Limiting Electronic Media

David LePere, Executive Director, Cherokee Creek Boys School

David LePere, Executive Director, CCBS

Cherokee Creek Boys School continues to recommend limiting screen time for all children in your home – and to collect all the smartphones, tablets and laptops each night so kids are not tempted to use them when they should be sleeping. Most children don’t have the ability to self-regulate when it comes to electronic media, so it’s up to us parents!

All my best,

David

From Richard Louv’s website, Children & Nature Network, November 7, 2013:
The American Academy of Pediatricians issues tougher guidelines for kids’ media use.

In a statement published October 28 in the journal Pediatrics, the AAP, linking excessive media use to a host of health problems, including obesity, recommended that kids should have no TVs or Internet access in their bedrooms, that parents should adopt “family media use plans” that also ban electronic media during mealtimes and after, and reiterated that children should be limited to less than two hours of entertainment-based screen time per day.

Boy watching too much tvIn addition, the AAP urged that children younger than 2 should have no TV or Internet exposure. (Tell that to the companies that are pushing to put electronics in the hands of children in every preschool and daycare facility.) The statement pointed out that the average 8-year-old spends eight hours a day using various forms of media, and teenagers often surpass 11 hours of media consumption daily.

To the AAP’s credit, it does not demonize technology — and does point to some of tech’s educational benefits. It cites a report released on Oct. 28 by Common Sense Media Research, which offered the good news first. Use of “traditional” screen media (TVs, video games, computers) has fallen by more than half an hour a day.

Then came the other news: Almost twice as many children have used mobile media compared to two years ago, and the average amount of time children spend using mobile devices has tripled!

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One Response to “Limiting Electronic Media”

  1. Jeri Stoner says:

    Wonderful idea!!