hello and welcome to pete's dock talk tv i'm dr mona and on this episode we're talking all about screen time and your kids make sure to hit subscribe follow me at pete's doctor on instagram and i hope you're watching this on your favorite device because here we go [Music] so on this episode i'm going to be talking about why we as pediatricians want you to limit the amount of screen time as much as possible i'm going to be going through the data and also just the reasoning on a developmental aspect as to why we want
to reduce screens the american academy of pediatrics and the world health organization's recommendations on screen time why i don't consider video chatting or face timing as part of screen time for our little ones and also how to create reasonable screen time rules for you and your family especially in this pandemic so i first want to point out the irony of talking about screen time while you are watching me on a screen i understand that there is a lot of guilt surrounding screen time especially in this pandemic so the point of this episode is not to
make you feel guilted or why are you doing this it's more just understanding the research behind screens and for us to create a reasonable plan for your family so what's the big deal with screens and baby and toddler development when we look at this we have to look at two things we have to look at well what is the screen doing to the infant and toddler brain and then also the fact that if a child is using a screen that can mean less meaningful interactions with the caretaker or a loved one so the first thing
is that screens can cause an unusually high demand of visual input into the infant and toddler brain so imagine when you're looking at a screen you're getting a lot of information from that screen that infinite brain is also getting a lot of information and that is a lot of visual input into their developing brain so their brain is on overdrive looking at the screen looking at all the colors looking at all of that and then when you take that screen away their brain is like whoa i am missing this input so all of a sudden
they'll get a little more flustered they may get a little more angry and frustrated and they may start looking elsewhere for that visual stimulation to keep up with their hyperactive brain so the other thing is that the faster the changes of the visual stimuli the faster your brain has to work to keep up and this is too much visual stimuli for a young developing brain so afterwards with all that excitement and processing that the brain is doing when you take the screen away they can almost seem like they're in a daze sometimes right that there
is some cognitive slowing that we see so there have been many research studies surrounding screen time and that is why you probably hear pediatricians speech therapists other developmental specialists and pediatrics say hey try to reduce the screen time as much as possible because the research keeps coming out that over using screens can have an impact on our children especially with their developing brains so one of the research studies which i'll be attaching to my show notes is a 2019 jam article looking at about 47 children between the ages of 3 and 5. they found that
children who exceeded the one hour of screen time recommendations from the aap had lower white matter integrity in the brain so these parts of the brain are associated with literacy skills such as imagery mental control and self-regulation so we are seeing an impact on this research study with the parts of the brain that control this so the children who exceeded the aap recommendation of screen time performed worse on cognitive tests and were not able to recall information as quickly so they had slower cognitive speed than those who did not have as much screen time so
yes there is a concern with over using screens on the infant and toddler brain especially and when i talk about the infinite taller brain i'm talking about up till five i know this is very hard right now in the pandemic so we'll be going over all of that but what we're seeing here as a summary is that the screens can cause more cognitive slowing it can cause more frustration when you take the screen away and remove that visual stimuli it can also make it harder for them to learn tasks right after so one of the
things we see is that if you're teaching your child something immediately after using a screen they're going to have that cognitive slowing they're not going to pick up information as quickly as they would if they never had that screen in the first place so we talked about what screens can do obviously to the developing brain but now we want to talk about that other aspect when a child is using a screen that means less meaningful interaction with loved ones caregivers teachers whatever that may be so kids and babies learn from their environment they learn from
being on the ground doing floor time they learn from having language having that reciprocity with the caregiver so looking at their face having them talk back and forth they learn by pausing so they learn by all of these things in their environment they don't learn as much from screens i have a lot of parents say well what if it's an educational program then that must be benefiting but the reality is children don't learn from a screen and i'm talking like younger than 18 months two years as much as they do from a caregiver we need
to see their faces they need to see our faces they need to see that sort of facial expressions when they do something how we react and vice versa so that is why it's so important that we have that face to face on the ground interaction and that is what screens can take away for those children one of the big things for me is that screens can have a huge effect on attention span and i use us as an example so imagine we have our cell phones we have social media instagram and it says what it
is it's instagram it's instantaneous our brains have now been programming with we need things right when we want it instant gratification i'm going to look something up and i'm going to find it and that concept is what's happening with screens they are moving through images they're moving through apps and their brain just doesn't have time to be doesn't have time to sit still and that has a huge effect to me on attention span just thinking from a common sense perspective so we want to limit the screens as much as possible so that we can allow
their brain to just relax to process things as slow as possible and i use the example again when we're interacting with a loved one when you're reading a book for example book is a great social and language and developmental activity when you're reading that book you are allowing the child to see the pictures on the book you are allowing them to listen to your words you are pausing and explaining things they are processing the images in real time and in front of you they're also seeing how your lips move so you're able to read with
them it's a social interaction it's also for language development screens don't have that right with screens you're not having that sort of in-person communication the pausing that can happen because it's instant instant instant i want children to be able to slow down i want their brains to in a good way slow down and focus on one activity at a time rather than moving through different images all at once so the other thing is that i want our children to understand that it's okay to be bored the problem with screens that when we hand them the
screen we're saying hey you're bored it's not okay to be bored occupy your brain but rather i want them to be able to explore the toys that they have get creative do imaginative play right this is something really important for children so an example i give is just your older child screaming mommy mommy i'm bored okay well take your ipad i'd rather you ask them and say hey here are your options what do you want to do with it you know where your toys are what do you want to play with for 20 minutes while
mommy does this okay well i'll go play over there i want them to be able to play with their toys and foster that creativity foster that imaginative play for toddlers that are non-verbal this may look like a toddler who cries and you need to get work done so you give them the ipad before you give them the ipad i want to encourage you to create a safe space for them to play and we use a play area with a gate and i put ryan in there and i show him his toys and then if i
need to work in the kitchen i'm right next to him working in the kitchen with an eye's view for safety and he is allowed to explore those toys this may not be long you know some toddlers won't play independent play for a long time but i want you to get in that repetition of doing that before you hand them the screen say well here are our options and what do you want to do with it from a young age you can teach your child that sometimes ryan will cry and so the independent play won't go
anywhere and that means i have to take him out and stop what i'm doing but with the repetition he's starting to understand hey okay it's okay that i'm kind of bored but let me go play with this new toy over here i talk about toy rotation a lot on my instagram because i think it's really important that you are creating a fresh space for children in terms of the activities and input that we're giving them but you can do that without screens now how do you incorporate all this information dr mona you're saying that screens
are going to cause white matter changes they're going to cause my child to have low attention spans and i'm saying the data and i'm just saying some observations our job is to create an environment that balances everything so i do believe that there is some protective measures we can do if your child is using screens but you're also engaging with them in other ways in meaningful ways that is protective in my opinion my worry is that if screen time just becomes screen time hour after hour but if you set aside your screen time i don't
want you to feel that guilt because you're setting that aside and then you're going to be engaging with them whether it's for meal time or other times that you could get work done the american academy of pediatrics says that under 18 months a child should only be using screens for video chatting with a loved one between 18 to 24 months of age that child should be using a screen with a loved one so they're learning alongside their loved one above two years of age so two to five an hour would be the recommendation if the
child's older than five you can set your own screen time rules as a family depending on if they're getting other activities done the world health organization is actually a little more strict they say that over two is when we can start introducing screens so they're a little bit more strict in their guidelines well why is video chatting okay but not other screen activities video chatting has that reciprocity there is that back and forth with that loved one that loved one can call that child's name smile back make sounds back that is different than watching a
cartoon so that is why the face timing and video chatting is okay we do a lot of that too especially in a pandemic it can allow that child to be connected with a family member the other question is what about having a tv on in the background so if your child's not watching that but you just have the noise my concern is that when that tv is on that means less verbal interaction with your child so when you have the tv on in the background there can potentially be less conversational piece there can be less
engagement because you're kind of distracted by that sound if you're able to have that sound in the background and fully be engaged with your child that's awesome but that is the kind of concern with having the tv on in the background so now to my rules i incorporate obviously the aap recommendations my own recommendations and just the realistic parenting in a pandemic recommendations because i get it it's really hard right now a lot of us are juggling a lot we have to be working from home we have to take care of our child and that
is going to make it hard to not have screens when they're convenient to use when you come up with a screen time plan you're going to talk to your partner any other caregivers in the home about what your rules are that is going to be decided upon by you i'm telling you all information but i want you to decide what works for our family and the resources we have you also have to look inside yourself if you are over using screens you can't expect your child to not overuse them too so set aside some time
to talk about the screen time rules you can do that as a family especially if your child's older the taller yours counts you can talk to your older child who's like two plus and say hey this is what we're going to be doing screens are for the weekend screens are for an hour before dinner screens are for x y and z come up with your screen time plan and try to stick with it as much as possible we know that there's going to be times where you have to stray from that but what i don't
want is that you say an hour but then an hour turns to two two turns to three it's very easy to do that when something's convenient so the first thing is under two i want you to try as much as possible to limit the screens i know the aap says under 18 months but the world health organization says two my personal belief is under two this is just an opinion try try your hardest okay and i'm gonna get into obviously if you can't you can't abide by the no screen time rule that's fine but try
your hardest set up some rules that say okay we are only going to use this for our toddler if we need to get some work done but we are going to do meaningful activities when we're not having the screens out that is the way to protect them in terms of not just having them to screen and screen and screen and have them have some developmental engagement with their loved one so another rule that i'm asking is try not to have the screen on during meals meals i consider a form of play there's a lot of
development happening during meal time social emotionally by sitting with a loved one obviously by language by talking about the food and also motor skills for your younger kids by learning how to use utensils selfie so there's a lot of development there and as we would not have a screen during playtime i would not want to scream during meals now i know what you're saying my child will not eat without a screen i want you to try them without it it may mean some tears it may mean some anger i want you to empathize with them
and say i see that you're upset that i'm taking away your screen right now it's meal time after meal we can do screens do you want to watch peppa pig or daniel tiger i want you to start setting those boundaries remember our children may not love the boundaries but it's okay to empathize with them and then also say well what would you like to do after and just give them two choices so that they feel some autonomy behind that choice if you are concerned you can start to lower the increment of how much time you're
doing with the screens but my advice is if you have not ever introduced screens for your child during a meal time keep continuing to do so if your child does have the screen focus on maybe one meal at a time do lunch and then dinner and then breakfast slowly start to get that screen out of the picture so that they can be more focused on the task at hand which is being an intuitive eater listening to their body listening to their fullness cues so besides meal times try to not have the screens on before bed
ideally one to two hours one being the the minimum expectation here why is that we talked about in the research that screens can cause your brain to be hyperactive we want the brain to wind down for sleep so if you're introducing a screen you're not allowing for that wind down process so i want you to spend time as a family before sleep time also encouraging you all not to have screens in the bedroom i know there's going to be exceptions to this rule but try as much as possible for the screens to be in a
communal space before they go into their bedroom especially for the younger children for your older child you can set up the rules that you want as a family that you see fit talking about screen time rules make sure that you as a parent are protecting your child from the internet what that means is creating parental blocks making sure that you are creating a safe space for them to consume information the internet and social media can be a very scary place and i want to make sure that you are touching base with your child on what
they are consuming this is very important for our older children as well i know there's a lot of information there's a lot of guilt surrounding screen time i do believe that there's some protective measures in place that if you are setting aside screen time because you need to get something done in this pandemic but you are also engaging with your child that can be protective but i want you to consider the rules especially for your child who's under two as much as possible remember that we are all doing our best so at the beginning of
every week or the beginning of every day you're coming up with that rule that works for your family based on the resources you have if you need help taking care of your child because you need to get some work done and a screen is going to help you that's fine but i encourage you to try other things before reaching for that screen no one is getting upset that this actual screen is being used but we don't want it to become a snowball effect i don't want it to be that we have relied on our screen
so heavily that our child is not able to do other activities this is all about balance i'm sure you all watching this will say that when i was a child i watched a lot of tv and i turned out fine i agree with that when our child is older older than five older than six we are prioritizing all the other activities that need to get done but screens are okay when we mix it in to other activities we're talking about more of the younger ages the under two where interaction with the caregiver is ideal that
doesn't mean introducing a screen is going to ruin your child's development it just means that we have to create realistic boundaries that work for our family thank you again for watching this episode make sure to comment and hit that subscribe button to stay up to date on all my future episodes also follow me at pete's doctor on instagram and subscribe to the pete's doctor podcast i'll talk to you all next week
