Every parent has told their child that if they don’t stop doing something, they’ll ruin their eyes. Whether it was pulp novels back in your grandfather’s day, or television in yours, it’s a common parental go-to. But is it true of kids and smartphones? To some degree.
Snapchat hasn’t been high in parental esteem from the beginning, but as it’s popular, it’s worth knowing when it adds new features. One, Snapstreaks, may be a cause of worry for parents because it rewards teens for using Snapchat in specific ways.
Famously, when Alexander The Great was confronted with the Gordian knot, the seemingly unsolvable puzzle, he pulled out his sword and cut it in half. For children, the modern version is deleting the app that tracks how much time you’re spending on the iPad from iOS 12 when parents start putting rules in place. Fortunately, there are ways to prevent them from “solving” this particular problem, both with software and with common sense.
Science is often our best guide to making decisions. But the best science can take a long time to complete, something that can be lost amid hype. This is particularly true of Anderson Cooper’s 2018 “60 Minutes” piece on a study run by the National Institutes of Health, where 11,000 children will be studied to see what, if any, impact screen time has on their development. The problem? It won’t be finished for a decade.
While we all remember summers off with a golden nostalgia, the truth is that they were probably bad for us in terms of learning retention. The “summer slide,” known as “summer learning loss,” is related to the fairly simple problem that if you don’t keep using a skill, eventually that skill will atrophy. So how do parents prevent the slide, while also limiting the use of screens?
Technology is an ever-increasing part of our lives. Smartphones, laptops, e-readers, gaming devices, car consoles, and a host of other screens and gadgets are filling our lives and sometimes pushing us in unique directions. But for kids especially, balancing technology and other activities can be tough. Here’s how to help children stay on an even technological keel.
