We often feel amazed after having seen kids as young as 2 years of age handling electronic gadgets. A kid who is young enough to face difficulty in tying a shoelace properly knows how to use different smart devices and watch videos on YouTube. Building blocks, puzzles, and standard toys are no longer the priority of children anymore. The problem of screen addiction may not seem severe at the beginning. But, as your child grows and reaches the age of adolescence, the temptation of screens, electronic devices, and the Internet can become huge problems for them.
Darker Side of Electronic Gadgets
The negative effects of the Internet vary from mental to physical and to emotional concerns. Parents sometimes feel incapable of stopping their kids from exploring inappropriate content on the web. Here are a few reasons why you need to limit your child’s screen use. Let’s find out what excessive use of electronic gadgets actually does to children:
1. Affects Child’s Development Negatively
Even before the kids reach at the age of 5, they become familiar with screens. This highly affects their learning capabilities. Electronic gadgets do not play any significant role in the development of your child whereas outdoor games do. Children in middle school or high school prefer spending their time while playing video games rather than actively taking part in sports.
2. Causes Aggression in Children
An unbalanced use of screens can cause severe aggression in children. They break boundaries and misbehave with parents, siblings and older members of the family. Some games on the Internet contains damaging content which promotes torture, murder, mutilation, sex. This results in violent behavior of kids. On the other hand, kids detached themselves from other activities just to spend more and more time on the Internet which harms their social behavior.
3. Damages Child’s Progress
Children sacrifice their sleep while using mobile phones or other devices which doesn’t not only affect their development but also results in falling grades at school. An overexposure to technology prevents kids from concentrating solely on their studies. They become careless and start performing poor in studies.
What should Parents Do?
The wave of technology has taken over our lives completely. It is not practical to block your kid’s access from using electronic devices. But, you can minimize their usage to provide them a balanced life. Parents can take control by using a parental control app as efficient as the FamilyTime app, if they want to monitor or limit their use of the Internet. FamilyTime lets you:
- Monitor web-browsing history and usage of different digital apps
- Block addictive apps
- Limit screen time either by scheduling auto screen locks on their devices or by remotely locking it at any time from a distance
To explore various more features, give FamilyTime app a try for free. You can get this app from the app store on your phone or simply by clicking on the buttons given below: