"I need my child to sit and wait while I cook."
"I brought my child with me for dinner with my friends and he is fidgeting non-stop."
"Ah, I'm too tired to occupy her, there's nothing to do."
These may be some of your thoughts when you choose to pull out your devices to distract your child.
What Expert Says?
Technological devices are unavoidable in today's society - their convenience and benefits to our lives make them almost indispensable. Think of a day that you don't spend moments on your gadgets, phones or TV. How often is that?
Yet for everything in life, there are its good and bad. While some of its content does bring the world closer together, there has been rising concerns of screen time, especially for young children. The issues range from having short attention span, developing myopia, behavioural problems, addiction, obesity and the list goes on.
But, the question that we often have is, how much is too much?
First, let's take a look at what are considered "screens". They include any devices with a screen such as a smartphone, computer, television, or video game console. Some examples of content are video-calls, television cartoons, YouTube videos and also educational games on phone applications. Content like e-books are excluded as screen time[1].
The KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH) led a study and developed a set of guidelines for early childhood up to adolescents in 2022. Here are their recommended screen time each day[2]:
For infants (below 12 months): No screen viewing time, including background screen time
For toddlers (12-17 months): No screen time
For toddlers (18-35 months): Less than 1 hour
For preschoolers (3 to 7 years old): Recreational screen viewing time to be limited to less than one hour
For children and adolescents (7-18 years old)[3]: KKH recognised that recreational screen time more than 2 hours daily for this group of children, is associated with the most adverse health outcomes and hence recommends to limit screen time to less than 2 hours daily.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) provided similar screen time guidelines and added on to suggest that parents co-view the screens with their children to help them understand what they are seeing. This can also aid in increasing social engagement between the adult and child for language development and conversations to occur - help children apply what they learn from screens to the real world!
Several studies were conducted in Singapore on screen time and we have included some findings here for your information:
Ebbeck et al. (2016) found that children aged 1- to 7-year-olds spent time on smartphones or touch screen tablets daily. This included a shocking finding that 3-year-olds spent 36 mins daily on smartphones. To think, television viewing was not included as screen time in this study - the total screen time of these children may be much higher! The parents/caregivers in this study had most concerns on children's vision deterioration and addiction to the devices.
On parents' motivation in letting their 1- to 5-year-old children use devices, Chen et al. (2019) found that parents have a purpose behind the use - they set out to gratify cognitive (as a learning platform), affective (they bond with children by using the devices together and having conversations about it after), and tension release needs (to 'babysit' them while they're busy or to entertain) in children.
Parents' daily use of media can predict children's daily use too: If parents use their devices, their children would do so as well. The hours that children are engaged in devices were found to be between 30mins to almost 5 hours on weekday for 2- to 5-year-olds. With this finding, Chia et al. (2022) shared their concern that this excessive use of devices may form addictive habits and affect children's development in cognitive and physical aspects.
These studies found high and frequent usage of screen time in young children and despite parents knowing the risks behind, their concerns were not reflected in their actions to reduce the use.
Tips To Consider
We Say....
[1] Jaymi (2020)
[2] KKH (2022)
[3] KKH (2021)
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