Screen time – how much is too much and should we limit our exposure to digital devices?
- In the 1940s, it was radio, then television. Today, parents fret about how much time their children spend on social media
- But is screen time as harmful as the fearmongers would have us believe?
You’ll get square eyes!” my mother used to say as I sat for hour after hour glued to the television. I ignored her, of course. It was just something parents said. Fast-forward a few decades and now I’m the parent. My five-year-old lives in a world where screens aren’t fixed pieces of furniture, but lie around on the kitchen table, on the sofa, by the bed, constantly accessible. You can’t even avoid them by going outside. “Screens are not only in our pockets, they’re on billboards, buses and bins,” says Tim Smith, a psychologist at Birkbeck, University of London.
The concerns have multiplied with the screens. In the past decade, we have heard that they will rewire our brains, strip us of cognitive abilities and damage our mental health. Many of us feel more distracted by them, feeling grumpier, guiltier and more tired as a result. The list of ills makes square eyes sound benign.
So should we take these concerns more seriously? Given the amount of time so many of us spend with our lit-up devices, it is an important question.
The trouble is, many of the most emphatic answers are the least reliable. Smartphones and tablets are not only TVs, they are chat rooms, shopfronts, banks and photo albums. We use them to work and play, to record physical activity and monitor sleep. We can look up peer-reviewed papers or scroll through anti-vaxxing forums, crucial distinctions that disappear when we use the umbrella term “screen time”. As fears grow and the debate becomes ever more heated, it’s time to separate the proven health advice from the hyperbole.