EDUCATION: Smartphones in children – should we ban them?

I’ll start straight away: should we ban smartphones and tablet screens for children under two? Should we introduce mandatory regulation of screen time for older children? Or should we just explain and educate the public, who are happy that the children are sitting quietly by the luminous rectangles, are quiet, move nicely, don’t move and don’t get angry?

That’s a ten point question. A quarter of the countries on the globe have already adopted bans (for example, Great Britain, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Slovakia or Japan), others are considering a ban or regulation, and the rest are drumming up all sides and educating the public, especially those with the smallest children. Only in our country there is silence on the footpath, as if there is no noise, although you can read about the negative influence of digital technologies on young minds here, here or here. Only in our country, we freely stuff tablets into schools, kindergartens and clubs and force children to play with them. Only in our country is it a rule to equip a child with a phone already in the first grade, and at class meetings, parents fight hard with the school rules so that their children can have their flashing screens even during class. Depression, anxiety and suicide among young people are increasing in direct relation to time spent in front of screens, not to mention obesity, hypertension and other negative phenomena. Insomnia, nervousness, inability to concentrate, irritability, abuse of psychotropic drugs, growth of psychological disorders. Hyperactivity and uncontrolled outbursts of anger. And many similar negative phenomena. It’s an avalanche and there’s no stopping it. Do you now understand why all those symptoms keep growing?

Doctors and teachers, psychologists and psychiatrists are talking about it, even the Czech media regularly write about it (for example here), but apparently it is still not enough. More and more often, mothers are seen in sandpits or on trams with their eyes glued to the screens of their smartphones, even though they should be talking to their children and developing their young brains. Many parents do not even know that looking at screens for longer periods of time irreversibly damages their children’s brains (see here, for example). For many others, it’s just convenient: if you put a flashing screen in your child’s hand, you will certainly have peace of mind from him for many minutes.

We have a lot of evidence, numbers and data. We also have international legislation that we could build on: International Declaration on the Human Rights of Children in the Digital Age supplementing the 1959 UN Declaration on the Rights of the Childthe essential parts of which read as follows:

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• We recognize that children have a basic human right not to be exposed to intentionally addictive devices, platforms and apps, the right not to be exposed to harmful radiation, and the right not to be commercially exploited.
• We urge the immediate adoption and implementation of standards regarding children’s exposure to and use of social media, games and other addictive platforms; and we further demand that advertisements aimed at increasing children’s screen time be restricted.
• We urge government officials to establish standards for NIR exposure based on health considerations and to promote the best technical solutions that protect the health, especially of children and pregnant women.
• We further encourage school administrators to create safe learning environments with no or very minimal NIR exposure using the best available monitoring technologies.
• We strongly encourage broad public education about the unique health risks associated with the continued exposure of children to addictive and harmful platforms and potentially dangerous levels of radiation, and about the legal fiduciary duties of administrators in fulfilling these duties.

We have examples of wiser countries that have enforced bans and strictly enforce them. We have recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the WHO on digital technologies that read as follows:

1. No screens for children under 2.
2. At the age of 2 to 5 years, the maximum stay in front of the screens is 1.5 hours and in the presence of an adult (supervision).
3. For children older than 5 years, a maximum of 2 hours a day and with supervision.
4. No screens during meals and 1.5 hours before bed.

New media and communication networks are an exciting invention. Technology helps us and we use it and love it. In the time of covid restrictions, social networks and all those applications like Skype, Zoom and others helped us to overcome isolation, to work, not to die from the loss of social contacts. Yes – the new age brings changes in lifestyle. Nobody here wants to preserve the present and deny society the many benefits of modernity, as the American Amish do, for example. But is it really necessary to run headlong into everything? Isn’t it better to sit down and think for a while before taking some qualitative and often irreversible steps?

It’s like every tool, every invention, every medicine. In the right doses it helps, in uncontrolled doses it harms. We adults feel it too. Digital technologies help us work, have fun, get information. You can find instructions, tutorials, advice, recommendations on YouTube. We watch movies, chat with our children and friends on other applications. But even we adults feel more and more dependent on ourselves. The number of traffic accidents caused by phones and our inattention is constantly increasing (see here, for example). We are unable to tear ourselves away from our phones, from our screens in the evening. Even us adults can’t do it. What about our uneducated children? They look at the screen five hours a day and mostly all their personal free time.

So let’s think about how to proceed. What will we do for our children here, in the Czech Republic? The options offered are as follows:

1. Ban. For children under two years of age absolute, for older children controlled use with a limited time. As a senator, I have the legislative authority to create and propose a similar ban. I believe that many colleagues would support me. However, there are other interests around us, especially economic and political. There are companies that make pink tablets and children’s phones. Other companies do business with them. There are European projects from which computers and tablets have been acquired, and the main characteristic of the projects is their sustainability. There are schools that have run into teaching online. All those companies, companies, individuals will fight tooth and nail against bans, while smart schools ban electronics during teaching. Those stupid parents attack schools for the same reasons, brandishing basic rights.
2. Recommendation. So that parents, especially those who are expecting and with the youngest children, know what damage the phone will cause in the hands of their children. That he will not allow the small child’s brain to mature, that he will destroy his personality for the future. How easy it is for teenagers to behave online illegally (for example, posting other people’s photos, threatening or mocking), how dangerous it is to let children move in the virtual world without control and without restrictions. Post stats, hard data, max screen hours. Pediatricians should ask their young patients and their parents how often children look at a screen. A number of diagnoses are directly related to the stay online.

To draw attention to simple paradoxes: No parent would let their child wander outside in the dark for five hours unsupervised. But most parents allow five hours of staring at the phone without checking what their dearest child is watching and clicking on. Digital violence that has no borders lurks online. It takes place day and night, at school, on vacation, at home. It catches the child everywhere and causes him psychotraumatization. Even innocent-looking applications add to the frustration of adults, let alone vulnerable children. Digital media is addictive. After all, each of the readers knows that for himself. There is no need for statistics or articles.

1. Support for all offline activities. Taking phones away from children or forbidding them to use them will be seen as punishment by any child. Therefore, it may be more efficient to support anything that can be realistically done in the real world. Sports, weaving baskets, playing in a band, reading books, trips, social activities. Many parents do not know the techniques that can be used to entertain a child and at the same time develop them appropriately. Sure, parenting is complicated, demanding, and everyday, while the phone is at hand without work and right away. Let’s support everything real, real and social.
2. Education in the form of state campaigns. Soft roads are clearly not enough anymore. If we discourage children from alcohol, cigarettes, hard drugs and energy drinks and punish anyone who gives these dangerous lures to children, perhaps we should equally uncompromisingly discourage everyone from being on social networks. Children do not read about the history of Karlštejn on their phones, nor do they look for advice on building a microscope. Most of the children and youth are on TikTok, Instagram and other social networks, where they just mindlessly watch short videos of the more capable YouTubers, while their confidence and mood drop. And the parent doesn’t know that excitement and stimuli in small children can be exaggerated if we give them too much. Whoever offers a child a flashing screen or salty fries from KFC will never succeed with a fairy tale or stewed carrots. The child insists that the stimuli be escalated more and more. He can’t do otherwise. Our brains are evolutionarily set up this way.

The decision is not either – or, and perhaps all four layers need to be launched in parallel. The question is not whether or how. The question is: why haven’t we talked about it for a long time. So let’s get down to it! It’s high time to start. We here, at work, in public space, everywhere.

For some children, it may be too late. According to experts, the young generation is already lost. It’s our fault, the adults, the parents, the society that ignored the warning signs. This can also be attributed to the unrestrained free upbringing and the reluctance to set boundaries for children. However, well-set boundaries will not harm any child. But a bad example hurts. Among other things, children learn by observing. And if a parent always has a smartphone in his hand, it’s no surprise to children that his offspring want the digital pacifier too. Every prevention should start in the family. It’s just that Czech families neglected prevention. Perhaps also because the state has been silent until now, and so it happened that from the third grade, children know much more about digital technologies than their parents, grandparents and teachers.

So now is the high time to think and act. So that we don’t lose even the youngest generation that is being born.

The author is an independent senator and president of the Union of Family Advocates

(editorial for Rodinné listy, 3/2024)