If you have a child or teenager at home, then the most common and daily topic or debate is exactly staying on the phone all the time. Teen health expert Hina Talib reveals the actual amount of time a teenager can spend in front of technology devices.
“As doctors, we're really starting to move away from the concept of fixed screen time,” says Talib. "It just doesn't seem very useful to us, because teenagers can spend their day on screens for education, to communicate with parents, etc. Instead of thinking about minutes and screen time, we need to get young people thinking about the quality of screen time.”
In other words, it's less about how many minutes or hours a teenager is spending on their phone, but the type of content they're consuming. Think about what they are using the screen for and what the purpose was, says the doctor, adding that parents should talk to teenagers about this approach.
So something that makes your teen feel good (say, spending an hour or two texting with friends or watching a documentary on Netflix) might be considered a good use of time, compared to something useless.
How much time should teenagers really be spending on phones and technology?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) has estimated that eight to 10-year-olds spend about six hours in front of a screen a day (on their phones or other devices), 11-14 year-olds consume up to nine hours per day and ages 15 to 18 are limited to 7.5 hours. And these numbers seem pretty high, don't they?
But the health expert says you should no longer worry about the hours they spend on phones and other technological devices, but how they spend it and what materials they see.
Apparently, many parents can breathe a sigh of relief after this article.
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Source: Pure Wow
