Before we get to the point of this post, let’s go back 15 to 20 years. Most of us would have been kids at the time, enjoying with our friends out on the playground. Playing football, running around or playing some game that we created ourselves. Life was good back then.
We did not have a lot of smart devices around us to stop us. Even if we did, well they weren’t distracting enough as they are today.
Cut to today, kids now are hooked to screens. A kid starts crying and out comes the magical phone or a tablet with a cartoon playing on YouTube.
This trend where kids are now addicted to screens is growing day by day. Let’s look at how it affects these kids who are still growing up and figuring out the things around them.
We all know that a smartphone or a smart device is wonderful. It helps book a cab in a minute, lets you order food and you can use it to find where you are when you are lost. There are a lot of things that these devices help us with. But there are also many ways in which it has impacted the quality of our lives.
Let’s travel back in time once more. Before social media existed people would actually go and speak with other people. Socialize in the real world to be more precise. With social media coming into the picture, a lot of old-school ways of socializing have vanished. Liking a photo is the new way of socializing.
With the existence of social media, the ability to actually socialize in the real world has deteriorated. People hide behind screens with an alias and socialize. A good thing about this is that you can make friends around the world whom you will never meet but with whom you can speak about anything. The bad side is online bullying, along with a lot of other things.
Think of a kid who uses a phone and is playing a game, whose user base consists of a high number of adults. The kid opens the chat and discovers a whole new vocabulary of fancy words and stuff he shouldn’t know about.
Phones and apps and a lot of programs nowadays are designed in such a way that a user is sucked into the instant gratification vortex. Simply put, instant gratification is a situation where tempts to let go of a future benefit for a more immediate sense of gratification. Instant gratification gives us an immediate release of dopamine, also known as the happiness hormone.
Let’s look at an example, let’s say I have dirty clothes that I need to wash, a task that I have been delaying for a few days now. I know that it’s important for me to wear clean clothes, but I procrastinate and decide to go on a social media site. Now, these are designed like slot machines, where the more you keep scrolling and surfing the more instant gratification you get. These are designed to keep you sucked into their websites for a longer period.
Now, lets go back to the kids. A good way to get pleasure would be to read a book, but if this habit is not inculcated in kids at a young age it becomes harder for them to do it later on. Instead, they go on their screens and start playing a game or watching a video which gives them instant gratification and keeps them in the loop for a long time.
Sometimes, kids watch a video about a story that already has everything imagined for them.
Doctors suggest that a high amount of screen time can cause kids to have problems focusing and socializing. Let’s look at ourselves, lets say you were writing an assignment but had your phone next to you which kept buzzing now and then. Think of how distracting that is. Jump back to kids now, with them being sucked inside the screens, it’s going to be even harder for them.
With the pandemic, the amount of screen time grew rapidly. Everything was online. Let’s face it, we might have had online classes but how much did we focus on them compared to a real classroom? Would these kids know who the other person was on the screen?
The apps and games are designed in such a way that creates a compulsion loop. Basically, it’s something that will keep you using your device for a longer period. Let’s take a game for example, a kid plays the game and earns a few in-game coins which can be used to upgrade the character or buy other stuff which can be used in the game. He notices that this helps his character become stronger or look cooler and hence the loop begins. He keeps playing to earn more coins and does not stop until it’s quite a long time.
I read an article by the Wall Street Journal(I recommend you all read the article as well) that said that kids want Robux instead of cash. In a way, kids are already being conditioned to get ready for the metaverse. The older generation might not accept the metaverse, but if these kids are already in it, then it’s just an everyday thing for them.
It also says that for doing a chore or for behaving well, kids ask for Robux(monetary unit in the game – Roblox) instead of cash. This can create a wall between how they understand the real world and the metaverse.
Too much screen time at an early age can also hamper the brain development of a kid. It can cause other health problems as well like obesity and mood swings.
It can also cause sleep problems. We all have seen posts or read articles about how screen time before going to bed is bad and how it affects our Circadian Rhythm. Being in front of a screen before going to bed affects the quality of sleep. This means a person will not feel well-rested. With kids, where sleep is a crucial aspect of their young age, it can affect them negatively and can hamper their growth and health.
Too much screen time in the night when its dark can also give them spectacles.
Another thing I came across while preparing for this post was NOMOPHOBIA or No Mobile Phobia. As the name suggests, it’s the fear of being away from your phone. With kids being around phones almost all the time, it’s going being to be pretty hard for them to be without phones later on.
Well, that was my post about how childhood was not a very long time back and how it is now. It is not very late and steps can be taken to prevent this situation from becoming worse. Should parents limit screen time for kids? this is a question we should ask now.
Have you noticed these things as well? Let me know in the comments below.
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