Why tackling kids’ screen time means confronting adults’ phone addiction |
Governments all over the world are scrambling to introduce guidance on screen time and social media age restrictions in response to mounting evidence of harm to children from use of digital devices. But screens are such a huge part of all of our lives, it will take more than top-down policies to bring about the change we want to see, writes Rebecca McQuillan
Is too much screen time bad for kids? Well, here’s a cautionary tale. Norway has seen a worrying decline in children’s reading ability, worse than in other Scandinavian countries, which many link to the increased use of tablets.
While Norwegian children are still above average for reading in various international surveys, they have tumbled down the rankings. Norwegian experts and observers point to the impact of digital devices in a country where children are given tablets when they start school. If children have access to games and zany videos on a computer, books fall out of favour, the argument goes. In a bid to undo that unintentional harm, the Norwegian government has made big efforts to attract children into libraries and said children aged 6-12 should have a maximum of 1.5 hours of screen time a day.
The thought of children discarding books in favour of blaring animated videos will cause pangs of regret to anyone who loves kids’ books. The idea that an iPad could trump We’re Going On A Bear Hunt or Just You & Me is just plain sad.
But the wider concern is that device use is setting back children’s education and their social, physical and mental wellbeing. The Norwegians’ drive to bring back books is part of a wave of action across the world to try and roll back the unforeseen adverse effects of digitising childhood.
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Here in Britain, the government has just issued guidance that preschool children should have only one hour on a screen per day, following the advice of an expert panel. It suggests steering clear of fast-paced videos and recommends that where possible children and adults should use screens together.
I’d have appreciated this guidance as the parent of a pre-schooler, even though I’d have struggled to keep to it. It’s something to aim for at least. The new advice is clear and apparently evidence-based. It suggests alternatives to screen use and makes a distinction between content that’s over-stimulating like endless noisy short videos, and slow-paced simple stories like you’d find on CBeebies.
But the UK guidance also leaves many questions unanswered, particularly for the parents of older children. What if your child is primary aged – how much screen time is too much then? And what’s a screen – should the telly in the lounge be thought of in the same way as an Ipad or a phone? Are CBeebies and CBBC in the same category as YouTube? If a child is drawing or playing with toys while the TV is on in the background, is that a problem too? Are traditional telly programmes as bad as gaming on a site like Roblox? Are some children better able to get the benefits of screen use without becoming addicted, and if so, why?
And how should schools respond to all these concerns? They have been right over the last 15 years to try and equip young people for a world where so much business is transacted online, but parents worry that their children are sitting up late in their rooms using their school devices. What age is the right age for children to be given tablets?
There is so much more to know and our understanding is still evolving. High levels of screen-use can be harmful, most agree on that, but unpicking exactly how and why is much harder.
The reliably sensible English education secretary Bridget Phillipson has been honest about this, saying of the pre-school screen guidance: “This is still quite an unknown area in lots of respects and we’ve taken a precautionary approach.”
The government can only do so much and a lot comes down to parents, but the difficulty is that it’s hard, so hard, consistently to reduce your child’s screen time. People are busy. They are working or making tea or trying to book the car in for a service. They don’t have endless time to bake with their kids or go on a bike ride or make space rockets out of toilet rolls. An older parent I know, with three kids, used to call the TV “the third parent”. She was way past worrying about it. It stopped the kids fighting for a while each day, allowed her time to get things done and helped save her sanity. I sympathised because the TV has done the same for me. Screens can be the bringers of peace on a frazzled day.
But the bigger problem is that we’re trying to put a recalcitrant and devious genie back into a bottle. British children aged 8-14 spend three hours a day online, according to Ofcom. Total screen time often exceeds five hours a day, once you include the streaming of telly programmes. And we have no grounds for being surprised, really, because we adults are the same.
Time spent on phones per day for the average adult? Three hours 21 minutes, according to the latest data. As parents, we’re telling our children that what’s OK for us isn’t OK for them, an argument that’s always hard to sustain. By trying to cut kids’ screen time, we’re really trying to do something much more challenging: change a screen-addicted culture that’s embedded at every level.
The government is currently consulting on whether social media should be banned for under 16s. I hope it happens, even if some children find ways around it, as it would make it easier for parents to manage their children’s problematic phone use.
But what we can’t ever do is edit out screens altogether. What we need instead is a more sophisticated understanding of these devices and the various ways that they impact children and young people. We’re currently feeling our way forwards, trying to strike the right balance so children are helped to use this tech constructively but without being entirely clear on what the right balance is. No one wants children to live a half-life in digital form instead of experiencing the world at first hand, with all their senses. We need clear information to help guide where we go from here.
But I can’t help feeling that no matter how many consultations we have, no matter how much expert guidance is published, we won’t get far unless we address the elephant in the room: adults’ phone addiction. It’s not just kids that need a digital reset, it’s probably all of us.
Rebecca McQuillan is a journalist specialising in politics and Scottish affairs. She can be found on Bluesky at @becmcq.bsky.social and on X at @BecMcQ