UTRECHT, Sept 22 — Two recent news media articles on how countries like Sweden and Australia are trying to put a cap on screen time for age groups ranging from toddlers to teenagers got the parent in me thinking.

Though my daughter has gotten past these sensitive year brackets, it prompted me to delve a bit more into screen time hazards and start conversations with ‘people in the know’.

Sweden’s lid on screen time

While the Swedish health authorities have instructed native parents that children under the age of two should not be exposed to any kinds of screens whatsoever, the guidelines also specified that teenagers should have no more than three hours of screen time a day.

The authorities left the planning part to parents on how they stick to stipulated norms of limiting screens for an hour among two to five-year-olds, two hours for children in the age bracket of six and 12 and three hours for teens between 13-18 years of age. The health agency also recommended that children do not make use of screens before bed time and screens may not be allowed into sleep rooms at night.

“Children’s health is paying the price for tech companies’ profits” opined Jakob Forssmed, the minister for health and social affairs of Sweden.

‘Baby’s day out’

While most adults among us are in sync at some degree with the negative health effects accruing from excess digital media use, putting paid to that notion, we often get to see parents at parties doing toddler feeding with both the child and an electronic screen (to engage the kid) intertwined on their laps. It’s even more astonishing to see some toddlers meticulously manoeuvring these gadgets with their tiny fingers playing or pausing the screens with effortless ease.

During my childhood times in India, while the patient parent used to cart the child around verandas doing feedings singing lullabies, the more practical and short-of-time parent made the toddlers get used to morsels of food being shoved down their bloated cheeks.

Times sans screens

In the absence of any sort of ‘in-house’ screens those days, the only electronic gadget which made its intrinsic presence felt was the good old radio which also had a limited hour ‘use time’ stipulated by households.

A rewind to my mother’s ‘golden-olden family time’ recollections, the last person to switch off the radio at night used to be her father after catching the 9 pm news bulletins while the rest of the household were fast asleep by then. Fast forward to present times, some households contemplate at 9 pm on what to cook or order for dinner.

Other countries to follow suit

It’s a feisty debate comparing generations but the fact remains that modern day iPad kids are kind of hardwired into their screens for recreation unless the parent or their place of study has firm plans to put them in a play park.

Endorsing similar views is Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who recently said that his government will soon use trial age verification technology before restricting children later in the year from opening social media accounts. The limit would probably be between age brackets 14 and 16.

“I want to see the kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts” the premier added.

France is also strategising against excessive screen time for children. Some of the curbs already in place are pre-installed parental controls on internet-enabled devices sold, prohibiting mobile phones in nursery, primary and lower secondary schools though the enforcement varies, social media age verification for children under 15.

Djokovic’s parenting policy

Tennis great Novak Djokovic who believes in taking a more traditional approach to child rearing, recently spoke about the mobile phone ban imposed by him on both his school-going children. He said, “Out of the two parents, I am the one that is responsible for their activities, sports, healthy lifestyle”.

The “Bibliotheek” culture of Netherlands

A library which is called the “Bibiliotheek” in Dutch is an essential part of the country’s learning culture. With the ‘Library at School’ (de Bibliotheek op de School) programme, the local municipalities join forces with libraries to draw attention to pleasure reading and media literacy among children both at school and at home. It is a potent collaboration that encourages children and young people to read more and use the internet, social media, and games in wise and informed ways.

Trying to co-exist with the digital media invasion, the Dutch ‘Bibliotheek’ culture is unique with most libraries housed in gigantic spaces with state-of-the-art facilities like compact cubicles for personal study, cafeterias and kid zones. From Anthropology to Autobiographies, Chemistry to Cartoons, the massive book range at offer pleads to revive the physical book reading culture, especially among youngsters.

The ‘Bibliotheeks’ also provide unique sub-divisions like ‘Taal Cafes’ (Language Cafes) where volunteers help users learn the local language in an interactive atmosphere. Most expatriates and their children from my known circles in the Netherlands learned Dutch faster and better through these free language cafes than paying through one’s nose for courses offered at commercial institutes.

The omnipresence of AI

With the Artificial Intelligence (AI) lexicon looming large in every sphere of our lives not to forget its effortless seepage into pedagogical modules, are today’s generation of youngsters reaching a no-way-out situation with gadget-related technology? Will AI become a regular school subject like Computer Science? Will it stamp its omnipresence on every utility service concerning children?

Conundrums like these are currently tilting like a yo-yo from being hypothetical to practical.

Easier said than done?

How do households deny access or limit screen usage time of the current generation? Now, this definitely seems like a million-dollar question appearing at a time when screen media is almost a way of life for Gen-Z kids.

Parents need to be street-smart while creating alternate leisure options for their children. To put this in perspective, I would want to draw an inference from a travel experience that led me to the above belief.

Once while travelling from a destination abroad to my home-town Hyderabad in India, I and my fellow flight mates noticed that the airline did not provide any in-flight screen entertainment despite being a long duration flight.

After a while, it was even more amusing to see that most kids on the flight were neck deep into their comics, puzzles, and paint books.

Find your way when there is a will. — Bernama