
Stay plugged into their hand-held devices on the ride to and from school. The 10-year-old gets up half an hour earlier on school days to play computer games, and he and his brother Two of my grandsons, ages 10 and 13, seem destined to suffer some of the negative effects of video-game overuse. Weights already epidemic among the nation’s youth. And the sedentary nature of most electronic involvement - along with televised ads for high-calorie fare - can foster the unhealthy Schoolwork can suffer when media time infringes on reading and studying. To a study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Teenagers who spend a lot of time playing violent video games or watching violent shows on television have been found to be more aggressive and more likely to fight with their peers and argue with their teachers, according A fourth-grader cited “ Call of Duty: Black Ops,” because “there’s zombies in it, and you get to kill them with guns and there’s violence … I like blood and violence.” Hatch asked children about their favorite video games. In preparing an honors thesis at the University of Rhode Island, Kristina E. Christakis of the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Those who watch a lot of simulated violence, common in many popular video games, canīecome immune to it, more inclined to act violently themselves and less likely to behave empathetically, said Dimitri A. Heavy use of electronic media can have significant negative effects on children’s behavior, health and school performance.
NYTIMES GAMES FREE
Time playing outdoors, reading, doing hobbies and “using their imaginations in free play,” the academy recommends.
NYTIMES GAMES HOW TO
“We’re throwing screens at children all day long, giving them distractions rather than teaching them how to self-soothe, to calm themselves down,” said Catherine Steiner-Adair, a Harvard-affiliatedĬlinical psychologist and author of the best-selling book “ The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.”īefore age 2, children should not be exposed to any electronic media, the pediatrics academy maintains, because “a child’s brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn bestīy interacting with people, not screens.” Older children and teenagers should spend no more than one or two hours a day with entertainment media, preferably with high-quality content, and spend more free Parents, grateful for ways to calm disruptive children and keep them from interrupting their own screen activities, seem to be unaware of the potential harm from so much time spent in the virtual world. How much time the youngsters spent with media.

“Many parents seem to have few rules about use of media by their children and adolescents,” the academy stated, and two-thirds of those questioned in the Kaiser study said their parents had no rules about Remains the dominant medium, but computers, tablets and cellphones are gradually taking over. “The average 8- to 10-year-old spends nearly eight hours a day with a variety of different media, and older children and teenagers spend more than 11 hours per day.” Television, long a popular “babysitter,” Of Pediatrics cited these shocking statistics from a Kaiser Family Foundation study in 2010:


In its 2013 policy statement on “ Children, Adolescents, and the Media,” the American Academy And it starts early, often with preverbal toddlers handed their parents’ cellphones and tablets to entertain themselves when they should be observing the worldĪround them and interacting with their caregivers. While Internet addiction is not yet considered a clinical diagnosis here, there’s no question that American youths are plugged in and tuned out of “live” action for many more hours of the day thanĮxperts consider healthy for normal development.

Media, the effectiveness of which remains to be demonstrated. Many comeĬhinese doctors consider this phenomenon a clinical disorder and have established rehabilitation centers where afflicted youngsters are confined for months of sometimes draconian therapy, completely isolated from all Shown next Monday on PBS, highlights the tragic effects on teenagers who become hooked on video games, playing for dozens of hours at a time often without breaks to eat, sleep or even use the bathroom. Excessive use of computer games among young people in China appears to be taking an alarming turn and may have particular relevance for American parents whose children spend many hours a day focused on electronic screens.
