Trigger Warning: The following post contains potentially upsetting content with references to pornography and pedophilia.
We are bombarded with both screens and opinions about screens, especially about screen time for kids. Some families believe phones and TVs will melt their kids’ brains at a glance. Then others shove a phone in their toddler’s face any time they get fussy. We have very iffy research saying screens will cause brain damage, but then we have TV shows and video games meant to teach our kids life lessons and education. So, which is it? Are screens evil or not?
As a twenty-three-year-old raised in the age of the Internet, I’m here to tell you that it’s not so black and white. Obviously, your kid doesn’t need screens. They can live a completely happy and contented life with no phone, computer or TV access. And yes, just like too much of anything turns unhealthy, too much screen time can cause some serious damage to mental health and attention spans long-term. I know this from years of screen-addicted experience.
I grew up with internet access during the boom of YouTube and free internet flash games. Blues Clues, Dora the Explorer and the Suite Life of Zack and Cody blasted on the television. I spent hours on my dad’s office computer playing video games like Webkinz, Jumpstart World and Wizard101. To this day, my idea of a good time is settling down with a video game on my computer and a YouTube video playing on my phone.
I had screen time as a kid, and most of those memories are precious. When a game or show wasn’t teaching me math or reading, I still experienced a story designed for my age that fostered my imagination.
My parents did a great job of regulating and monitoring my screen time, but some things still slipped through the cracks. While I had a good time surfing the internet, I was still exposed to content that ranged from creepy to deeply disturbing. In retrospect, I saw things that, as an adult, made my skin crawl, mostly because a child had access to that kind of content.
Despite regulations like YouTube Kids and parent controls, it hasn’t improved. In many ways, it’s gotten much worse.
Still, I’m not trying to fearmonger! I am by no means anti-screen. Again, I partially credit video games for making my childhood great. But in this day and age, it is essential for the development and safety of our kids that parents are intentional with what their kids are consuming through their screens and for how long.
The Good
If you research kids shows, you’ll quickly find that most of it is geared towards education, which, to me, is the most concrete pro of screen time. Kids can learn observation skills, reading, math or even other languages from cartoon and live-action characters. Even if a show doesn’t have an education side, it can still teach life skills like communication, kindness and boundaries. A very popular example of this is the Australian cartoon Bluey. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a slice-of-life show about a family of cartoon dogs, with two young sisters Bluey and Bingo as the main protagonists. Behind the jokes and antics, some really meaningful lessons foster emotional development, teaching kids to deal with friendships, familial relationships and difficult emotions.
Video games are also a fantastic way to combine fun and education. Children often have a tactile style of learning, meaning they learn by doing rather than reading or listening. Through gaming, they can actually interact with what they’re learning, which helps cement the information. If they find the game fun, it’s basically sneaking education into their brains.
At the end of the day, video games and TV are just plain fun. As the adage says, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Sometimes the games I played were just dressing up a virtual Barbie or flying around a colorful world as a fairy. They were comforting and exciting all at once. Story-oriented games actually made me love reading and writing even more. I don’t know if I would have wanted to be a writer if I hadn’t experienced so many interesting stories in childhood video games.
But, not to sound like an elderly woman, things may have been better back in my day. Not that kids still can’t experience older media like the shows and games I grew up on, but it’s much less likely that they will. There is an overwhelming amount of content on the internet, and at this point, you really have to wade through a lot of sludge to get to the good
stuff.
The Bad
There’s a slang term thrown around called “brain rot.” People use this term interchangeably to mean different things, like unhealthy obsessions or low-effort internet content. In this case, when I say there’s a lot of brain rot on the internet, I mean there are a lot of videos, shows and games that do nothing productive, but you can’t stop consuming it. You’re not learning anything, and to be honest, you’re not particularly having much fun, but it’s keeping your brain from being bored. Scrolling through TikTok is brain rot. Playing a game where you do the same thing over and over with no challenge is brain rot.
Why is brain-rot content so popular? Because it gives us a small but noticeable dose of dopamine. It allows us to not think, putting a nice comfy pillow between our minds and our real-world troubles. It’s very, very addicting. Proof: My five-minute Instagram break started forty minutes ago and will probably continue after I finish writing this sentence (it did).
Now think about how hundreds of thousands of kids have unregulated access to TikTok, YouTube and the vast ocean of the internet. While internet addiction has yet to be declared as an actual diagnosis, many professionals are seeing a link between children and symptoms of addiction related to screentime.
If your kids have their own phone, or if they otherwise have access to social media, games and the internet, that’s not inherently a bad thing at all. Despite what severe anti-screen people say, you aren’t a bad parent.
But it is important to be aware that too much screen time can have a severe negative impact on mental health. While psychologists disagree on whether screens cause disorders, there is a studied trend that kids with ADHD form an unhealthy dependency on video games. And for all ages, increased screen time is linked with increased anxiety and depression, especially with exposure to social media.
If you’ve ever spent the entire day on your phone, you’ve probably noticed how much it makes your brain feel like sludge. It might put you in a downright sour mood. In my experience, this effect is ten times worse with kids. Having too much screen time gets kids used to instant gratification. If they want to see a TV show, they get it. If they want to play a game, they get it. Their brains don’t get the chance to be bored, creative or thoughtful. This will shape their behavior for years, potentially into adulthood.
So, what do we do about this? Ban screens entirely? Well, you totally could, and some parents do. I’m all for that, but it’s also pretty extreme. I’d recommend a simple little device: a timer. A physical one would be nice so your kids can see how much time they have left, but your phone or the oven would also work. Let the kids know how much time they get when you set the timer, and be consistent with having them give up the screen when the timer goes off.
The Ugly
Earlier, I said I saw things as a child that still make me shake my head that a kid could easily see that on the internet, even accidentally. Sometimes it was horror content, especially videos that pretended to be for kids, but took a gory turn (anyone remember Happy Tree Friends and Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared?). And then, of course, there was just straight-up porn, or other sexualized content, even under the guise of being for kids.
Social media platforms, especially YouTube, will claim that they’ve made the internet safe for your child. Do not believe this for a single minute. YouTube Kids supposedly only allows clean content on their platform. But pornographic content is still rampant on the site. The trend of disguising adult themes under a childlike cartoony cover is even more popular than it was when I was a kid.
There was a period on YouTube Kids that people call “Elsagate,” named after Disney’s Elsa because of the character appearing in so many videos. Dozens of channels made videos featuring crossovers with popular characters, especially Disney and Marvel. Some videos were harmless, but a disturbing amount featured violence and fetish content.
Often, the videos were live-action and featured real children in the skits.
In 2017, outrage at “Elsagate” grew until YouTube cracked down with stricter policies. However, in my opinion, this just made the perverted content creators get more creative with how they hid their videos. At the nursery I volunteer at, iPad-wielding toddlers will watch YouTube Kids, and as of this year, I’ve had to snatch away their screen because they were watching cartoon characters mimic clearly sexual acts. The issue is very much still present. If you want an even more detailed analysis of the state of YouTube Kids, I recommend this video on the topic.
We can’t talk about internet safety without mentioning the obvious: online predators do exist and are scarily clever with the ways they find to talk to kids. Often, they disguise their accounts to look like the accounts of other kids. Usually, they try to communicate via private messaging on whatever app they’re on, pretending to befriend the child and maybe offer them gifts. Even in the video game space, some predators use voice modulators in voice chat to make them sound young to sneak under watching parents’ radar.
A scary part of this is that even children who have been warned about internet safety can be groomed by online predators. They might be tricked, or they might purposefully ignore any safety advice they received.
So, the long and short of it is, screen time isn’t inherently good or bad. It can be helpful and fun, but at the same time, it can be unhealthy. Whatever your decisions on screen time are, it is important to be aware of its effect on the mental health, behavior and safety of your kids. Just like rules about public safety and chores, I’d encourage you to set up consistent household rules with screen time, like time limits and methods of monitoring what content your child is consuming. And with so much “brain rot” clogging the internet, intentionality in finding the shows and games with actual substance that will make a positive impact on your child is an invaluable thing that they will likely appreciate as an adult.
Bethany Brewer is an Orlando-based creative writer and an editorial intern at Connecting Mothers Initiative. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Central Florida and uses it to write blogs, short stories, and video game scripts.
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