The light at the end of the pandemic tunnel seems even brighter than it did just a month ago and in its glow it’s tempting to look back on the adjustments we have made in our lives and consider how many of those adjustments will solidify into new standards. Certainly, near the top of the changes wrought by SARS-CoV-2 is an explosive use of the Internet as a vehicle for group interaction and communication. Did you even know what Zoom was a year ago?
Dr. William G. Wilkoff
From remote education to international business meetings our screen time has increased dramatically. In homes across the country families have relaxed any restrictions they might have had on video exposure as they struggled to amuse and entertain children who have been shut off from their playmates. As reported in the Washington Post, the monitoring company Bark found that children sent and received 144% more Internet messages in 2020 than they had the year before..
Even families that I know who have been incredibly creative in finding physical activities, both indoor and outdoor, for their children have scaled back their restrictions on screen time. While the term “survival mode” is a bit too strong to describe this phenomenon, it was simply a matter of finding solutions given a limited supply of options.
The increase in screen time has prompted many parents to worry about its effect on their children. The American Academy of Pediatrics has already expressed concern about the cumulative effects of screen exposure on visual acuity. And it seems reasonable to expect that the obesity epidemic will accelerate as more children become more sedentary watching video screens. Whether the dire predictions of educators about lost learning will come true remains to be seen.
We can hope that this relaxation of screen time limits will be temporary. But that hope has a slim chance of becoming a reality as we have realized how powerful the Internet can be as an imperfect but effective educational tool. We have seen that apps such as Zoom, GoToMeeting, and FaceTime can allow families to connect on holidays when to face-to-face meetings are impractical. How should parents, and those of us who advise them, begin to restructure sensible and enforceable guidelines for screen time given the sea change we have just experienced?
There will certainly be significant resistance on the part of children to unlearn screen habits developed during the darkest hours of the pandemic: Texting a friend whom you will now be able to see in school, playing a video game instead of biking around the neighborhood with on a sunny afternoon, or, binging on sitcoms in the evening with your parents when they knew you didn’t have to get up early to catch the school bus.
It could be a herculean task to nudge the screen time pendulum back toward the prepandemic “norm.” In the past we haven’t done a very good job of promoting a healthy screen time diet for children. When the only screen in town was television the American Academy of Pediatrics’ focus was more on content than quantity. Quality is often difficult to assess and parents, like most everyone, seem more comfortable with guidelines that include a time metric – even if they don’t seem to be very good at enforcing it.
Maybe screen time is too big a boulder to roll up the hill. The good news is that during the pandemic, activity – particularly outdoor activity – has increased dramatically. Bicycles went off the shelves like toilet paper. National and state parks have been overflowing with families. While we must not ignore the downside of excess screen time, we should put more effort into promoting the healthy alternative of outdoor recreation. Let’s not allow a positive trend slip into becoming a short-lived fad.
Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.