The impact on children and teens of heavy screen use – whether via smartphone, iPad, video or television – isn’t solely due to the content that they see or the time that they spend.
Rather, it’s what they are not doing while being entranced by screened content that is most concerning.
Laura Thomas is a senior clinical psychologist at Solstice, the holistic wellness centre on Parliament Street in Hamilton.
“The impact of screen time is that it has taken away opportunities to do other developmentally normal and important activities,” she said.
“Ultimately, I think thats the biggest thing.
“If you’re on an iPad or if you’re watching a screen, you’re sitting still. You’re not outside, you’re not playing with your siblings, playing with your friends, using your imagination to play with your toys, helping your family with the chores.”
By going out, you are moving your body, exercising, helping your physical health and regulating yourself.
Dr Thomas said: “We know that movement is so important for emotional regulation.
“Bilateral stimulation helps the brain process thoughts and traumas. If something negative has happened in the day, just that running around while you’re thinking about it, processing it, can really help, in the evening after school.”
Dr Thomas said it is important to acknowledge that some things that children do on screens are positive – schools, for example, use screens to provide educational tools or require homework tasks.
However, there’s also content online that can cause serious harm, including sexual exploitation, access to violent or sexual images and bullying.
“At Solstice, for children, I think most significantly what we see is bullying.”
Dr Thomas said children are bullied on online platforms such as WhatsApp and Snapchat, meaning the bullying environment extends beyond their school.
“On WhatsApp, it can be verbal abuse within groups or constantly being added and rejected from groups.
“With Snapchat, one of the ‘attractions’ is that the message disappears. So, where there is bullying, there’s no evidence of the message. There are absolutely loads of significant risk concerns linked with the Snapchat platform.”
Parental support
Dr Thomas said children who lived through the Covid era of screen-based homeschooling often present with and anxiety and social anxiety about having difficult in-person conversations.
“They say ‘I know what to do online, but I don’t know what to do face-to-face’. If you’ve got a device, it doesn’t give you a reason to have that face-to-face conversation.”
She said parents can promote healthy screen use by modelling appropriate patterns of online behaviour, while also monitoring and regulating the content that is accessed by their children.
It is vital that children can speak to their parents if they see disturbing content online.
“What we don’t want is that sense of shame when a child sees something or hears something that they feel like, ‘OK, I know that’s wrong’.
“We don’t want them to keep that to themselves. We want them to be able to share that.
“Parents need to give their child the message that nothing is that bad that you can’t tell me about it. That’s the most important thing.
“It’s opening up those conversations within houses and talking about, ‘this is what we want to protect you from.’”
Dr Thomas mediates conflict between children and their parents, who express concern about their child’s “addiction to screens”.
“We talk about how to consider different people’s perspectives and come to a middle ground. We’re aware that obviously the world is changing. There are good things from using screens and social media, but it’s about that balance.”
