Screening your Kids Screen-Time

I guess I have always leaned toward the anti-tech side. I was in my teens when most of my friends were getting their own cellphones – one of those ancient clunkers that could only be used to send text messages and make phone calls.  I told my parents that I didn’t want one. To my thirteen-year old eyes, it seemed odd seeing two friends at a table who were supposedly catching up instead making themselves busy on their phones and not even talking to each other. I only got my own keitai just before entering university.  

Now that I have my own children, I feel strongly about exposing children to too much technology. At home, we don’t have a TV or play video games and we don’t intend to buy our eldest boy, Luka (7) a phone or an ipad. Luka may not be so familiar with the latest TV cartoons but he loves Star Wars and Kung Fu Panda through iTunes and Amazon prime and he has become a bit of an oceanic expert watching Octonauts on YouTube. During weekdays, we allow him to watch after his bath and before dinner, but limited to an hour. During the weekends he may watch a whole film.  

I totally understand the temptation to simply hand over your iphone on a crowded bus when your toddler throws a tantrum or when you just want an extra thirty-minute sleep in the morning. There are no perfect parents and at times we may bend our own rules but we try our best to at least be in control of how and what our children are exposed to.  I would like to explain why by drawing on my own observations and experiences as a mom.

Luka attended Ohana for three years and before starting local primary school in 2018 he had two years of Japanese kindergarten.  In the first year, it was normal for most girls and boys to play at a nearby park for two to three hours. By the second year, fewer kids were joining us at the park: girls usually preferred playing indoors and some boys preferred watching TV or playing games, particularly Minecraft.  It was not easy to spend so much time at a park, day after day, when I was also (at the time) caring for a year-old daughter and my just-born son.

One day, a mom approached me in the park to reveal that she bans any screens at home. She said she was happy to share that information with me after hearing that our family didn’t have a TV, adding that she kept it quiet in case it became a reason to bully her two sons.  We anti-screeners were in such a minority that this mother felt she had to keep it a secret! Another time, a different mom said she was thinking of buying a device for her son but was not sure when. I asked her why she needed to buy him one at all and she said because most of her son’s friends were getting one.  

I was shocked that most parents seemed happy to go along this without question.  I sympathize with the fear of your child being left behind but I was also concerned with how little debate there is over this issue even in the media.  Only last early Summer I stumbled across an article in the Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s second most-read newspaper, about a fifteen-year old boy who had become addicted to online game after dropping out of school, aged 11. He eventually spent up to 16 hours a day online and his aggression towards his family got out of hand. The only satisfaction he seemed to get was from the anonymous acclaim he got online through his game scores.  Luckily, he was taken to a treatment center and is now weaning himself off his addiction.

The worrying thing is that one of Luka’s kindergarten friends who apparently used to sleep with his ipad on his chest (even before entering primary school) is now already on his way to obesity.  As soon as he comes home from school he locks himself in his room with the ipad and a stack of sodas and snacks, only coming out to use the bathroom. The mother is already terrified of taking the ipad away for he uses force to stop her. I can already see the future, maybe worse than what happened to the boy in the article.

These are extreme cases, perhaps, but maybe it is best to err on the side of caution.  I believe we don’t need to overreact when a child says, “I’m bored.” It is okay for children to be at a loose end because that forces them to be creative.  Luka may nag me to give him my full attention over the two youngsters but he has also been known to spend a good hour building an electric eel out of Lego or drafting a storybook about a Ghost Tunnel.  It can be a challenge when among 35 students in his class, there are probably fewer than five households that restrict video and computer games - and when friendship is decided on the basis of whether you have a device or not.  He is already feeling excluded by his classmates when they are less eager to come and play at his house after school but he has never asked us to get him a device (occasionally we do let him play games at his friend’s place).

What I always keep in mind is that easy pleasures are a poisoned chalice.  On our lazy Sunday mornings, we sometimes let Luka watch Doraemon on my husband’s iphone. An hour later, instead of enjoying the beautiful start to the day, he is grumpy and just wants to watch more.  Children are much more closer to the natural cycle when they receive energy from the sunshine, and the energy is most effectively used outwards, in other words, physically or creatively, rather than inwards, passively in front of a screen.  I have not read enough to explain the scientific cause and effect of screen time and the damage it does to a child’s body and mind but I have read articles on how too much exposure can affect the frontal lobe, the part of your brain that controls your self restraint and which is still developing in childhood (it is said to take until the age of 20 to 30 to fully develop).  As for the teenage boy in the Asahi article, a hospital later said his lungs were working at the same capacity as a 53-year-old.  

“…the last child in the class to get a phone wins.”

My final words are this quote from an article in the New York Times on how the people in the forefront of this technology are the ones who are most aware of its dangers.  It is like food; the early you introduce a low-sugar, low-fat nutritious diet, the more likely the child will grow to enjoy healthy food. The less exposure to screens in the early stage of development, the more likely it is that the child will grow up not craving a fast, easy fix to boredom.  

[REFERENCE]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/phones-children-silicon-valley.html

https://www.asahi.com/articles/DA3S13480591.html