Aug 10, 2018 3 min read

A well-known health organization has sounded another alarm about the amount of time our children spend gawking at “screens” such as computers, phones, tablets, video games and television.

The scientific advisory statement released by the American Heart Association and reported on by ABC News, warns once again that too much time with TV and video games is leading to more hours of inactivity by children, thus putting them at greater risk of obesity and poor cardiovascular health.

The ABC report noted that children sit down for an average of eight hours a day between school and recreation, and time looking at screens of varying types begins to ramp up at adolescence and then rises dramatically as children age.

What’s a parent to do? Of course, there’s the option of banning electronics from the home, but in this day and age, that seems pretty unlikely. So, it’s a matter of deciding how much is too much.

Dr. Nicholas Edwards, a pediatrician and sports medicine doctor from the University of Minnesota who is cited in the ABC report, said the key is to start when the kids are younger.

“It is harder to intervene as they get older,” Edwards said.

But the kids are being subjected to other influences with another objective: getting them to spend even more time with their screens.

According to a recent Associated Press story, a group of psychologists, researchers and children’s advocates, along with the Children’s Screen Time Action Network, is pressing the American Psychological Association to condemn what the AP report calls “persuasive psychological techniques to keep kids glued to their screens.”

“There are powerful psychological principles and technology that are being used against kids in ways that are not in their best interests,” said Josh Golin, executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the parent group of the Children’s Screen Time Action Network.

The technology cited by Golin, according to the AP report, uses computers to help determine what motivates people, then uses that information to influence what they do while online. It’s basically the same type of behavioral psychology long used by marketers and advertisers to get people to purchase their wares. But, said B.J. Fogg, a behavioral scientist at Stanford University, the difference is that smartphones are ubiquitous.

“Families don’t understand why their kids are so strongly attracted and pulled to these devices,” Richard Freed, a California psychologist who signed the letter to the psychological association, told the AP. He noted that the World Health Organization earlier this year declared excessive video gaming an addiction.

So what does Edwards, the pediatrician and sports medicine physician, suggest parents should do?

He believes parents should remove TVs and “recreational screen-based devices” from children’s bedrooms, and ban them at mealtimes. At the same time, there should be strong encouragement of face-to-face interaction, play time and time spent outdoors, he said in the ABC report.

Added Edwards, “The core message is to ‘sit less and play more – just move.'”

It’s clear having technologies of all types at our fingertips is not something that’s going to change, but we can, and should, do a better job of making sure our children find other, and probably more rewarding, ways to spend their time.