Screens have become an ingrained part of our lives - from researching projects, scrolling through social media, to texting friends - it’s hard to imagine how our lives would be without screens. But with the increased exposure to such screens, it’s bound to bring about consequences and the question we should be asking is what we should do about them.

 

Studies have shown that the average European would have spent 17.6 years of their lives on their screens. Health consequences in children include the hindering of physical and cognitive development and screen time has a positive relationship with diseases such as obesity, chronic back pain, sleep disorders, depression and anxiety. In fact, overexposure to blue-light from screens could lead to damage to the retina and cause macular degeneration as we age. When we spend a lot of time on our screens, we lose time we could have spent being active or socialising in person, and the media we consume is often pure entertainment or, the content provokes feelings of bitter comparison with the “perfect” lives many people seem to be living online. 

 

Those are real problems many children, teenagers and adults are facing today and so knowing how to tackle screen time problems is critical. For parents, many devices have the option to set parental locks at set times everyday, which forces the child to take a break from the screens and allows them time to unplug and unwind. It should also be the parent’s responsibility to set good examples - eg. not bingeing Netflix frequently, as children will assume this is a healthy habit - and encourage other off-line activities such as family games, sports, and crafts.