Screen Time Slow Motion Water Balloon
Screen time and kids
There is a lot of debate these days with the increased availability and popularity of all kinds of digital devices, and with more and more specialized gadgets being made by the month it seems like, about the good and bad effects of these things on kids. While there are some pretty convincing reasons to limit your children's screen time, and I certainly am a proponent of giving kids a more active and varied lifestyle than just screen time all the time, there are also some reasons that seem to me rather unsound scientifically, or at least not yet proved well enough. For instance, there is a common mistake made among scientists, journalists, and humans in general, that when we are dealing with unknown, unexplored, or as yet not understood objects or qualities that association must equal causation. This is simply not true.
Screen time and heart health
For instance, many of the sites that I visited as I researched this subject (I was curious why so many people seemed adamant that kids need less screen time when none of them gave a compelling reason, it was just sort of assumed) gave heart disease and cholesterol levels as a reason to avoid extended screen time for kids (and even adults). However, there was no clear link described between the screen time and the heart and cholesterol problems. It is very possible (and in my opinion very likely) that the increase is related to sitting on one's butt all day and not actually related to what one is doing on one's butt; for example, if one read a book all day for the same amount of hours as one watched TV, would that really be better for the heart? And then could one not come up with creative solutions to permit screen time and still avoid heart problems? Like perhaps in exchange for an hour of screen time kids don't have to read a book, they have to go do a vigorous workout. We seem to be worried about our kids intelligence from all the screen time, but what about their bodies?
Screen time and sleep
There are some other factors that seem to be more directly related to screen time, like decreased melatonin levels. However, even those must be directly linked to be scientific fact. Again, it is not enough to indicate correlation, one must be able to indicate causation. Is it possible that sitting on one's fanny all day does not produce as much melatonin as leading a more vigorous, active lifestyle? While I am certainly no expert on the subject, it seems possible to me. And again, I am not someone who thinks that kids or even adults should have unlimited screen time every day. I just think that starting out with an unproved assumption and then building assumptions on your assumption and trying to create a call to action out of that is just silly. I want to see some hard facts, please.
