is the dreaded screen. It seems to hold a magnetic attraction for children (and adults) and has infiltrated our lives at a furious pace and across all age groups.
Our children spend a lot of time in front of screens. There are various studies and statistics bandied around – for instance, an average of 1 in every 12 waking minutes, or 6.5 hours a day (that’s 20 years of your life by the time you reach 80!) are spent in front of a screen. Whatever it is, it’s certainly a lot and in some families it is taking over leisure time completely with the result that there is little time left for other things.
There’s no doubt that the digital world offers our children exciting entertainment, education and stimulation. Children can learn logic, quick thinking, problem solving and strategy from gaming, and much socialising is now done through texting and social media. But I think screen time should be part of a rich and varied childhood and not dominate our children’s lives – certainly if you want your child to do other things, and especially if you want them to read.
Lots of parents tell me they would like their child to spend less time on digital entertainment and more time reading, as well as enjoying other things such as playing outside, getting involved with sport, taking part in imaginary and creative play, enjoying their toys, interacting with other children and so on. In other words, not spending the vast majority of their time in front of a screen.
The truth is that time spent on screen-based entertainment is eroding or even replacing time for other things. Parents I talk to have conflicting emotions about all this. Despite feeling anxious about it they see their children are happy, having fun, socialising with their friends, becoming more and more tech savvy. And that has got to be a good thing in this day and age, hasn’t it? So this is really not an easy problem to tackle.
Spending so much time in front of a screen also means children have become accustomed to immediate entertainment. They are growing up with the instant gratification that comes from digital attractions. This is one of the reasons that reading holds less appeal for children today. The ultimate reward from completing a good book is enormous, but it is not instant – it takes a while and some effort to get there. Watching television or YouTube, on the other hand, is a passive activity. Entertainment is presented fully formed and all children have to do is watch it. Gaming and texting are interactive but are also instant – and responses to actions, such as levelling up, winning a game and responses to texts all tend to come thick and fast.
EXPERT VIEW
Gaming produces a burst of the brain’s reward chemical dopamine, a substance implicated in all addictions. Interestingly, although ‘computer game addiction’ is being increasingly recognised by the medical profession, they do not recognise ‘book addiction’. And while health departments now recommend limits on children’s screen time, curiously they’re not recommending a limit on reading time or number of books kept in the child’s bookcase. There are a growing number of in-patient clinics for computer addiction, yet there are no Roald Dahl rehab clinics. This is because reading is a very different and more timely neurological and intellectual process, requiring far more inference and cognitive work on the part of the developing child.
Dr Aric Sigman
And gaming and texting only really need short bursts of concentration. Reading requires effort and attention to make sense of the text and follow the story. In other words, it requires sustained concentration.
So not only is it less effort to passively absorb TV programmes, watch videos and to play computer games, but also the rewards come quicker. And the more children do these things, the more their brains become accustomed to them, the more they want and expect that kind of entertainment, and the harder it is for them to concentrate for a longer period of time on something like reading without being distracted.
EXPERT VIEW
The moving image of screen entertainment is the perfect medium to produce strong rewards for paying attention to something. Compared to the pace with which real life unfolds and is experienced by young children, screen entertainment portrays life with the fast-forward button fully pressed. Rapidly changing images, scenery and events – zooms, pans and edits – and high-fidelity sounds are highly stimulating and, of course, extremely interesting. Once you are used to food with E numbers and flavour enhancers, real food doesn’t taste as interesting. Modern screen entertainment is the flavour enhancer of the audio-visual world, providing unnatural levels of sensory stimulation. Nothing in real life is comparable to this. Screen entertainment overpays the young child to pay attention to it, and in so doing it may corrupt the reward system that enables that child to pay attention to other things in life, such as books.
Dr Aric Sigman
There is no doubt in my mind that the desire for screen time can be compulsive. It can also become obsessive, and I think it’s not too strong to say that then it is like a drug. In the worst cases, studies have shown that the changes addiction makes to the brain of an internet addict are similar to those of a drug or alcohol addict: X-rays reveal that pathways to the parts of the brain associated with emotions, decision-making and self-control are interrupted. So these addicts might present as being unable to connect emotionally outside a video game, for instance. At the time of writing it’s estimated that 5–10 per cent of internet users are unable to control their usage and are considered addicts. These numbers are small and the point I make is extreme, but the power of screen-based entertainment to hook us is abundantly clear in our daily lives. And other studies have found a significant link between excessive social networking usage and depression.
As a parent, I know you’ll have seen the big negative impact – physically, mentally and emotionally – that excessive screen time can have on your child. All the families I have talked to, without exception, have observed changes in their children’s behaviour after too much screen time, whether it be TV, gaming or texting. These changes range from being mildly obsessive, over-excited or lacking in concentration on other things, through to being moody, bad-tempered, hyperactive or even outright aggressive when told it’s time to switch off the machine.
Children can get fixated when trying to get past the next level in a game, checking social media updates, replying to texts or watching the next instalment of something on YouTube. Like addicts they can lose interest in other things as a result. Think about your own need to keep checking emails or your phone for texts. How hard do you find it to switch off and be still, to concentrate on reading? I know how hard it is for me. It’s the same, if not worse, for children.
EXPERT VIEW
Children are understandably influenced by sensation-seeking and instant gratification without their impulse control being fully developed, and so their ability to self-regulate their own screen time is extremely limited.
Dr Aric Sigman
How screens are used for entertainment in the home is therefore a vital element in your child’s reading development. If you want your child to read for pleasure, you’ll need to give the whole issue a lot of thought, not only considering the negative aspects of digital entertainment, the internet and computers, but also the positive ones.
He plays on his Xbox before breakfast, after breakfast and after school. We’d like him to focus his energies into other things but it’s like fighting a losing battle.
Parents to Jordan, age 12
Reading for pleasure and recreational screen time can coexist. I have met families where reading thrives despite
