Screen and Early Childhood
It becomes difficult to control children’s screen time once the addictive element in them gets the children hooked into them. Screens are known for their negative impacts on children’s intellectual, social, physical, and emotional development. Ours is an era when children are passively watching instead of actively living.
Screens are known for:
- Shortening the attention span,
- Killing reflectiveness,
- Creating expectations for rapid changes in the broader
real-life environment.
The significant environmental factors that affect neurological and cognitive development of an infant are exposure to language and eye contact, the source of which is attentive and caring human beings, not the screens.
The parents tend to push the children towards the screens due to a lack of knowledge or a desire for some hours of relief in this chaotic lifestyle, which poses a threat to the children in many ways, manifestations of which can be a rise in the level of aggressions, no quality family and social life, sleeping disorders, obesity, deteriorated vocabulary, emotional dependency, and many others.
Screen hours also interfere with the two most important
processes that play a pivotal role in early childhood development:
- Play
- Reading ability
Play includes all the activities that young children do when they are not sleeping, like:
- Taking books out of a bookshelf,
- Making a building or a car using blocks,
- Pretending to sweep the floor, talk on the phone, write
like elders in the notebooks, or pretending to read from
the books, scribbling, or imitation, - Make-believe conversations, stories, role plays, or games,
- Hiding, running, jumping, hopping, skipping,
- Observing elders, etc.
Play contributes to their social, emotional, and intellectual development. Play helps them to internalize the reality that they are part of. Free play is limited only by the imagination of the child. Pictures or images are created in mind while reading. Such images are specific to our experiences and needs. To read is to nourish the imagination and liberate it while the screen captures it.
Quality literature stimulates and frees the mind. Children are losing their ability to enjoy reading. They are failing at the front of absorbing and comprehending what they read. One of the most important reasons is the lack of involvement and concentration caused by passively attending to the screen hours. Those hours condition them to switch the channel every few minutes if they are dull or the show demands active brain participation.
Howard Gardner says, “In all, television emerges as a much more self-contained experience for children, and within its boundaries, the visual component emerges as paramount. The book experience, on the other hand, allows for greater access to the story’s language and suggests greater expanses of time and space. Books may encourage readers to make connections with other realms of life.”
If parents have to use the screen, they should model its right, just, and balanced utilization. Children should see their parents and elders using the screens for tasks that command importance. Moreover, there should be some specific hours to which parents should limit their usage. Parents should keep their intentions under check concerning their reasons for using the screen. The reasons should not be the ones that satisfy their addictions.
Children have some basic needs:
1. Capacity for self-direction, that is, to become self-dependent.
2. Ability to become self-aware, that is, can discover their strengths and weaknesses without external help.
3. Ability to communicate and express themselves, that is, to
be interested in getting along with others and have the skills to
communicate with them.
4. Facilitation for language development because this will define their universe.
5. Development of physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual needs.
6. Availability of free and resourceful time and the opportunities for free play
Screen time (through any electronic media and toys), especially in the formative years, is an obstacle in the actualization of these needs.
Dr. Khushboo
Project Manager,
Zaytuna Academy