Parents across England are responding to new government recommendations intended to limit their children’s screen time. While many agree with the recommendations, they are also wondering how realistic they are for daily living.The new recommendations for England are that children aged two to five years old are recommended to have no more than an hour of screen time per day, while those aged less than two years old are recommended to have no screen time at all unless it is assisted by an adult. As mentioned in BBC, the new recommendations also include that children should have no screen time during meals or in the hour before bedtime; instead, parents are recommended to use alternative forms of entertainment such as reading or playing interactive games with their children.While the new recommendations are for the betterment of children’s lifestyles, many parents are saying that it is impossible to follow these new recommendations while balancing work and home life.“If I didn’t have screen time for my kids, then I would never get anything done,” Maddy explained.She explained that she did not impose rules on screen use and felt that this had helped her children maintain a balance between screen use and other activities. She explained that her children are equally likely to go outside and play.However, Maddy also explained that she was selective about the content of what her children watched. She preferred watching videos that were educational and did not like videos from the internet that might negatively impact children.Looking back at her initial parenting aspirations, she recognizes that her perspectives have altered over time. “You can’t just carry on surviving if you have to clean the house, you have to do some work,” she said. “Mums are not the stereotypical do all the childcare, spend every second with your kids type of thing anymore. That’s just not how lives work.”On the other hand, other parents have also had to deal with problems associated with screen time and have had to take drastic measures. Nik Bannister, a parent from Leeds, remembered that he had first noticed changes in his son’s behavior when he was younger. The media his son was watching was seemingly innocuous children’s content.He says, “Our home honestly felt like it was unraveling. Every time we tried to turn the screens off, it was like full-scale meltdowns. Anger, tears, constant arguments. He was just very restless, very easily frustrated, and nothing seemed to hold his interest unless it was a screen.”He believes that some content is made in a way that keeps children interested for longer than they should be. “All these little cartoons and videos, they still use psychology tricks to keep kids hooked, there’s a lot of deliberate dopamine spiking that’s causing an addiction in young kids.”As a solution, he and his partner took steps to reduce the overall amount of time spent using screens, replacing it with more hands-on activities like building sets and games. While it wasn’t easy, he believes consistency was the key.
