Argumentative Essay on Screen Time

📌Category: Child development, Psychology, Science, Technology
📌Words: 647
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 01 April 2022

Over the past decades, technology has revolutionized people’s everyday lives. From smartphones to televisions and smart speakers, these new gadgets have completely changed how we live. Average teens spend up to 9 hours using or watching screens. With all of this screen time comes many negative drawbacks. Many teens suffer from depression, sleep deficiency, social issues, and attention problems. Many parents and others wonder what is the best way to limit these negative effects on adolescents. While some people think that restricting the content the adolescents use is a more effective, I believe that limiting time is the better option to lessen the unfavorable consequences of using technology. Banning screens in bedrooms and in the evening are very efficient ways of accomplishing this goal as well as restricting the minutes that children spend playing video games. Overall, the most effective method of minimizing the adverse effects of technology on adolescents' growth is to restrict the number of time kids spend on devices.

Foremost, banning screen time in the evening lets growing kids get the sleep that they need. Nakul Vijakkhana, Tanaporn Wilaisakditipakorn, Kitja Ruedeekhajorn, Chandhita Pruksananonda, and Weerasak Chonchaiya investigated the correlation between evening media exposure and nighttime sleep time in infants. They were able to conclude that “infants 6 to 12 months old who were exposed to screens” before going to bed “showed significantly shorter nighttime sleep” compared to others not exposed to screens (Cross 1). These scientists’ end results show that infants that used electronic devices in the evening slept less at night compared to other babies that were not using the devices. This is a clear example of a problem caused by technology. The reason for this sleep deficiency is that young children were allowed to spend time on these gadgets. The parents of these young children can easily ban screen time in the evening. Fundamentally, if they were denied access, they would be able to sleep more and thereby grow and develop.

Furthermore, the time that children spend on digital media should be limited so that they do not develop attention defects. Ra CK, Cho J, Stone MD, De La Cerda J, Goldenson NI, Moroney E, Tung I, Lee SS, and Leventhal AM did some research regarding the impacts of media use and attention problems along with many other groups of researchers addressing the same question. Ra and his group enrolled adolescents without symptoms of ADHD. Their data along with the other researchers’ findings all showed a “correlation between media use and attention problems” (Small 1). The adolescents that “frequent[ly] use[d] digital media [showed] symptoms of ADHD” after a 24 month period (Small 1). From the data collected from the scientists, there is a clear relationship between using digital media very often and attention problems. This is another way that screen time gives children issues. The main element that caused these thinking flaws was the great usage time of digital media. There are many simple methods of decreasing this time. Essentially, these children could have easily avoided ADHD symptoms by simply using online media for less time.

Finally, having a restricted amount of minutes allowed for video gaming will keep a kid’s social skills from declining. Kirsh and Mounts did some research on the idea that playing video games would negatively impact the ability to recognize emotions communicated through facial expressions.  People who participated in this experiment played violent video games before tracking calm faces as they turned into either angry or happy faces. Participants were asked to quickly identify the emotion portrayed by facial expressions as they changed. They found out that "playing violent videogames delayed happy-face recognition time" compared to someone who did not play as much (Small 1). As you can see, the school children that played violent video games took a long time to find a happy face than others who did not play as many electronic games. This is yet another example of how technology is negatively impacting adolescents. Since the root cause of this problem is the time spent playing video games, parents and other guardians can limit the hours that kids use digital games. Ultimately, if these teenagers did not play video games as much, their social skills would be much more advanced.

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