It may be a mission impossible, but doctors have warned parents to limit their children to just two hours of online activity per day.
The recommendation from The American Academy of Pediatrics has found that giving children unrestricted access to social media, texting, smartphones and laptops can have a huge impact on their physical, psychological and emotional health.
Overuse of such media has been linked with violence, cyberbullying, school woes, obesity and lack of sleep, among other problems.
Dr Victor Strasburger, lead author of the new American Academy of Pediatrics policy, says the major concern is that “many parents are clueless” at how their children are being impacted and fail to set rules around such media usage.
“This is the 21st century and they need to get with it,” Dr Strasburger, an adolescent medicine specialist at the University of New Mexico, said.
“I guarantee you that if you have a 14-year-old boy and he has an internet connection in his bedroom, he’s looking at pornography.”
The new policy takes into account children who use smartphones, computers and other internet devices and expands on the theory of limiting children’s TV use to two hours per day.
Following the research, the policy recommends that the two hours of TV use should also include internet use for entertainment, including Facebook, Twitter, TV and movies. Using the internet for homework is an exception.
The policy made note of a 2010 report, which stated that children in the US aged between eight and 18 spend an average of seven hours on the internet each day, making it the leading activity for children and teens, other than sleeping.
The policy, which has been published online in the journal Pediatrics, found that many children watch movies or TV via the internet and send text messages to friends after “lights out”.
While Dr Strasburger says he realises the findings may fall on deaf ears when it comes to teens, he hopes parents will take the policy on board and set start setting some internet use boundaries.
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