Screen Time Guidance Does Not Go Far Enough | Letters

While I afloat support nan government’s guidance to parents of under-fives to support surface clip to nether an hr a time (Keep under-fives’ surface clip to nary much than an hr a day, UK proposal says, 27 March), this does not spell acold enough. Children do not only acquisition screens astatine home; they besides brushwood them successful early puerility settings and schools.

Contrary to nan proposal fixed successful nan caller guidance for parents, nan authorities requires each children to complete a screen-based trial wrong their first six weeks astatine superior school. The Reception Baseline Assessment takes up 20 minutes of their regular surface time. Teachers are not capable to interact pinch nan kid while doing nan trial arsenic they must travel a script. This contradicts nan proposal for parents, which suggests that nan champion shape of surface usage involves adults interacting pinch their children while utilizing screens.

I researched this and recovered that each children observed completing nan trial showed signs of anxiety. Despite this, they had to complete nan trial regardless.

If nan authorities is superior astir limiting nan harms associated pinch surface usage successful young children, it must return a much holistic attack and modulate surface clip successful acquisition settings arsenic good arsenic nan home.
Dr Mandy Pierlejewski
Halifax, West Yorkshire

The UK authorities now tells parents of under-fives to take “slow-paced” media content. But where, exactly, are parents meant to find it? We cognize what slow media looks like. Decades of investigation (including my own) show that young children study champion from contented pinch clear narratives, debased sensory strength and repetition. BBC children’s programming was designed astir these principles.

But arsenic nationalist backing declined and commercialized pressures grew, children’s surface clip shifted towards YouTube and commercialized platforms, driven by persuasive, manipulative design, pinch increasing grounds of harm to learning and wellbeing. The astir wide consumed YouTube contented and top-ranking apps are fast, fragmented and designed to seizure attention, not support learning.

This is nan contradiction astatine nan bosom of nan caller surface clip guidance. Parents are told to prioritise slow media, but nan media disposable to them is dominated by nan opposite. The guidance is simply a invited step. But if it is to activity successful practice, it must spell further by ensuring that high-quality, developmentally due contented is disposable done sustained finance successful nationalist work children’s programming.
Natalia Ingebretsen Kucirkova
Visiting professor, UCL Institute of Education

Regarding nan proposal to trim surface clip for under-fives, it became clear astir 20 years agone that excessively overmuch clip spent focusing adjacent to nan eye, specified arsenic successful reference and surface use, during nan early years increases nan consequence of myopia (shortsightedness). This affects astir a 3rd of group successful nan UK.

Focusing overmuch of nan clip wrong a fewer feet, and, moreover worse, wrong a fewer inches, causes nan normal elongation of nan oculus (which happens fastest successful nan first fewer years, earlier usually stopping astatine astir property 12) to hap overmuch faster, and to spell connected for longer.

We cognize that familial factors impact nan incidence of myopia, but studies person shown that expanding nan magnitude of clip spent outside, and reducing nan magnitude of adjacent focusing that a kid does, importantly reduces its incidence. There are different undisputed benefits of reduced surface use, but a simplification successful nan incidence of myopia would beryllium different important benefit.
Dr Mary Gibbs
Rusholme, Manchester