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Wisdom Wednesdays: What you need to know about screen time and kids · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Now,
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  Speaker 1: if you're a parent, if you remember having little kids,
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  Speaker 1: I think we'll all remember the temptation of giving it
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  Speaker 1: the iPad or the iPad nanny. But it turns out
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  Speaker 1: that new research shows that this could be worse for
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  Speaker 1: kids than we originally thought. So first of all, let's
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  Speaker 1: start with recommendations around screen time. The World Health Organization
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  Speaker 1: and the American Academy of Pediatrics have recommended that children
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  Speaker 1: under five have a maximum of one hour of screen
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  Speaker 1: time per day, and children under two should not have
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  Speaker 1: any screen time at all. Now, unfortunately, there's very few
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  Speaker 1: families that are meeting these guidelines. So at twenty twenty two,
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  Speaker 1: meta analysis examining sixty three studies from a whole range
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  Speaker 1: of countries found that only thirty six percent of children
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  Speaker 1: under five and twenty five percent of children under two
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  Speaker 1: meet these recommendations. Furthermore, the researchers thought that those figures
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  Speaker 1: were likely to be under representative, as questioners of screen
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  Speaker 1: time frequently underestimate screen time due to difficulties recalling how
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  Speaker 1: much they actually watched, and because screen time is often
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  Speaker 1: viewed negatively, leading parents to under report to what we
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  Speaker 1: call social desirability bias. We want to actually fit in,
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  Speaker 1: and less screen time would appear in previous research to
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  Speaker 1: be better for developmental health. So on one previous study,
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  Speaker 1: even thirty minutes to two hours of screen time per
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  Speaker 1: day had association since with poorer developmental health compared the
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  Speaker 1: durations of less than thirty minutes. And another study, the
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  Speaker 1: risk of language delay in two year olds in Korea
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  Speaker 1: was forty three percent higher with one to two hours
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  Speaker 1: of screen time use per day, one hundred and seventy
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  Speaker 1: four percent higher with two to three hours of screen
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  Speaker 1: time use, and whopping two hundred and three percent higher
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  Speaker 1: with kids who had over three hours of screen time
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  Speaker 1: use a day. So this new research actually set out
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  Speaker 1: to look at the effective screen time on the social
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  Speaker 1: emotional development of children under the age of five, and
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  Speaker 1: it was a systematic review just published in March twenty
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  Speaker 1: and twenty five, And they basically did it due to
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  Speaker 1: the increased amount of time that kids under the age
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  Speaker 1: of five spend on electronic media and they want to
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  Speaker 1: actually look and see what is the impact, and they
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  Speaker 1: looked at three It was a meta analysis of three
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  Speaker 1: large observational studies that included over twenty six thousand kids
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  Speaker 1: under five, and they found that higher screen time was
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  Speaker 1: associated with worse overall social emotional development. So one study
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  Speaker 1: was conducted in Finland and China and one was conducted
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  Speaker 1: in eight European countries, so we had a pretty good
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  Speaker 1: spread in this and they used questioners to assess social
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  Speaker 1: emotional development in four different domains hyperactivity, emotional problems, conduct
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  Speaker 1: problems like rule breaking behaviors, and peer problems, interactions with
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  Speaker 1: other kids, and social emotional development refers to the ability
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  Speaker 1: to communicate emotions and establish connections with others and it's
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  Speaker 1: a really important part of that front door low development
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  Speaker 1: in young children. And what they actually found the highlights
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  Speaker 1: of this study was that more time on screens and
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  Speaker 1: whether it was television or tablets, were associated with the
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  Speaker 1: following a thirty nine percent higher odds of hyperactivity, potentially
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  Speaker 1: down the track leading to an ad it's D diagnosis.
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  Speaker 1: And they also found a twenty one percent higher odds
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  Speaker 1: of emotional problems and higher screen time was associated with
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  Speaker 1: higher odds of conduct problems and problems interacting with peers,
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  Speaker 1: But it was unclear whether those bits were statistically significant
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  Speaker 1: due to some data discrepancies in the study, and the
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  Speaker 1: researchers created one study is good quality and the other
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  Speaker 1: two as fur quality. So we dive into the details
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  Speaker 1: of this study. It turns out that screen content is
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  Speaker 1: often fast paced and includes intense audio, visual effects and stimulation,
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  Speaker 1: and the researches think that these high levels of stimulation
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  Speaker 1: could make real life feel less interesting to children in comparison,
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  Speaker 1: and then potentially that contributes to any attention and even
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  Speaker 1: screens being in the background can affect children as well
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  Speaker 1: as background screen time decrease social interactions with caregivers in
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  Speaker 1: one other study, and this could hinder child social development
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  Speaker 1: by decreasing opportunities to communicate and to build social skills.
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  Speaker 1: And another thing that's a potential issue here is that
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  Speaker 1: screens can potentially display sleep or disrupt it and also
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  Speaker 1: displays physical activity because they are so captivating and anybody's
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  Speaker 1: ever seen a young kid with a screen knows that
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  Speaker 1: these things are so engaging for them. And the blue
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  Speaker 1: white light of screens also can worsen sleep itself by
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  Speaker 1: disrupting melotone production, and adequate sleep and adequate physical activity
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  Speaker 1: are hugely important for social, social emotional development and all
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  Speaker 1: of this is just an increasing problem in our time. Obviously,
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  Speaker 1: when I was a kid, we didn't have that exposure
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  Speaker 1: to screens, and I get it as a parent. It's
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  Speaker 1: so bloody difficult, particularly when they the kids actually love
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  Speaker 1: the screen so much, and that is part of the problem,
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  Speaker 1: is that they are highly addictive and they actually take
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  Speaker 1: the kids away from wanting to interact with others. And
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  Speaker 1: the other thing that was really highlighted in this is
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  Speaker 1: it actually destroys their physical activity or e roads into
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  Speaker 1: their physical activity. And the recommendations are are that kids
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  Speaker 1: for the age of three to five are physically active
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  Speaker 1: for a whopping one hundred and eighty minutes a day,
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  Speaker 1: and if they're spending significant amount of time on screen,
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  Speaker 1: they're going to struggle to get that. And then kids
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  Speaker 1: of this age should be sleeping for ten to thirteen
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  Speaker 1: hours a day, and that impact on sleep, as well
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  Speaker 1: as the direct impacts on social and emotional development, I
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  Speaker 1: think is just a shocker for their future development. It
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  Speaker 1: appears it's pretty much parenting is pretty much like everything
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  Speaker 1: in life. The stuff that's easy is generally not good
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  Speaker 1: for us, and the stuff that is good for us
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  Speaker 1: is often very hard to do. So that's it for
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  Speaker 1: this week. Folks, catch you next time.