Effects of excessive use of cell phones, tablets and tv screen in early childhood

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I am a clinical psychologist by profession and my area of specialization is children and adolescents psycho pathologies. I have been evaluating and managing almost all the behavioral, emotional, and developmental problems in children and adolescents.

Today I am going to discuss about a very important issue that I think most parents are facing today and due to lack of knowledge or awareness they are not aware of repercussions of screen use in children. Nowadays kids are excessively exposed to mobile and tv screens even kids in their early year have access to screen to such an extent that it is affecting their normal development in many ways. In my clinical practice I have seen hundreds of such cases when parents left the kid on screen for 10-12 hours a day and eventually the kids start showing many problems in behaviors. Most symptoms that I have noted in majority of kids in early years (around 1-3 years of age who were using excessive screens) were speech delays, delays in social skills or inappropriate social behaviors, emotional problems, tantrums, hyperactivity, lack of interest in other kids etc. These are just the few problems that I have observed personally in my clinical practice. These could be many more and yet need to be identified. In older children and adolescents effects of excessive screen exposure that I have observed are like limited socialization, anger management issues, study difficulties, social anxiety, and many more yet need be find out.

There is strong need for research in this area and awareness campaigns for parents should run on national level for every country addressing importance of limiting screen time for children and adolescents. So that we can save our future generations.

Author: Misbah Nosheen

16 February 2024

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