Influence Of Screens On Children with Swasth Wellbeing
good evening everyone on behalf of swast wellbeing would like to welcome you all for our today’s session on influence of screens on children with miss kiran tertia mr kiran theft is a child behavior psychologist practicing at multiple pediatric clinics in mumbai she supports parents in addressing emotional and behavioral changes challenges of children ms kiran would have done her post graduation in counseling psychology along with studies in science of parenting child rearing and introduction to development psychology her professional experience includes having worked with many children in daycare preschool schools and clinical setups it helps dealing with some of the most common challenges faced by children including poor attention and concentration academic concerns gadgets or screen time tussle speaking offensively or harshly breaking things having catastrophic temper tantrums stealing arguing and confronting others lying hitting peers parents or teachers parents parent child distancing bullying fursy eating and so on so firstly heart is to welcome miss kiran sifti on behalf of our entire team of worst welding and we feel fortunate to have you talk on our platform today and thus without any further delays would love to hear briefly about our today’s question from you thank you amrita thank you so much for your introduction and it’s such a pleasure to be in the events organized by swast well-being and such a relevant topics that uh you and your team pick picks up each time so it’s uh it’s great the the in fact when amritya just for the benefit of other listeners who are listening when we were in talks that what should be the topic that we should bring up in this sector screens is one thing uh which was uh one of the things which was at the top of my mind because uh what i have observed in the last especially during the lockdown right a year two years or so it has affected and impacted across all the age groups of children uh previously where we would think that probably it will affect the adolescents or a little older populace um during the lockdown it has shown impact for as young as one and half year old child has been so um i think it’s a very relevant topic that we have uh picked up for this session yeah uh so without any further delay uh so we have uh received certain questions from the parents of the children so i’ll quickly run you through the questions and we can go further so my first question would be how do screens affect child development um now here um amrita we are we have to first define a couple of things in this question right we are talking about screens we are talking about child and we are talking about affect right there are three things now when when i see a child then it can be as young as the pre you know the toddler then the preschooler then schooler and then the older eight children right and as we see this big age band then the question comes that okay what do we mean by screen right so how i view screens as that an activity for younger lot which is probably if used in replacement or as a shortcut to achieve the learning which the child should have otherwise done should have done it right what that means for a younger lot is that the learning to eat right learning to handle frustration [Music] right i learning to wait if you go somewhere out or you’re seated in the car learning to wait you know the waiting threshold if in all these areas for the younger one first i’m talking if screens are being used to shorten the learning curve or as a shortcut it is going to affect their milestones it is going to affect their language development because language development is something which zero to seven years a child learns and the only way that the child learns is through interactive right social interaction with people and peers around so when screens start taking that you know that space which should have been given to the learning of the child we are going to see the effect in the milestones of the young children now if we come towards the other end of the spectrum the older children then the screen because of the pull inherent pull that screens how right now it’s not about milestones per se but it is about physiological emotional and social needs of the child all right so i have come across many cases and all the children where the screens for entertainment whether it is youtube whether it is video games it starts affecting their motivation to eat their their sense of i need to go to sleep i’m feeling sleepy now here i’m talking about very basic things sleep and eat which as a living being we would think that probably it’s such an automatic thing it’s a need of the body so if we even start from that as the base that has the foundation then you can imagine everything about it whether it is social connect right and uh even in the areas amrita where the lockdown was getting eased out i got so many children in this 10-year plus age where the motivation to go out and connect with friends had got affected so much that they would rather prefer sitting at home and doing screens so you can imagine all the other things if it is affecting the eat and sleep then it has a potential to affect all the other needs of the child so you can see the spectrum here right so i hope that you know that will definitely help the parents to understand what exactly needs to be taken care of so my second question would be how does screen time affect children’s health right um now health we are talking from physical health point of view uh see if now i’ll take it as a generic question but overall it encourages encourages sedentary kind of lifestyle we all are aware that the longer the child sits and the younger children need to flex their gross motor skills they need to do fine motor they need to do those development out there they need to the middle age children the middle childhood which is around 7 years to 10 needs to learn how to make friends how to handle social conflicts right so it is going to affect your cognitive health and problem solving skills as well so overall sedentary lifestyle is going to affect the child’s biological health as well as the cognitive health when the child is not getting enough real life problem solving it it takes essentially takes a child into a world which is which the skills which the child thinks the child is learning right the child cannot apply it in the real life a few days back i had i was talking to this 12 year old child where i said okay so when you’re playing so many video games right then how is how do you see that so the child says i see i’m getting more adaptable i’m getting more flexible and i can solve so many problems because it needs a lot of you know intelligence to solve the problems i said all right so can you go to the kitchen and fix a meal for yourself and the child just abhors going outdoors trying to make friends because the child has started labeling on the self that i’m not good at making friends i can’t make friends so you can imagine that all the things that we think we are intelligently solving and learning is affecting the child right so when we talk about when you talk about physical health amrita here it’s going to affect the child’s overall health as well as it pushes the sleep time in older children even in younger one also but i’m you know in all the children specifically where they start thinking that uh i’m not feeling sleepy let me probably catch up with some more you know maybe social media or maybe youtube or maybe something else till the time i feel sleepy now you can imagine what’s happening when the body stops listening to the knock knock that you got to sleep and this of course the screen and the the the light is not helping you to get an indication that’s a sleep time so the child and starts thinking i actually don’t sleep i actually am not feeling sleepy and a child is sleeping at two o’clock three o’clock in the night so you can imagine the whole circadian the whole biorhythm is going to go for a toss and next day when the child gets up the in fact uh because the child had a poor quality sleep you know nighttime sleep so we we see how cascading the effects are right the overall emotional control of the child the overall snappiness of the child right is going to increase the the motivation the taste of food is going to get affected so again it will have it it will be like a cycle the child will think that i’m not feeling hungry and by the time the child starts thinking i’m feeling hungry that is 12 o’clock in the night the child is bound to go to the kitchen and bound to go to the closest junk food which is there for the child so you notice that the whole biorhythm goes for a toss so that’s the amount of effect it can help it can have on the health amrita here so my third question would be how does screen time affect a child’s brain okay that’s a that’s a very interesting question uh the whole screen right we have to understand who creates these apps and softwares right what is the motivation of that person or that organization right for that end of the people who are creating these tools it’s business their aim is how can i increase the stickiness here okay how do i understand the psychology of human behavior right and am a how do i design my system the whole reward system where the person keeps coming back and and not just keeps coming back wants to keep seeing what next what next what next in fact unlike a tv program i mean in two days time even the tv program is 24×7 if you think netflix has the tv program smart tv but then if you look for typical tv program right it has a starting and it’ll end the the child will will have a feeling that all right i did i finished and will be ready to move on to the other activity here when the child is on youtube just when the child was about to finish the the video you imagine what happened when three more videos start coming up that hey why don’t you even say this so the whole reward system keeps getting triggered trigger triggered in the brain because brain is plastic right brain works on what root is being used you know it’s like a practice so in fact in younger children such as the plasticity of brain that in younger children first five years of life amrita the children who had started speaking and started connecting with others when they started getting six to seven hours of screens they stopped talking they regressed they stopped connecting with people and whatever is the external manifestation somewhere the brain which is plastic is undergoing a change in the circuitry where the skills right where the practices that the person because brain wants to be if efficient right so whatever skills and whatever practices that the person is not using anymore starts getting proved especially it happens in children because their brain is much more dynamic right nerve connections are our synapses are getting connected much faster and getting pruned much faster so the child can in fact um here it is not directly related to screen but it is related to the plasticity of the brain a six-year-old child when was taken from an environment of x language and was put up in another environment of y language within three to four months of time the child completely forgot the native language and picked up the new language so whatever we are seeing as external manifestation of the behavior is actually a change in the brain so if the if only the reward system the quick reward system is the is the is the path which is getting more and more sharper you can imagine what’s happening then then we are not really preparing the children for the real world because the real world the amount of effort which is required even to make a seven tier tower even to make seven blocks to put it one above one above another how much frustration the child has to go through so when the child’s brain circuitry is getting changed for instant gratification you can imagine how frustrated the child is going to feel in real life and when as a parent we start noticing that the child is feeling so frustrated what do we start thinking oh my god looks like the child is not liking that because there are no screens let’s again give back to back the screens to a child because the child will be quiet so it’s like how do we come out of this cycle so there’s a real brain changes circuitry changes which is bound to happen the reason why i uh amrita has taken a moment to explain it with examples so that parents don’t just see it as a mumbo jumbo is something technical that we’re talking about it’s real it affects the behavior right so i really hope you know yes that will definitely uh help the parents to understand what needs to be taken care again so uh my fourth question will be can too much screen time affect child health and vision okay now here um vision is a little tricky question because um you know um the studies i mean i’m not ophthalmologist but i will take it more of as a as a person who comes across many such news and all so the the studies which i see in vision amrita they are more like those studies on alcohol you know one study says there is no effect another study says so so um and there was another study which so nicely a child of um i think nine or ten-year-olds showed it to me saying that look they say they’re good for my brain you know i should be doing more playing more on the video games they will sharpen my brain wow that’s wonderful so um but then yes there is general general you know because i have been part of um webinars where ophthalmologists were there as well so generally you know there is a 2020 kind of rule which says that if you have been watching something now we have to understand that when uh how generally we visualize when we talk about screens is we don’t really see screens as a tv a big screen on the on the on the on the wall and the child is here and the child is watching and the child is still aware of the surrounding what we visualize generally with screen is like this right the screen is much closer right the child’s is centered more inside the device than anything else outside right that means a child is going to react much more if you ask the child to stop it so it can bound to because at the end of the day even if you think from body point of view even eyes are uh the the muscles uh are are being supported by the muscles so of course a fatigue is bound to come in fact children uh see again we have to see it from a purse from from not from the thinking from the thought that we all have to be doctors to understand it it’s common sense because our eyes need to blink as well every time they blink right the whole the liquid inside gets circulated so you can imagine when uh children are in the devices and they just forget to blink as well it’s going to dry up your eyes and more injuries and internal injuries are bound to happen so apart from the muscles which are holding the eyeball right the dryness of the eyes itchiness of the eyes all these things are bound to happen and then of course the other thing is the fatigue overall fatigue when you’re over using one particular muscles you know like um there was one experiment which i gave to a child where i asked the child to hold a weight in his hand right for some time and then the arm starts painting when you hold it for some time so you can imagine the why the arms start painting is muscles right they start to they start complaining but because you listen to the to to the messages your body is saying you keep it down but now imagine when that screen the weight has been designed and great brains are behind it amrita who design all those things because they say why to stop it you remember when in google there was a time when pagination was there and pagination is what first 20 things will be shown page number one and then page number two page number three like that i’ll just start thinking why to do this pagination let’s have a seamless going going going you know it’s like um every time you have to stop the screen you have to tear yourself away that okay it’s enough say so much of onslaught of data here right so you can imagine when the child is completely in the device right and even if the eye is complaining muscles are complaining the way when i ask that the that particular child to hold the thing the child acted and left the weight because the child was glued to his body but here even if the child is glued to the body the child stops listening to the messages which are sent because the screen has grabbed the complete focus of the child so if you even see from a common sense point of view it is bound to affect the vision as well it is bound to children who are some particular number it is bound to increase if even if you see from common sense point of view but then if you go by studies they’re all varied i would say that because there are times uh we can’t just see screen only from negative point of view so there are some good things also children are doing when i say screens i talk about this unending urge to keep seeing whether it is social media youtube where it becomes so difficult for the child to tear off that it starts affecting physiological needs of the body social need cognitive needs right it’s uh the child is not getting any newer set of problems than it is but because screens are helpful as well so as a practice as a parent if you can guide the children to follow this uh you know 20 20 20 kind of thing that every 20 minutes half an hour just take a break stretch yourself go around look far away these are the good hacks which can help the child and of course if there can be moments right of course we have not started talking about how to handle screens probably we can keep it towards the later part right now we are just um participating in doomsday what’s going to happen how the screens are here they’re not all bad because the topic is here we started from there but then of course it is bound to affect the health and vision as well if we see from common sense point of view so that sensitization in the parents mind and in the and health because it’s it’s uh the body that the mind will stop listening to the physiological need if the child is eating sometimes young children number three get where who are being fed by the parents because it’s easier right if the child is eating then the signal which comes from the stomach to the brain that all right i have eaten enough the child is bound to ignore that signal so that the chances are very high that the child may actually overeat then we think from the other point of view we say that the child does not eat enough without screen so i have to give the screen the reason why the child is eating uh with the screens over eating right it could be that the child is overeating at the time and was not listening to the body right so it is bound to ha affect the health both from uh the point of view of overeating the child is not listening under slept quality sleep sometimes we think that okay the child has slept at two o’clock three o’clock and he’s getting up at 12 or you know one so maybe it is okay within quality sleep the way we human beings are the quality sleep is the night’s sleep if regularly two to three days the child is deprived of that it is bound to show in his his or her social ability to connect with other people ability to do attention and focus bring focus on the things in fact if you notice unlike again going back to tv where the child is watching a particular cereal the child will wait for it to finish or if the child does not find interesting we’ll just leave it and start doing some other activity offline right the tricky part about screens especially the screens that we now associate with is the smart tv kind of screen where it is on demand so the tricky part about that is if a lot of times you will start noticing that the child is not even waiting for the whole video to finish is just stuck just kind of swiping left right up down right the kind of instant it’s the in the instantness which the child’s brain starts expecting can adversely affect the ability the capability of the child to handle the real world problems right so it definitely it is bound to affect all the physical areas that you talked about amrita yeah it was lovely hearing you uh on this part because many people would have not known what the effects are happening because of these screens uh likely you saved uh for you know these screens are too long that will affect the child’s brain yeah i’m sorry but there was a point which came in my mind that um i do have a thought here when we say that many people will not know um with the amount of information we are information age right whether we read newspapers we get so many forwards we see it in the news everywhere we all know it but the problem is there is also a sense of disbelief because if i am going in a hotel okay and my i have a three-year-old child or two-year-old child and you know i see another table on another table a family is sitting where they have given a mobile to their child right and the child is nicely eating the parent is helping eating then i start looking at my child who is just jumping up and down up and down the chair i said to hell with what i know you know i am being walked and i need my child i have well intentions for my child i need my child to be quiet so i give a mobile to the child so it isn’t that we don’t know a lot of us know it but when it comes to practice practicality right we also have to understand that there are skills that the child needs to learn and that’s going to be a painful process it’s not that the child is going to say thank you my friends have a iphone a 11 year old child will come and thank you it’s not going to happen where the child will say that thank you you are not allowing me to have my personal mobile even though every second person in my class is having a mobile child is rather going to shout at you and saying you are the worst parent on this earth and that’s going to hurt somebody that is yeah so moving on to my next question so does screen time affect child’s behavior right um see we should not paint a very sorry figure of the screen time uh it’s a generalized question screens uh see in today’s age uh it’s an enabler as well you have to see it from both the point of view especially during the lockdown when the children could not socially connect meet right with other people so beautifully it helps the children to have video calls with their friends to call them up you know to make their own groups share photographs here and there and even to play games together right and when the child has to like i see a lot of schools where they are online schooling so sometimes when they show some videos and then it increases the stickiness uh you know children suddenly see some audio visual and they find it interesting and they’re able to you know sit through the lesson and sometimes the concepts also becomes become clearer because the whole chalkboard and the table the teacher is not there so sometimes it can become very monotonous if only the teacher is talking that so when all these things come it can really be helpful so um see i see it as a need to balance yeah so if if um and also if the parent is um is sensitive and seeing that is it replacing something or is it complementing yeah so when i say replacing what that means is that if the child is in an emotional state how do i define that if the child is in an emotional state which was worse the child is tired sad angry hungry right bored all these things which are uncomfortable if the child is in that state and that time if we say all right you are angry sad you know bored so you use a mobile so the tricky thing that these expectations definitely can affect the behavior of the child why i say that is because the child starts associating the mobile as one of the survival kids right so next time the child is feeling sad because the child did not and the amazing beautiful question i’m with that you asked that does it change the brain structure of course it’s bound to change the brain structure because it will set an expectation some somewhere deep inside that okay i’m feeling sad i need to be on the phone i need to you know uh you know play the game right so if the child starts associating that that means the cap the child did not build capabilities to handle those uncomfortable emotions so you can imagine it it becomes like a craving then however if the state of the child before the mobile was given is happy right excited the child went down played with friends or something came back right and then or after the online schooling interacted with the parents did some cooking did some things and then all right it’s in high state and then at that time the child said sun is probably doing screens for whatever x amount of time which is age appropriate it is fair enough right the child was in a high state to begin with child went through the screens either entertainment social connect whatever is the aim or to find more information online n number of things so then it’s it’s it is all right it’s balanced yeah so we have to see it from this point of view we can’t uh put a a a motherly statement saying that a fatherly statement i mean without taking any sides here so apparent statement that okay screens affect behavior um this depends on how it is being used yeah so if it is if it is balanced if that sensitivity is created then actually we are helping the child to build a lifetime of balance for the devices yeah because how to use the device in a balanced manner if the child practices it at home you’re helping the child not to get into an addiction even for the lifetime it’s like healthy eating habits right so the way we inculcate in children healthy eating habits the way we inculcate similarly uh the way we inculcate okay healthy physical activities we also inculcate what are the healthy way of handling the devices how to what are the healthy ways of screens in fact there was one thing which because we we have been so focused on health so far that one thing that is another effect which i see is that for younger children younger children first 10 years of age is that the screens become an alternative source of information for the child and a lot of time children start forming start forming opinions or start adopting mannerisms or start mimicking right what they see it in the youtube sometimes as a parent when we see all right it’s a youtube video going on there are some children there it must be appropriate for children i see children acting there right so we are okay with that and we have ensure it’s youtube kids whatever it is right but then we don’t we did not see the quality of the video the emotions which are being shown there the narration which are being shown there the actions which they are doing so it becomes an alternative source of information for young children because they start mimicking that behavior at home with the with the family and with the peers right so that’s how we should see that even that aspect of behavior also starts showing in in first 10 years of life because that’s a highly that’s a age where children don’t filter out information whether they are reading books whether they are interacting with friends whether they’re interacting with parents teachers everything is a source of learning for them then internet the screens also become a source of information for them so you have to imagine that 20 25 years back when it was like half an hour one hour of tv which was highly censored now you can imagine what what quality of information is there in their hands and that quality of information is what the child is growing up in terms of building sense of humor in terms of building outlook was life so we got to be you know careful about this aspect of behavior as well yeah okay that was well informative uh so the next uh question i’ll just move out is what are the effects of screen a brief if you can give us an idea okay so firstly of course uh i uh you know now that um uh whenever we talk about a movie kind of thing so we had enough actions in the beginning where we talked about screens or this that is that right so the the effect of screens could be manifold it it can be now we we can we can have more balanced view here that um it can be an amazing source of information for children it can be amazing source of self learning for children right a particular age uh in fact when the ch when the parent and the ch and the child are co-watching those smaller videos for younger children i’m saying you know five years six years it can also become a family bonding kind of thing where they watch things together and you know they are laughing at it and all that also becomes like uh something interesting right a family bonding also happens or activity happens so um that’s one of the effects of screens where it becomes a as a family it becomes a source of entertainment uh now if you talk about uh because when you ask me this question effect amrita i didn’t see it as a negative effect only yeah so i’m talking about in a holistic way so so so and the other effects right from if i have to see from one and a half years of age can be that the child does not learn to truly relish the food enjoy the food right which the child should have learned by the time the child is seven years old zero to seven right so that is the time when the child should have learned build a motivation to do things the child did not build a motivation because we use screens as a shortcut right the other one can be where the child the effect can be where the communication speech is okay where the child will be able to when the child is watching screens the child will develop a particular accent if the child is on heavy dose of screen will develop a particular accent will develop a particular slangs which the child is subjected to so that kind of speech is okay but then truly verbal communication that gets affected as well in children right the third aspect which gets affected is a social aspect how tough it is five years to 10 to 11 years is the time frame for a child to actually start connecting with more and more connecting with peers away from the eyes of the adults you know five six years onwards parents are comfortable to leave the child you know when they are not overtly watching the child and that is the time when the child goes through you know all sorts of social uh conflicts and problem solving my friends don’t want to play the game that i want to play yeah or my four of the friends three have grouped against me they are not keeping me in the group and all these practices which happens in the childhood are the ones which are going to help the child in the adulthood because very few professions are there which work in silos how do we leave all the learning to corporate world itself like right from team building also they will teach you when you are 24 25. some things have to be learned when the child is in a malleable you know in the younger age and that can only happen through practice that can only happen when the child is away from screens so that social is another effect which happens another effect is this uh skewed expectation which comes that okay i don’t like it in fact sometimes younger children get so used to the swiping that even in the air they do it like this they become so used to this action you know so in fact um any anything which is shiny they see this thing in fact there was a child who picked up a book a hardboard you know book which i had given to a child and a child is trying to do like this i said no here you turn like this you know there is no swiping happening here so it can actually affect you know these are the areas the social area in sun gratification setting up ability their their truly true abilities to handle frustration you know that the groundedness goes missing where the child is jumping from one thing to another in fact as the child grows up a certain loneliness a sense of loneliness can start coming up because we are human beings we are designed to connect with people in fact if parents have to see how do you see your child when the child is towards the end of online schooling right when the child finally says all right my schooling is done for the day you see the body language and you know the mannerism the tone of the child and you compare it with how the child’s body language and tone is when the child is coming back from a physical school if i had to just you know give example of my daughter when my daughter older daughter came back from the school when the physical schools opened for about a month’s time for older people so that was the first time when she actually talked about what was taught in the school today when the child went to physical school because you can imagine it’s an immersive we are now building all vr and mi and virtual realities immersive the physical world is the real immersive you know so we want to simulate that in a virtual world but we already have it so the child needs to get it right so these are the all effect you see the overall energy missing in the child the low sense of loneliness and unfortunately by the time the child if the child has been on over screen by the time the child is 12 13 the labeling you know that self-defeating thoughts that i’m not good at making friends just imagine how tough it is then to undo that effect the the when the fact was the child did not tried enough the child did not get enough platform to horn up those skills so these are the whole effect if i have to see from a balanced point of view seeing both the positive and not the positive effects of the screens in a child’s life that was the insightful laugh so moving on to my next question would be what is the impact of screen time on children i i now i have to think of a very creative reply to this question so uh because it’s here we are talking about the impact on children and we have spent the last i think um close to 50 minutes now in talking about the impact on children so um probably i’ll take a moment while i answer this question uh because i really want parents also to take a few um you know for the parents to feel empowered when they leave this session and not just uh leave with the problems alone so probably i will take this moment to edit this question a bit and take it from this point of view that now that we know the impact right to a little extent uh is there something we can do about it is the question so uh are you okay if i take it from that point of view i’m ready here absolutely absolutely please go ahead okay thank you so much so um uh see uh important is not to see it as the screens as an adversary right and important for younger children first zero to five it’s important for the the parents not to feel or see this see the screens as something that the child is entitled to the problem with this whole sense of entitlement is that somewhere the parents are thinking that if they are not showing it to the child they are robbing the child from basic rights that become the challenge right uh in fact so much so that when the when the parent sometimes i you know get a mother or a father they start becoming guilty that i am checking whatsapp or i’m seeing some what’s some video and i’m not giving it to my child so maybe i’m doing something wrong so either they end up doing it when the child has gone to sleep or feeling terribly guilty about it or negotiating with the child so i would always say that don’t treat the mobile especially for younger age more as a luxury a privilege which you need to be owner of you cannot tell put it on the child saying first 10 years you cannot put it on the child saying that you know my child wants it all right the way whatever the child wants you’re not really necessarily giving it to the child right you’re first thinking of the needs of the child and then whatever you feel are reasonable wants you give that right and if you start seeing it more as the way a father or mother drives the car even if the child wants you’re not giving the child the car staring to the child’s hand so or you know whether when you cross the road you’re not leaving the child child’s hand when you’re crossing a busy road so you don’t put these things on wants of the child similarly i would say that do not see the screen from that point of view as well right it should be that all right maybe routine driven where okay this is the time or when family time people are co-watching together or for a particular stipulated time where the parent feels empowered that all right your time is up it was for half an hour please close the device where the parent needs to truly believe that you have right to say close it and without feeling guilty without feeling that you’re robbing the child of something because for this particular aspect the child is going to tell you that is the mannerism will probably be for you to uh you you’ll probably gather from the mannerism that you’re doing something really wrong to the child because you have to understand the way apps and software are designed in the screens is to increase the stickiness so you are not just playing with the brain of the child you are praying with the manipulators who are creating these devices who are adults who are behaviorists psychologists gaming experts who understand behavior so you you are who are your competitors you need to know so it is not that that it was a child’s want it has been created in such a manner that is why all the efforts by educational by education is to gamified learning process it hasn’t worked because you know the moment even surreptitiously you start putting in some learning into the games the child’s mind says no no this is not what i’m sitting here for right so they’ll immediately reject it so there is no learning which is putting out there right so if you can truly believe and not compete yourself with the child not feel guilty truly whenever you’re giving to the child see the emotional state of the child if it is uncomfortable emotional state right as i mentioned right in sadness or anger or something the child needs to persist those feelings child needs to build capabilities to build defenses and coping mechanisms right so you cannot short circuit it or shorten that process by giving a device then the child will start attaching the device with their survivor okay so see the overall and and always feel in control and for older children sometimes we start thinking that they are the older children older when i say 13 14 years so it’s all right i have left it to the judicious decision of the child i wouldn’t say uh you should do that especially if it is a matter of sleep eat and social that the child needs to get so you should uh work collaboratively with the child with older children not authoritatively but collaboratively with the child to keep the sensitization going so that’s my suggestion in terms of the keynotes that hopefully will help the parents thank you yes uh mr and it was really insightful so this uh we have come to our last question of the day uh so which is what are the screen time recommendations by edge if you if you can just elaborate or right generally uh it is said that below uh two years uh you shouldn’t even who recommends that um even american pediatrics association recommends that uh below two years right it should be zero screen time ideally there’s so many things where the child needs to master there are so many milestones every month matters so we can’t uh rob away even half an hour one hour from the child’s learning you should see how a one and a half year or two-year-old child is continuously looking and solving problems there are so many things with the child sometimes either the child is strengthening the back muscle sometimes leg muscles sometimes hand pulling out falling down again pulling out looking at the toe looking at the sunlight there are so many things that the child is doing so first two years ideally there shouldn’t be any screen time uh two to five years uh use your judiciousness as i said that if any parent as a parent you should not believe that a child is entitled for screen time okay you should not believe that but yes use your judiciousness generally one to two hours is what is recommended again if it’s a little younger child don’t keep it more than 20 minutes a stretch 20 minutes i should be less uh you should be regulating that and beyond that it should be more of how do you see that impacting other areas of the child which the child should have been concentrating on so generally two hours is what for two to five years and uh you know one to two hours and then after five years two hours or whatever it is but again don’t take it like as this is the amount of vitamin a or iron that the parent has to give to the child there is no vitamin s which the child needs for a healthy growing so vitamin s is vitamins creams the child doesn’t need them but then as a family if you want to do it together for knowledge you want to do it for some socializing you want to do it please go ahead however one thing that throughout the screens which we did not talk about was cyber bullying we did not talk about how you know those are another thing those are emotional aspects we were more on physical but please do be sensitive about it sensitize older children about it cyber bullying is a real thing in the night time in the bedroom when the child is completely renting out is high on emotion in the childish device there can be some really bad decisions that the child can take so yeah i hope you know this this helps yeah thank you yeah with this we had uh come towards the end of today’s session thank you miss student for such a wonderful and impactful session on the topic influence of screens on children so we would also like to thank our viewers and to attend the sessions and also the followers who keeps us you know the inspiration to give us uh to run the webinars and you know have a mistake for them so and finally uh with the hope of you know on boarding all of you again for our motivational patience uh by the eminent experts we please stay safe stay healthy and tune into first well-being and thank you ms kiran for you know sparing a lot of time today to you know help us understand the importance of influence of skins and children uh with this we will end our session this evening and look forward to host you again in the coming months and to it yeah thank you so much look forward stay safe and stay healthy thank you thank you amrita thank you to all thank you thank you so much
Insights on “Influence of screens on children”, shared by Kiran Tevtiya, Child Behavioral Psychologist and Founder of 18petals, with Swasth Wellbeing. Courtesy Amartya Pal.
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