critical consideration is that if you are not very careful, you could end up effectively creating an unhelpful dynamic where you effectively teach your child that they are not trusted, at which point you may well be encouraging them to find ways to subvert your attempts at policing their online activity, then when they do encounter problems they are unlikely to come to you for help as they will have to confess their nefarious scheme... For more see this short video on the 'the secret cyber life of young people'...

Road Safe, Web Safe

This is where the analogy of road safety that we use with students comes in. Roads in every country are commonplace, and at some point everyone of our children will need to learn how to navigate them safely and independently. The same can be said of the 'wild wild web'; like roads they are a modern and essential reality, and while they can be dangerous, they shouldn't be treated is if they are inherently dangerous places—although they can be very dangerous places. The solution to both is very similar: education and supervision. Like roads, we expect kids to be able to navigate the web from an early age, but never alone; although any wise parent should be modelling for their kids how they navigate the web, when they are using it together. Just like road safety, there are some basic rules we expect all young children to follow, to make these effective we've kept them simple:

1. Only search the internet with a responsible adult present.
2. If you see something that makes you uncomfortable, show the responsible adult.
3. If you need to search online unsupervised, use a search engine designed for kids like Kiddle or Safe Search Kids.

About point 3, we liken these 'child safe' search engines to playgrounds, spaces that are designed especially for children, this doesn't make them harmless, after all, kids in playgrounds can still get hurt, but it does make the likelihood of this less likely. In the same way we liken searching using Google as tantamount to walking down Orchard Road, not an inherently dangerous space per se, especially in Singapore; but clearly the possibility of encountering something or someone inappropriate is more likely. As children we did not grow up with the dangers of the internet, but we did grow up with dangers, and our parents, in my experience were quite comfortable with allowing us some controlled exposure to risk situations, precisely so we could learn from them. I fell out of several trees, and off several bicycles during my childhood, not to mention the stairs I fell down. Stairs, now those are really dangerous, but I doubt anyone is seriously considering preventing children from using those... So we're not looking to create a zero risk environment for our students, but a managed risk environment, this distinction is essential. This last point is one I've written about before, but a recent article from the Washington Post, entitled, 'Why I don't monitor my kids' texts anymore' does an excellent job of articulating this tension, along with some practical parenting advice.

"As a young and socially inexperienced person, I was sometimes mean, sometimes gross, and sometimes way out of line. Every kid tests his or her own boundaries. That’s how they start to grow up. The queasiness in my stomach or the ache in my heart when I crossed that line is what helped me learn from those mistakes. 

When we hover over our kids’ social interactions, on high alert to catch each mistake and steer them back on course, we squelch their internal barometer for embarrassment and guilt. Had my mom listened to all my conversations and called my behavior out into the light, I might not have learned to read my moral compass."

This does beg the question, "at what age is it okay for my child to browse the internet unsupervised?', and the answer is very similar to "at what age is it okay for my child to cross the road unsupervised?", which is, when you have taught them how to navigate it safely, and what to do if things go wrong. In my experience this is unlikely to be until grade 4 or 5, which is, incidentally, when students are allowed to make their own way home (with parental permission, of course).

Not all families or children are the same, and the home environment is not one that is necessarily conducive to ensuring that young children are never able to go online unsupervised. Given that our policy is to teach responsibility, we'd like to think that even if unsupervised, our students would still make the 'right choice' and either stay offline (working within an app for example) or use one of the child safe search engines that they are encouraged to use in school.  However there are clearly scenarios where this is not a realistic option, in which case you may want to consider some digital tools that can assist with this, but bear in mind these are unlikely to be free if they're any good, for example a one year family subscription to Azoomee costs £40, " No ads, no in-app purchases. And a PIN lock to keep kids inside the app and take away the worries."

As of iOS 12, all iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) now have built in options for parents to monitor/restrict screen time.

When you open Screen Time for the first time, you can specify if you are a parent setting up an account for a child. Then you set a parent passcode that will be required to alter the Screen Time settings. From your device, you can also select “Set Up Screen Time for Family” to set up Screen Time with Family Sharing. You’ll be able to access your child’s Screen Time reports and set controls from your own device. When a child reaches the end of a time limit on the app, they can request more time; the request pops up as a notification on the parent’s device. 

Finally, Screen Time allows parents to set restrictions on downloads, privacy, and other settings. By default, Apple won't set these restrictions, even if it knows it's a kid's phone. Parents will have to manually make these adjustments in Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions. (Wired Magazine) 

This article contains some very practical advice, over and above the 'unplug the router' (one I have to say I like; simple but effective!) strategy, along with some wise caveats,

"While we can certainly recommend a bunch of apps and devices for you, this is more about your approach than the tools you’re going to use. Kids generally don’t like being spied on and dislike being spied on without their knowledge even more. While a number of monitoring tools can run without children knowing about them, we strongly recommend being transparent with your kids about when and how you’re tracking them. 

You know your kids better than we do, and we can’t prescribe the right approach for every type of child, but whatever your situation it pays to be open and honest about the dangers out there on the web and in the real world."  (David Nield)

Parenting in a Digital Age

 

Frame conversations around three approaches to media: 

control: media bias (base your control on facts not myths), experts, parental controls, software, etc

negotiate - ratings, time, balance… role modelling these

affect = mood, disposition, violence, ‘addiction’ 

Don’t panic!

“In 1922, 6,000 radios were owned by the American public; this number grew to 1.5 million by 1923, 17 million by 1932, and 44 million by 1940 (Dennis, 1998). In 1936, about nine in 10 New York households owned a household radio, and children in these homes spent between 1 and 3 hr a day listening to these devices (Dennis, 1998). This rapid rise in popularity sparked concerns.

A New York Times piece considered whether listening to the radio too much would harm children and lead to illnesses because the body needed “repose” and could not “be kept up at the jazz rate forever” (Ferrari, as cited in Dennis, 1998). Concerns voiced by the Director of the Child Study Association of America noted how radio was worse than any media that came before because “no locks will keep this intruder out, nor can parents shift their children away from it” (Gruenberg, 1935).

In recent decades, concerns about the effects of radio on young people have practically disappeared—but societal concerns about emergent technologies have definitely not done so.

Although previous parents' fears of radio addiction might seem amusing now, contemporary concerns about smart-phones, online games, and social media are shaping and influencing policy around the world.

The similarity between concerns about the radio and social media provides a striking reminder that in every decade, new technologies enter human lives and that in their wake there will arrive widespread concerns about their effects on the most vulnerable in society."

Orben, A. (2020). The Sisyphean cycle of technology panics. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(5), 1143-1157.

Screen time is just time 

> work/homework, reading, viewing, meeting/conversing, messaging, gaming

Four main categories of screen time.

1. Passive consumption: watching TV, reading, and listening to music 
2. Interactive consumption: playing games and browsing the Internet
3. Communication: video-chatting and using social media
4. Content creation: using devices to make digital art or music

(The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens] 

What if we swapped the phones for books? Why is that okay?

Beware media bias 

> Not all screens are the same: phone, tablet, e-reader, laptop, desktop, TV, game console

> Consumption v creation: one huge difference between devices is the capacity for creation/interaction, especially during holidays encouraging creative use, again model this... 

Practice what you preach 

Over 7 hours a day for parents... how does that compare to your children?

‘hours per day’ is not necessarily a helpful metric, but parents generally exceed child use by a rate of double to three times (9 hours v 3) 

Model appropriate use, eg at the dinner table, receiving messages during conversation, sleeping with your device, headphones in a social space, use before sleep... 

Device management 

• Children are not adults, less self control, so possibly more guidance needed 
• Beware of privacy, just because everyone can use their own screen doesn’t mean your child should, eg daily/regular family screen time. Maybe the family TV is a better solution? 
• Parental controls - sometimes necessary, but don’t rely on these long term
• avoid an adversarial solution that pits child against parents, responsible use is the goal
• be realistic about the amount of time you allow, and what that time is being used for:

Maybe apportion screen time in different ways? 

• Passive consumption: watching TV, reading, and listening to music 
• Interactive consumption: playing games and browsing the Internet
• Communication: video-chatting and using social media
• Creation: using devices to make digital art or music

Resources 

Screen time - Summary of Expert Advice 

Video Games & Violence

Device control and internet filters 

Creative Screen use at home

Creative Apps for iPads

Parental Video Gaming Advice Summarised 

Screen time Diigo reading list (>80 articles) 

Expert Advice

UNICEF

THE STATE OF THE WORLD'S CHILDREN (2017) 

p109

Assumptions about restricting screen time

"While parents and caregivers may think they are protecting their children by restricting the time spent on digital technology, this may not be the case.

Common measures to restrict internet use – by governments, businesses, parents and others – usually take the form of parental controls, content blocking and internet filters. While well meaning, these are not always well designed to achieve their desired purpose and may even create unintended negative effects. For example, such restrictions can cut adolescents, especially, off from their social circles, from access to information and from the relaxation and learning that come from play. Tension around these restrictions can also damage trust between parents and children. And extreme restrictions can hold children back from developing the digital literacy skills needed to critically evaluate information and communicate safely, responsibly and effectively through digital technology – skills they will need for their future.

Without consensus on screen time, it is important for parents, policymakers, researchers and the media not to jump to conclusions about what is healthy or unhealthy digital use. Considering the full context of a child's life – together with an emphasis on content and experiences rather than screen time – may prove more useful for understanding the effects of digital connectivity on children's well-being.

A common assumption is that time spent online will detract from other activities thought to be more valuable, such as face-to-face socializing, reading books or exercising. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘displacement theory' (discussed later in this chapter). While this assumption originally received support and served to inform policy statements, such as the former digital media guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), more recent evidence suggests it might be simplistic or even inaccurate. One reason for this shift is the growing recognition that digital technologies offer many opportunities for children to pursue developmentally valuable activities, and these opportunities are both increasing and improving. 

Recent research suggests that youth seem quite resilient to screen consumption at higher levels – up to six hours daily – more than is typically recommended by most policy statements."  (Peersman, Claudia, et al., 2016)

Screen Time: Not too little, not too much

"Despite concerns, mainly among parents and educators, regarding the effects of extensive screen time (see section: The debate over digital dependency), a recent large-scale cross-sectional study of more than 120,000 15-year-olds in the United Kingdom found that the time children spent using digital tech had only a negligible impact. This study, which controlled for gender, ethnicity and economic factors, included watching TV and movies, playing video games, using computers and using smartphones. The activities differed somewhat in their respective impacts, but the authors conclude that, in general, no use at all was associated with lower mental well-being, while moderate use (between approximately two and five hours per day, depending on the activity) seemed to have a small positive effect on mental well-being." (Przybylski and Weinstein)

p111

"...physical inactivity is unlikely to be a direct consequence of adolescents spending too much time on screen-based activities.

Some studies suggest that online activity and physical activity may be more independent of one another than they seem. 

children are not forgoing physical activity because they want to go online. Instead, they may be going online because they are already physically inactive, for a variety of reasons. (Melkevik) Or they may be less physically active, and also go online, as two separate outcomes... 

...interventions targeting screen time alone are unlikely to significantly increase time spent on physical activity." (Iannotti, Ronald J., et al. 2009)

Instead of asking “How does screen time affect physical activity?,” perhaps the right question is “Are children leading lives where they can get a healthy, balanced amount of activity for optimal growth and well-being?” Promoting physical activity and a healthy diet might prove a better strategy than merely reducing screen time. 

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate

"Human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution."

"Maybe technology is not the problem. Maybe it’s just down to human behaviour. Consider again the parents of young children who worry about screen time but put their toddlers in front of an iPad for hours on end and then blame the technology. Consider the fact that teenagers have been locking themselves up in their rooms, avoiding talking to their parents and responding only with barely audible grunts to ‘how was school today?’ for, probably, centuries. Screens didn’t cause any of this. From this perspective, the mere existence of screens contributes to this problem in the same way that cars contribute to crashes. That’s right, car crashes wouldn’t happen if there weren’t any cars, but it is the person in control behind the wheel who causes them, not the car.

Not all screen time is equal – Shooting Azimuths

Fear mongering 

From time to time, doom laden missives like this get circulated amongst parents:

10 Reasons Why Handheld Devices Should Be Banned for Children Under the Age of 12 

We need to stop talking about the notion of screen time. All screens are not equal. A TV is different from a computer, and they are both different from a touchscreen tablet. Putting all of them in the same category is dishonest and simplistic. Screens are merely a way of visualising experiences of a wide variety of categories. They are bearers of media—they are not media in themselves. Thus, they cannot categorically be defined as good, bad or neutral. For instance, no reasonable person would say that all computers are bad in the workplace. There may be good or bad uses of a computer, but the computer itself is neither. It’s just there—as an instrument, or a bearer of media.

Secondly, there is a big difference between watching something and interacting with it. The interactive component changes everything when it comes to creating new experiences for kids. Being engaged and actively participating in something—with feedback, collaboration, imagination and creativity—is a completely different experience from viewing a passive narrative. There can be a time and a place for both, but they are by no means the same thing.

iPads – A Tool, Not Alchemy, for Education

Screen time in the Early Years...

In 2011, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its policy on very young children and media. In 1999, the group had discouraged television viewing for children younger than 2, citing research on brain development that showed this age group’s critical need for “direct interactions with parents and other significant care givers.” The updated report began by acknowledging that things had changed significantly since then. In 2006, 90 percent of parents said that their children younger than 2 consumed some form of electronic media. Nonetheless, the group took largely the same approach it did in 1999, uniformly discouraging passive media use, on any type of screen, for these kids. (For older children, the academy noted, “high-quality programs” could have “educational benefits.”) The 2011 report mentioned “smart cell phone” and “new screen” technologies, but did not address interactive apps. Nor did it broach the possibility that has likely occurred to those 90 percent of American parents, queasy though they might be: that some good might come from those little swiping fingers.

The Touch-Screen Generation

American Academy of Pediatrics Guidance (AAP)

"In a world where “screen time” is becoming simply “time,” our policies must evolve or become obsolete. The public needs to know that the Academy's advice is science-driven, not based merely on the precautionary principle

Media is just another environment. Children do the same things they have always done, only virtually. Like any environment, media can have positive and negative effects.

Content matters. The quality of content is more important than the platform or time spent with media. Prioritize how your child spends his time rather than just setting a timer."

• Beyond ‘turn it off’: How to advise families on media use 
• Focus On An Issue 
• AAP Announces New Recommendations for Children’s Media Use
  

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH)

"The evidence base for a direct ‘toxic’ effect of screen time is contested, and the evidence of harm is often overstated. The majority of the literature that does exist looks only at television screen time.

Evidence is weak for a threshold to guide children and parents to the appropriate level of screen time, and we are unable to recommend a cut-off for children's screen time overall.

Many of the apparent connections between screen time and adverse effects may be mediated by lost opportunities for positive activities (socialising, exercise, sleep) that are displaced by screen time.

There is a little evidence that any specific intervention can be applied across the population to reduce screen time. We have developed four key questions for families to use as a guide to examine their screen time:

• Is screen time in your household controlled?
• Does screen use interfere with what your family wants to do?
• Does screen use interfere with sleep?
• Are you able to control snacking during screen time?

If a family can ask themselves (or be asked by others) these questions, and are satisfied with the answers, then they can be reassured that they are likely to be doing as well as they can with this tricky issue.

Not all screens are equal, and guidelines need to be updated to reflect these differences.

A family doctor’s rules for toddlers and screen time 

...healthy, age-appropriate use of media and technology, even with the youngest children, is possible.  It all depends on content and context."

Can Technology Be a Teaching Tool for Toddlers, Preschoolers? | Common Sense Education

Lumping all screens into one category is not helpful. "Screen time is a really enticing measure because it's simple – it's usually described as the number of hours a day using screen-based technology. But it's completely meaningless," says Pete Etchells at Bath Spa University, UK, who studies the effects of video games on behaviour. "It doesn't say anything about what you're using that time for.

Children benefit from the right sort of screen time

Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens

"The notion of screen time as a one-dimensional activity is changing. Computers, tablets, and smartphones are multipurpose devices that can be used for lots of purposes. Designating their use simply as "screen time" can miss some important variations. The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens identifies four main categories of screen time.

1. Passive consumption: watching TV, reading, and listening to music 
2. Interactive consumption: playing games and browsing the Internet
3. Communication: video-chatting and using social media
4. Content creation: using devices to make digital art or music

If screen media use can mean writing a short story on a computer, video-chatting with relatives, watching videos, reading the news online, or playing games, what is the point of documenting the total amount of time teens spend using screens?"

Page 23

"Computers, tablets, and smartphones are multipurpose devices that can be used for any of these activities; designating their use simply as “screen time” can miss some important variations. So, for the first time that we are aware of, this study quantifies the time spent using these devices for different functional purposes: what we call “passive consumption,” which includes watching TV or videos, reading, or listening to music (using the word “passive” is not meant to imply that the consumer is unengaged); “interactive consumption,” which includes playing games and browsing the Internet; “communication,” which includes video-chatting and using social media; and “content creation,” which includes writing or creating digital art or music."

Eye Problems?

Thankfully, studies conducted thus far haven’t attributed long-term vision problems to screen usage as a kid. Mark S. Borchert, MD, director of both the Eye Birth Defects and Eye Technology Institutes in The Vision Center at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, states, “Multiple large population-based epidemiologic studies suggest that screen time does not affect the predisposition for glasses. At least 90% of the risk for needing glasses is genetic.”

Mashable.com — How to protect your kids' eyes and ears from too much screen time

Let the kids have recreational screen time of at least an hour a day, why?

168 hours in a week (7 x 24)

- 64 (7 x 9 hours sleep)

7 x 24 = 168 hours a week 

- 7 x 10 (sleep) 70

- 5 x 9 (school week + travel) 45

- 5 x 2 (homework/tuition) 10

- 7 x 2 (meal times) 14 

= 140 hours 

168 - 140 = 28 hours of leisure time a week - not including holidays, 4 hours a day. 

If they played one hour a day, that still leaves 3 for playing outside, creating, reading and ...? 

Key Slides from the Parent Presentation

Sources

Melkevik, ‘Is Spending Time in Screen-Based Sedentary Behaviors Associated with Less Physical Activity'.

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