The average daily time spent increase for children with 53 minutes at age of 12 months and more than 150 minutes at 3 years (Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institue of Child Health and Human Development, 2019). And if the children are in home-based childcare or were the child of first-time mothers; they were the ones to report highest amount of screen time (Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institue of Child Health and Human Development, 2019). Majority of the teens use it to pass time i.e. 90% and 84% of them using it to connect with people and 83% to learn new things (Schaeffer, 2019). Youngsters also use smart phone is to avoid interacting with people i.e. 43% (Schaeffer, 2019). This trend is more popular in girls and less in boys.
Teenagers have even said that they feel lonely without their phone (Schaeffer, 2019). More than half of them know that they are using excess of their time on mobile phones and among them roughly half have reported that they have never reduced the time on their cellphone (Schaeffer, 2019). This whole smartphone is very addictive in nature and it is clear, when ever we wake up in the middle of night we get our mobile phone (Dredge, 2018). Sometimes even if we do not use our mobile phones, the people around us being constantly on their phones; incline us towards getting our phone. Thus, this whole thing is a viscous circle.
Either we use it for social networking or for playing games, these all things we feed on. Nick Kuh said, “I’ve worked on apps myself, and it’s mot something I’m proud of” (Dredge, 2018). Thus, the
But, what we see is completely different, about 87% of the children use more than the recommended screen time (Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institue of Child Health and Human Development, 2019). Other simple things like using an alarm clock instead of alarm on mobile phone, respecting the people in the room by not using mobile phones, keeping screen time shortcut on the lock screen; these all can help in controlling your screen time (Kidslox, 2017).