Smart Phone In Children Study, Health Is Affected As Well As Mental Stress
Now it’s a fact that screens are such an important part of our daily lives and they are so influential that it is inevitable that our children learn about them very quickly, easily and naturally.
Many parents put mobile phones in the hands of their children to entertain them at a very young age. But he finds that swiping on the phone turns on the light.
Mobile screens get children addicted very quickly and this leads to changes in children’s minds that we are slowly learning about.
The habit of using mobile phones among young children around the world, including in Pakistan, has had many effects on their behavior. The habit of giving mobile phones by parents especially to children under 12 years of age has not only affected their health but also increased the stubbornness and stress factor in them.
Talking about her six-year-old son Raham’s request for his personal phone, Mahnoor says, “He told me, ‘Mama, I want my own phone.’ Not only did I forbid it, but I was shocked to hear it.
“But it’s not so easy to deny children for such things because when they see the same thing around them with their peers, they think that their parents are abusing them or they’re doing it to them,” she adds. do not love.’
Mah Noor says that every time she asks her son Raham to close the game on the mobile or to take back the mobile, he gets irritated.
He gets very angry. He started crying. If you take the mobile or close the game, he becomes rude. He would have been angry.
But this is not just a story of one household but all the parents these days seem to be worried about their children’s increasing screen time.
According to the Pakistan Pediatric Association, 80 percent of children between the ages of six and eighteen in Pakistan watch screens for four to six hours a day. These are mobiles, video games and computers.
According to the report, 30 percent of children have poor near vision due to watching so much screens, while 50 percent of children complain of blurred vision, headaches and eye pain.
“Study, health is affected as well as mental stress”
Dr. Nosheen Kazmi is a psychiatrist attached to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan and according to him the addiction to mobile and games has created many problems in children and there are often cases where parents seem helpless and children. Suffering from depression.
In a conversation with the BBC, he said that children do not have a sense of screen time and their “education, health are affected, as well as mental stress.”
She says that even if you take these mobiles and games away from children at that time, they still do not sleep very well. Apart from this, along with their visual impairment, physical health problems, their ability to focus on something decreases.
“We have a lot of kids who come in with depression and we see that these kids have a lot of screen time,” says Dr. Nausheen.
Due to the increased screen time of children during the Corona epidemic, it has been observed that they have reduced socialization by going back to school. The tendency to make friendship has been seen less.
He says that I have two or three such cases in which O-level children got so addicted to the game that they could not start studying even after going to school many times.
Regarding the mental effects of increasing screen time, psychologist Dr. Pankaj Kumar says, “According to the research, if children or teenagers stay on the screen for more than six or seven hours, it can have psychological effects on them. This can lead to problems like self-control, lack of curiosity, lack of emotional stability, lack of concentration and not being able to make friends easily.’
However, it also depends on what they are looking at on the screen, be it watching movies, videos, games, social media or reading something, he adds. “The effect may vary from one child to another.”
Researchers have found that students who send or receive text messages while studying perform poorly on tests and do poorly on attention-demanding tasks.
At what age should a child be given a smartphone?
Children learn to use phones from their parents. According to a European report on the use of digital technology among children between birth and eight years of age, the dangers are not understood in this age group, but children are imitating their parents.
Most parents these days are quite worried about whether they should give their children a smartphone or keep them away from it as long as possible.
Although we have no conclusive evidence that smartphone or social media access in general has negative effects on children’s mental health. However, most of the research to date has been conducted on adolescent boys and girls, and evidence suggests that children are more vulnerable to the negative effects of smartphones and social media during certain months and years of mental development.
Most experts agree that when deciding whether your child is ready for a smartphone, there are a few factors to consider and what to do as parents after giving a child a smartphone.
A European study of technology use among children aged from birth to eight years found that children of this age had ‘little or no understanding of the dangers of the internet’ and if this age Talking about the clear effects of smart phones and social media on children older than this, we do not have any solid evidence in this regard either.
Dr Nosheen Kazmi says that it is the responsibility of parents to know how to use technology themselves.
This involves clearly telling the child which apps they can use and for how long. If the parents do not give the child a free pass from the beginning, then the problem will not arise. Six hours of screen time can’t be reduced to two hours over time, so it’s best to factor that in from the start. Passwords should be set, timers should be set, children should be allowed to create social media accounts keeping in mind the age.
Another big issue, says Dr Nausheen, is whether the child has access to or permission to view content based on their age. She believes that internet safety should be discussed in school and at home so that children are aware.
“We have also had cases where young boys and girls have seen inappropriate content which was disturbing to them and they are suffering from depression. He was billed for talking to the wrong people.
Are you suffering from smartphone addiction?
Experts say that if you are worried that you are suffering from mobile phone addiction, the following are some of the early signs:
Constantly looking at the phone for no reason.
Feeling anxious or uneasy at the thought of being without your phone.
Prioritizing time on the phone over socializing.
Waking up in the middle of the night to check your smartphone.
Spending too much time on the phone can result in reduced academic or work performance.
