Now this is definitely a tricky subject in this day and age
to talk about… babies screen time before the age of 2 years old… Whats normal, whats healthy, what do you do?
As new parents we had so much more on our plate to deal with than thinking
about if our baby was watching screen time too much, you know that feeling when
your cooking dinner and its so easy to put a wiggles show on so you have
10-15 minutes of silence to get dinner done. Turns out there is a lot of good
research out there regarding this topic and I’m not going to act like an expert
on the subject, because I’m definitely not, but for today's blog I'm going to
discuss what I found and how its going to reduce my reliance on screen time for
my babe before he reaches his 2 year birthday.
Throughout early childhood parenting there is a million
decisions you have to make, all of them important, and like all parents I
believe in moderation, some parents will allow their children to watch TV if
that works for you then don’t let me change your mind. I’m just sharing my
ideas and what I have found.
In looking into the topic, I started my research online,
lets be honest that’s where most of our research starts in this day and age,
but in particular with this topic, screen time has changed from the day and age
when the families sat in the living room watching an hour of tv before bedtime,
to children with portable devices in their hands for extended periods all day,
everyday.
With the introduction of the touch screen devices starting
with the apple iphone in 2007 (not long ago when you think about it) human behavior has changed in such a way that a touch screen device is commonly attach to your
hands or eyes on an hourly basis. Even just watching my husband, each day/night
he uses his phone to conduct business as well as being an avid amateur
photographer, I regularly catch him up at 1-2am doing work. I thought he would
be the hardest person to convert on the topic of screen time use with our baby.
How wrong was I? He was completely on board with my ideas of parenting.
The conversation one night went like this
Me : “Babe what do you think about screen time late at
night and long term health effects”
Husband : “That’s why I have Night Shift activated”
Me : “Ummmmmm whats that?”
Husband : “Its where between sunset and sunrise your iphone
and laptop remove blue light from the screen so it doesn’t affect your melatonin
production and prevents it affecting your circadian rhythm”
Me : (blank stare)
Husband : “Circadian rhythm is your sleep cycle”
Me : “ohhhhhhhhh”
Turns out my husband had thought about this topic a lot,
modified his screen time behaviour to limit its negative health affects for him,
so if there was research for Adult Screen time, what else could there be out
there for babies?
Sleep
A quick search of melatonin raised a huge wealth of information,
all of which can help mummas and babies out there to improve your sleep, so ill
share a bit of what I found.
Melatonin is a hormone that is in every human, its produced
usually at night time by your pineal gland that’s located in the center of your
brain, and is a regulator of your circadian rhythm (sleep cycle) as well as
having many other biological benefits for your immune system, it’s a powerful anti-oxidants
and can reduce headaches etc, even early links with cancer prevention… pretty
interesting stuff right.
So what does screen time and melatonin production have to
do with each other you ask? It turns out the receptors in your eyes when
observing blue light during the day (think how blue the sky is) will actually
stop melatonin production, and during the night when there is no blue light
your pineal gland goes into full production of Melatonin, which triggers your
circadian rhythm. For this reason its why most people who do overseas travel
use melatonin supplements to reduce jet lag and force their body back into a
sleep cycle.
So whats blue light and melatonin production got to do with
screen time… Turns out a lot. When you look at a screen (weather it’s a laptop,
tv, phone etc) the imagine that you see is made up of small points of lights,
they are RED, GREEN and BLUE… so unfortunately for all of us, we are looking
directly into a screen of blue light every night, lowering our production of
melatonin and wondering why we cant easily fall asleep anymore. Easy fix is to
limit the screen time, or enable blue light limiting features on your phone.
Apple has a built in feature called “night shift” and im sure Andriod devices
will have their own product to lower blue light on your screens at night.
Brain development
To start with, I was shocked to learn that in just the
first 12 months of a babies development their brain triples in mass, Triples….
I nearly fell off my chair when I read that number. There is no other time in
your life that the human brain will grow at that rate. Ever!!
So what happens during all of this brain growth when your
stimulated by screen time, well studies have shown that babies stare at bright
colours and motions on a screen, but they aren’t able to process them and make
sense of their meaning. It takes 2 full years for a babies brain to develop to
a point where the symbols make sense and they understand what they see on the
screen is equivalent to in real life.
A perfect real world example of this is spatial awareness,
the ability to be aware of oneself in space and or the understanding of objects
and their change in position.
Now look at how us kids were brought up under 2 years old back
in the good old days before tv’s. Someone threw a ball at us, we watched it
leave the hand, move through the air, roll across the floor and eventually
stop, all in the wonderful world of 3D vision in one fluid motion start to
finish, we could touch the ball, play with it afterwards, put it in our mouth
and throw it away again. We knew where we stood in relation to the ball because
our visual reference system (our eyes) used the many depth perception clues to
determine it, and we also watch the balls position change in relation to our
position, all of this in one ball toss, crazy ehy, and that big old sponge of a
brain took it all in for next time when it saw the ball being thrown.
Now modern day kids are being shown a ball toss on a
screen, its broken up into scenes, you see the ball leave the hand, cut to the
next scene where it’s in motion flying through the air, the last scene is it
landing on the ground before disappearing. The baby can’t lunge for it, they
can’t grasp it, they just lose the ability to confirm what they saw in 2D on
the screen is actually a ball, before being bombarded by the next set of
images. Depth perception is lacking because their eyes are only focused on the
screen, and not constantly learning to adapt to the environment around them.
What happens when a baby sees someone on TV, they instinctively
smile at them, but the person on the TV doesn’t smile back? So not only does
this affect their understanding of social interactions with other people, but
it also makes them think that in life that there is no point smiling because no
one smiles back.
I remember as a child not spending time infront of the TV
but going outside riding our bikes around the street and playing ball games in
the backyard. So I know as Brandon gets older I will be taking him to the parks,
and kicking the ball with him. Also we will encourage him to play outside as much
as possible. We have already started taking him to the park when it’s a nice
day. As well as playing different games with him on the floor. This is how
babies develop their skills.
We wont have a hard and fast rule that Brandon wont watch a
screen whether it’s a Iphone or TV, but we will limit his amount of time he
will be infront of them based on the currently available research online.
So next time you’re with your partner, put your phone ontop
of his/hers and have some time to unplug and reconnect with them. Life’s short,
enjoy it without facebook/twitter/Instagram/pokemon etc.
I could honestly write about this topic till I’m blue in
the face but seriously who wants me to go on with such an in-depth subject! At
the end of the day everyone can make their own choices and everyone has their
own parenting style! And I will do what works for me and my family.
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