This summer the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, announced he was considering a two-hour “screen time” cap on children’s use of social media apps – a proposal that is not just insufficient, it’s outdated.
It's also doomed to failure, as most parents will simply pay no notice. It is, indeed, like most of Labour's grand ideas, utterly unenforceable.
We should indeed be thinking about moderating time on screens, but the proposed cap addresses only the quantity of consumption, not the quality. Fortunately, as someone who lectures on digital literacy (and is a mother), I can tell you there are some ways to push back and create healthier habits for children this summer – even if the government doesn’t seem to have caught up with them yet.
And here’s some Karen from HR to give you some tips on how to manage your child’s browsing habits. Aren’t you just so lucky?
Limiting screen time has been the dominant digital guidance used by parents, educators – and all of us really – over the past decade. This advice emerged after studies indicated that increasing screen time could be a risk factor for being overweight/obesity in children and adolescents. This was, and is, good guidance to promote physical health. However, it didn’t include robust discussion about how the quality or nature of content online might be affecting mental health.
You mean, quality not quantity is most important? Gosh! What a revelation!
For example, in following this guidance, you could have one child watching CBeebies with their family in a communal space, engaging in discussion; and another child wearing headphones and watching algorithmically driven YouTube shorts. Under “screen time” guidance, these two forms of viewing would be considered equal. But, of course, they are qualitatively very different. In this scenario, one child is engaged in interactive, collective viewing with a parent that might be a jumping-off point for discussion and connection. The other child’s viewing is isolated and fragmented; they are consuming short-form content, probably with little focus on meaningful storylines or characters, on a platform that is still, by comparison, unregulated.
I can’t wait to see what other pearls of wisdom drop in this article…
If it helps, here are some of the things I’ll be doing with my kids during the summer holidays.
- For younger children, time off screens is generally better than on. However, when we do use screens, I encourage my own children to watch live TV on platforms such as CBeebies and CBBC, as this provides a diversity of content curated by a children’s programmer. Lots of time and advocacy has gone into producing it.(Ed: not to mention licensepayer’s money)
- Prioritise active and engaged viewing over passive viewing. This means content that encourages creativity and discussion. This supports active brain engagement, learning and communication skills. It’s often better to opt for collective over solitary viewing, which can act as a springboard for discussion and build critical thinking and social engagement skills.(Ed: collectives don’t promote the creativity you seem to desire, quite the opposite in fact!)
- Begin seeding critical thinking about digital content from an early age. You can input questionable images into platforms such as Sightengine, and they will tell you how likely each image is to be fake. This is a great way to start conversations about disinformation online.(Ed: start with BBC verify)
- Speak to older children about what they want their digital diet to look like. Together, dedicate half an hour a week to training the machine learning by actively searching for positive content – content that they are passionate about or that makes them feel good. Don’t watch uninteresting, uninspiring content or content that makes them (or you) feel bad. (Ed: who continues to watch stuff that they don’t enjoy?) Quickly move past it.
- And teach them not to like, share things or comment on things that they don’t like. Even commenting on something you don’t like counts as engagement, meaning you may get more of it.(Ed: who shares things they don’t think are worth sharing?)
- As a family, do an “uninspiring” clean. If it no longer inspires or educates you, unfollow it. This includes exes, TV personalities and brands. Do this regularly to clean up your feed and narrow in on what you do want to see.(Ed:Place your hopes on the algorithm you've decided is the root of all evil?)
- To combat targeted advertising, there are some Google alternatives you might want to look at as a family. DuckDuckGo or Firefox Focus are search engines that do not track you to serve targeted ads. You could also look at Startpage, which allows you to use Google without tracking your digital footprint.(Ed:Deliberately cripple the main functionality of the tool you use, because you can't handle what it does? )
Governments may not be properly regulating this technology, but as parents, there are still things we can do.
Yes, but that takes time and effort and actually interacting with your offspring, and so many modern parents don't want to do that. In fact, so many modern parents seem to be little more than children themselves.
