A child’s brain is an empty book that demands to be filled with positive vibes and meaningful thoughts.

Before the development of language understanding ability of a child, nature teaches the child to communicate through interpreting the facial expression of the caregiver.

That is how a child understands his surrounding adult is happy or upset.

Presently, most of the children are dedicated towards digital screens. As a parent, you must be anxious about the effect of screen time on your child’s brain development?

That’s totally justifiable, looking into myriads of pros and cons of involvement of digital media in a child’s brain development.

Karetrip is here to make you aware about the effects of using too many mobile phones and how to control them.

When to Suspect Your Child is Addicted to Screens?

Well, the Gen Z is the most advanced generation and has certain recreational characteristics that are entirely different from the rest generations. This generation confines themselves in the digital world and tries to find pleasure and satisfaction in their fascinated world.

This is the main reason behind the increased cases of depression and altered psychological problems.

Every parent wants to keep their child safe and healthy.

Karetrip is here to help you keep your child safe and healthy by watching out for any of these signs in your child to confirm that they are addicted to digital screens.

• Screentime instantly boosts up their moods when no other toys excite them.

• Your child refuses to eat without smartphones.

• The child gets mad when asked to end screen time for the day.

• Gradual increase in the screentime.

• Inattentive and not obeying caregiver and parents while using digital screens.

• Lying about using digital media.

• The playtime is replaced by screen time.

• Spends less quality time with family and friends.

Let’s see how we can act wisely and effectively to break the addiction of your child yet not snatching away the childishness from them.

How Does Screen Time Affect a Child’s Brain

Use of digital devices has some mild to serious effects on the brain development of the child.

We sometimes feel frustrated being an adult when we have to indulge in increased screen time for our office work. Imagine the danger those digital screens have on your child. Let’s look into it one by one.

There are multi-faceted effects of digital devices on your kid’s brain development. They are:

• Behaviour changes – A child is exposed to the unsupervised world where they feel empowered and unregulated. Children often indulge in risk taking behaviours that are unsafe and harmful.

Children are delighted by video games that mainly show violence and unhealthy competition to stand out from amongst the rest. Such inappropriate stuffs alter the behaviour of the child making them more irritable and violent.

• Increased irritability – Excessive involvement in the virtual world upsets the child when he discovers that the virtual charm is missing in reality. This makes the child frustrated and upset. Screens also create a situation of dependency on the child’s brain, if the parents restrain from giving them the smartphones.

• Short span of attention – With the prevalence of the fast-paced virtual screens, where the visuals change at a fast pace is proven to cause serious effects on the child’s developing brain.

The child is prone to program their mind to give little attention to a particular job. This habit of the child in the long run will take a huge toll on concentrating in studies.

• Reduced empathy – The increased violence that is inappropriately shown to kids disguised in video games and cartoons, teaches the child to not develop empathy towards their surroundings.

• Disturbed sleep – The blue light emitted from smartphones, tablets and TVs disturbs the melatonin hormone and alters the sleep cycle of the child. Engage in bedtime storytelling to improve the bond between you and your child and keep them healthy and safe.

• Decreased concentration – The ability to focus on studies is greatly hampered due to increased screen time.

• Compromised IQ – Studies found that infants who are exposed to smartphones grow up into adolescents with a decreased IQ compared to those who spend time understanding the world and practising to think.

• Early exposure to abusive contents – Children knowingly or unknowingly if they get involved in abusive and inappropriate contents in digital media, face severe psychological and mental problems in future.

• Compromised vision – Young children are developing reduced eye visibility and dry eyes due to excessive screen time. Nowadays, most children are seen wearing specs due to this.

• Tendency to gain weight – Not involving in playing outdoor games and absorbing inside the screens is a huge risk factor for developing obesity in the long term. Additionally, engaging in fast foods and fried stuff is increasing the risk manifold. Encourage your child to enjoy the age-old games where the body remains fit and many friends are made.

• Chances of cyber bullying – If a child unknowingly gets into the trap of social media often ignorantly oversharing personal information, makes them viable to fall into the trap of cyberbullying and several mental issues.

• Social problems – When a child refuses to engage in in-person games and devote time to online games, makes them under confident and doubt their own self for credibility. When they will grow into adults, this will make them depressed that they lack human connections.

• Risk of substance abuse – Often children adore their idols and take up bad habits and addictions. Social media and increased screen time is to blame. Though right guidance also plays a role in a child’s proper upbringing.

• Development of mobile addiction – The fantasy of a virtual world makes the child addicted to it to escape the boredom of reality. Experts say, boredom is very important for a child to learn new things and grasp the minute things from the environment.

• Reduced ability to manage real life problems – Too much involvement in the virtual world makes the child incapable of solving the practical problems of life which are often simple. The power of imagination is compromised when the brain is engaged in playing useless games on smartphones.

What is the exact screen time for a child as per age?

As per the recommendation from WHO, children below the age of 2 years should not have any screen time, while a child of 2 to 4 years should not be exposed to more than 2 hours a day of screen time.

As per the American Academy of Pediatrics, these are the guidelines for screen time for your children.

• Below 18 months (1.5 years old), no screen time.

• 18 to 24 months (1.5 – 2 years old), only high-quality media is allowed with parents co-watching with their child.

• 2 to 5 years old, screen time should be less than an hour per day of high-quality programming, with parents watching along with them.

How To Reduce Screen Time For Your Kids?

• Kids learn what they see. A child tries to learn to live on this Earth by grasping new activities they see their surroundings do.

So, it's prime time, spend minimum time on your digital devices as a recreational activity and engage in building a core memory with your little one.

Moreover, it is scientifically proven that premature exposure to enhanced screen time affects the brain development of your child.

A child doesn’t learn faster if digital media is used for visual learning modules. Your child will feel confident and attached to learn from you and not from any digital media.

• Engage your child in “mindful eating”. Your child must know what he is eating and the importance of that food in his body.

Though they are too young to understand the nutrition lecture, yet make their mealtime enjoyable and strictly avoid any screen time during the meals.

This builds the connection between the caregiver or the mother and the child and they get the desired nutrition from the foods.

• Join your child in digital screen time to supervise the contents and make them understand their visuals.

Politely set boundaries of screen time limits, once the child crosses the daily limit, teach them to respect the rules.

• No screen time before bedtime. The emission of blue light alters the level of melatonin in your body. This is the sleep hormone that calms your body at the end of the day to help you have a tight sleep at night.

Often the disturbing visuals and violence in video games frustrates the mind of the child. This leads to disturbance in the sleep cycle which makes the child tired and irritated in the next morning.

• Join your child in planning and scheduling time for their activities. Include storybook reading, playing with toys, interacting with nature meaningfully and all sorts of sports that the child feels comfortable in. Make your child productive and learn while playing.

• Share with them stories and innocent incidents about the side-effects of using more digital devices and enhancing the screen times.

A child is a new life and it is the responsibility of everyone of us to make the child survive-able in this fast-racing world.

In today’s world, with a tap on the screen we can gain thousands of pieces of information but this has also compromised with the ability to grow in the lap of nature.

Surely your grandparents had the best of their childhood, but we have the smartest of technologies at our fingertips. We can wisely weigh the factors and balance life to enjoy to the fullest.