Screen Time: Impact of Parents' Usage of Devices on the Development of Children

The world is progressively moving from a joint family system to a nuclear family system. With reduced number of people around the children, the scope accessible for fun and play, has also reduced. Combating with fashionable lifestyles and ambitious aspirations, both the parents are mostly working and can barely spare any time with kids. Added on to this is the increasing involvement of parents on social media platforms, like WhatsApp , Youtube and Instagram.

Kids crave the attention of their parents and always look forward to spending time with them. They hunt for ways & means that make them look different and attract attention of people around. Interaction with people helps children in enhancing learning capabilities and develops their personalities. With parents busy on their phones and computers, they often tend to neglect and ignore the activities of their kids . Children are quick learners, they quickly grasp things. For instance, children develop language skills only when they hear people around speaking.  It is therefore important for parents’ to set a positive example in front of them.

Children lay the foundation of their skill sets from the people they interact with and parents are the most important amongst them. Reduced interactions with children hinders interpersonal skills of children and creates an impression that doing so is fine. Children tend to copy this in their behaviour and start to become non-responsive in things they perceive as not important. This hampers the parent-child relationship to a larger extent. As children grow in age, they may turn rebellious. For instance, breaking rules during family time like meals and gathering.

Electronic devices like phones, tablets and laptops have become an indispensable part of life. While it helps in making our tasks much more simpler, it also hinders with the development of our brains. Reducing screen time helps parents spare some time to play with their kids. This develops a stronger bond and between them and facilitates the kid to encompass overall development. 

In the near future, the usage of screen time shall definitely intensify and this calls for a greater responsibility from parents in terms of usage of screen. Parents need to emphasise on self-monitoring and set screen limits for themselves before imposing restrictions on children. This shall enable them act as models and children will follow them.

Despite all the efforts, parents shall have some screen time. However, if they intend to share the same with their children they should try to utilise the best out of it. Parents can relate things they watch with reality and practical feasibility. Or they can discuss opinions about things they have watched. This helps children to develop resonance power. 

Screen has emerged as a value set. It is the parents’ who need to decide how it shall be imbibed in their children. Studies suggest that parents screen time has a direct relation with screen time of children and hence a complete family environment that supports minimum screen time needs to be practiced for the betterment of everyone. Technology can either be a boon or bane, depending not the user, and it is the same with the screen time for parents.