What Families Need To Know About Screen Time This Summer

This piece combines and updates two posts from spring 2018.

During the summer, it's safe to assume children are using technology more than usual.

Managing all that bleeping and buzzing activity causes anxiety in many parents. Here's a roundup of some of the latest research, combined with some of our previous reporting, to help guide your decision-making around family screen use.

1. Globally, tech brings young people opportunity as well as risk

A 2017 report from the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, surveyed the online experiences of children and youth around the world. They found that adolescents and young people are the most connected generation and that children under 18 represent 1 in 3 Internet users worldwide.

Digital resources are expanding access to education and work, and in some places, young people are using them to become more civically engaged.

But there are serious harms — such as sexual abuse, child pornography and sex trafficking — that are exacerbated by the Internet, especially in the developing world. And in the developed world, there are emerging concerns about the ties between Internet use and mental health problems like anxiety and depression. The key, say the authors of the UNICEF report, is "taking a Goldilocks approach" — not too much, not too little — and "focusing more on what children are doing online and less on how long they are online."

2. Young children are spending much more time with small screens

Ninety-eight percent of households with children 8 and under, rich and poor, have access to a mobile device, such as a tablet or smartphone. That is up from 52 percent just six years ago, according to a 2017 nationally representative parent survey from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization.

While children's overall screen time has held steady for years (at 2 1/4 hours), more and more of it is taking place on handheld devices: 48 minutes a day in 2017.

3. Families are organizing to put off giving kids phones

Brooke Shannon, a parent in Austin, Texas, with three daughters, started an online pledge called Wait Until 8th that calls on parents to put off giving kids a smartphone until the end of middle school.

"Children just don't have the brain development at this age to be able to navigate the tricky social situations that come with social media," she says.

So far, a few thousand families across the country have taken the pledge.

4. A new study offers a way to measure problematic media use in children

The question of whether screen media use can be a true "addiction" is not yet settled among mental health professionals. But a study released last year in the Psychology of Popular Media Culture tries to get a better measure of problems with screens. The researchers interviewed parents of children aged 4 to 11 about their children's relationship to media and their general well-being. The parents were asked to respond to statements based on an existing measure of problematic Internet gaming in adults.

Here are some of the statements that, if true, can indicate a bigger problem:

• It is hard for my child to stop using screen media
• When my child has had a bad day, screen media seems to be the only thing that helps him/her feel better
• My child's screen media use causes problems for the family
• The amount of time my child wants to use screen media keeps increasing
• My child sneaks using screen media

5. Screen time limits may have nothing to do with a young child's ability to thrive

Finally, a finding that may cause some relief to parents stuck inside, combating that summer heat.

For a study released last year in Child Development, researchers at University of Oxford and Cardiff University in the U.K. interviewed nearly 20,000 parents of young children aged 2 to 5. After controlling for factors like race, income and parent education level, they found limits on screen time over the course of a month were not necessarily associated with positive outcomes in children. On the contrary, the researchers found small links between moderately higher screen use and the children's good moods. The researchers concluded that caregivers, and their doctors, should do a cost-benefit analysis before "setting firm limits."

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