3 hours a week in front of screens and no more! This is what children need to develop healthy mentally and emotionally. This is the conclusion of a study carried out by the specialists of a prestigious university in Denmark. Researchers have shown that addiction to devices improves in just two weeks, during which the first positive effects in the behavior of small addicts are also observed.
Young children addicted to screens can become autistic. Photo source: archive
Reducing children’s screen time to just three hours a week can lead to significant improvements in their mental health and behaviour. And it all happens in just two weeks. The research, led by Dr. Jesper Schmidt Persson from Syddansk Universitet in Denmark, offers parents, in addition to the conclusions, a strategy that they should follow if they have addicted children.
The study, published in JAMA Network Open, involved 89 families with 181 children and adolescents between the ages of four and 17. Half of these families were asked to limit children’s screen time during free time to a maximum of three hours per week. We’re talking a dramatic reduction from the average seven to eight hours a day that many children typically spend on screens for entertainment. The results were more than encouraging. After just two weeks on these “detox regimens,” the children in the intervention group showed significant improvements in their overall behavior and emotional well-being. The researchers found that these children experienced a decrease in behavioral difficulties equivalent to moving from the “borderline” category to the “normal” category. This rapid and substantial improvement is remarkable given the short duration of the study. What does this suggest? Even a short period of reducing screen time can have benefits for children’s mental health.
A mother’s story: “My child had become unrecognizable”
Amalia Pârvu is the mother of a six-year-old boy. The woman told us that, in general, during the holidays, the child gets very bored. “We will go on vacation only at the end of August, and until then Andrei will not have any recreational activities. We still go to the zoo, the theater, the park with him on weekends. But, for some time now, I have noticed that the real refuge from boredom is games on the phone or tablet. He’s generally happiest when he’s online. He is immersed in a world of his own, totally disconnected from reality. He is so focused that he doesn’t even react when we talk to him. What else can I say..that he no longer feels when he is hungry, thirsty, and sometimes postpones going to the toilet”. The woman told us that the boy gets very anxious when he has to leave the tablet in his hand. “He’s depressed. He can’t wait to get back to his games. He doesn’t care about anything else. Any other concern leaves him indifferent. He tells us that he doesn’t feel like going out, he doesn’t feel like coloring, playing…activities he used to do with great pleasure”.
The child’s addiction worsened during the summer vacation, fueled, in particular, by attending after-school. “Now that the holidays have come, the friends he used to play with in front of the block are gone. Instead, he has those from after school, but they are of different ages, many of them older. These kids have access to cell phones, they even have their own smartphones, smart watches, they bring their tablets and play after party on them. That’s how Andrei entered this world of devices”.
The child’s parents realized that they had to take urgent measures. “It’s our fault because we agreed to buy him too. For example, she really wanted a phone to talk to her grandparents who she missed very much. He wanted to call her, alone, from his phone. And we gave him an older smartphone of ours. Then, he wanted a tablet because, as I was telling you, they also had the children at after school. And I said let’s take them, so that they don’t feel rejected, excluded from the group of friends. Here, we did not proceed correctly, because Andrei became addicted”.
The woman wishes she could turn back time and stop making such mistakes. “You think you’re doing him a favor, but in reality you’re doing the child the greatest harm possible.”
Amalia Pârvu took the bull by the horns, as they say, and imposed a drastic program on the child. “Two weeks ago we decided to do something. We decided to solve the problem ourselves, at home, without specialist help. And if we, the parents, fail, then we go to a psychologist. And I started the program: one hour a day, three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. On weekends we spend time together. And we avoid using the mobile phone in front of the child as much as we can”.
The boy’s mother told us that at first it was very difficult. “Andrei seemed to enter the withdrawal At first, he resisted, he resisted, he suffered, he tried to negotiate..Slowly, slowly, however, I noticed a change in his behavior. After coming to terms with the idea of time restriction, he seems to have slowly become more sociable, friendlier, more interested in what is happening around him, he tries new activities and is a child who laughs a lot, enjoys life again “, my mother told us. “He became the child I knew again: tender, affectionate, loving…we are best friends again”.
And the study carried out by Danish researchers reached similar conclusions. The most notable improvements were seen in emotional problems and difficulties with peers, but also in prosocial behavior, which involves caring and helping others. This indicates that reducing screen time can help children process their emotions better and improve their social interactions. Dr. Schmidt Persson, the author of the research, points out that the three-hour limit applies specifically to screen time during leisure time, not including screen use for school or homework.
Dependence on screens affects school performance. “We have a lot of children with CES”
Addiction, dependence on screens, devices, whether we are talking about mobile phones, tablets, laptops or computers, has long-term and very long-term harmful effects on the development of children, especially if they are small. “In the case of small children, the effect of frequently used devices is almost destructive. As long as color screens, laptops, gadgets, mobile phones and other devices replace parents, they will unknowingly raise a child without family consciousness. Prolonged exposure to screens leads to the appearance of psycho-emotional diseases, affective and behavioral disorders among children aged between 1 and 10 years. Then, let’s not forget that in the last five years the number of cases of children with special educational needs has exploded”, psychologist Radu Leca explained for “Adevărul”. More precisely, it tripled, reaching over 70,000. Specifically, according to the data provided by the Ministry of Education, the number of students with CES in mainstream education is 51,784, and those in special education is 19,450. Thus, officially, Romania has over 71,234 schoolchildren with special educational requirements.
“Like diseases caused by prolonged exposure to screens, we have light autism in the first place. In second place we have anxiety and depression. In third place we have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Then we have anxiety about sleeping at night or eating, which can put the child’s life at risk. Children addicted to computer games, especially network games with a high degree of violence, can also become angry and aggressive. And the parents end up in a situation where they simply can’t communicate with the teenager at all.” the psychologist explains what addiction entails.
