Kids’ online screen time should be reduced for positive school year: online expert

Parents may relax their screen-time rules for their children during the summer, but with the new school year approaching, a Calgary online safety expert says changes in screen habits are necessary for a child’s success.

Paul Davis, an IT professional of 33 years and advocate and public speaker of online safety, says kids who spent the majority of their summer in front of a blue light from a phone, TV, or laptop might be functioning much differently these days.

They might be staying up late and sleeping in and may be a little more irritable.

Davis says those are red flags, and it’s time to rip the band-aid and start tightening tech rules today.

“Our kids need a good night’s sleep. They don’t need to be distracted at two o’clock in the morning because of a social media notification that’s gone off, a blinking light, which you know they’ll see. They’ll go to the phone. They’ll see it. It takes away from their sleep,” he told 660 NewsRadio.

“If there’s one thing I learned about the last school year versus all the previous years that I’ve been visiting schools in 13 years, last year, I noticed more kids coming to school sleep-deprived.”

When it comes to device use, the time of day matters.

“When you wake up, don’t put the screen in your face right away, especially for kids, our brains need to wake up, and we don’t want kids coming to school and being inundated with drama and notifications and processing a 15-second TikTok video, not understanding what it means, making assumptions, and it starts their day negatively. We want our kids to start their day positively,” Davis said.

“We have to bring them back to reality.”

Davis says screen time right before bed is equally damaging because it prevents us from winding down.

He recommends stepping away from devices at least an hour before bed and for both distraction and safety purposes.

There are several studies showing that adults and kids crave smartphones the same way we crave junk food, drugs, or alcohol, and the negative impacts are pretty similar to increased anxiety, depression, and sleep deprivation.

A 2018 study by the World Health Organization concluded 6.85 per cent of students were classified as having problematic social media use, which is considered to be when behavioural and psychological symptoms of addiction to social media manifest. Some 33.14 per cent of students were at moderate risk for problematic social media use and another 60 per cent faced low risk, the study found.

With bullying, anxiety, and depression also at an all-time high among youth, Davis is encouraging parents to take back the wheel, starting with taking screens out of the bedroom and not allowing kids to start or end their day in front of a screen.

Davis says it’s not going to be easy to replace the dopamine from scrolling likes and shares, but that’s parenting.