Cell phone addiction

Docs Urge Limits on Kids’ Texts, Tweets

From Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D.

Lindsey Tanner, Associated Press, Oct 28, 2013

Doctors 2 parents: Limit kids’ tweeting, texting & keep smartphones, laptops out of bedrooms. [goodluckwiththat].

The recommendations are bound to prompt eye-rolling and LOLs from many teens but an influential pediatricians group says parents need to know that unrestricted media use can have serious consequences.

It’s been linked with violence, cyberbullying, school woes, obesity, lack of sleep and a host of other problems. It’s not a major cause of these troubles, but “many parents are clueless” about the profound impact media exposure can have on their children, said Dr. Victor Strasburger, lead author of the new American Academy of Pediatrics policy

“This is the 21st century and they need to get with it,” said Strasburger, a University of New Mexico adolescent medicine specialist.

The policy is aimed at all kids, including those who use smartphones, computers and other Internet-connected devices. It expands the academy’s longstanding recommendations on banning televisions from children’s and teens’ bedrooms and limiting entertainment screen time to no more than two hours daily.

Under the new policy, those two hours include using the Internet for entertainment, including Facebook, Twitter, TV and movies; online homework is an exception.

The policy statement cites a 2010 report that found U.S. children aged 8 to 18 spend an average of more than seven hours daily using some kind of entertainment media. Many kids now watch TV online and many send text messages from their bedrooms after “lights out,” including sexually explicit images by cellphone or Internet, yet few parents set rules about media use, the policy says.

“I guarantee you that if you have a 14-year-old boy and he has an Internet connection in his bedroom, he is looking at pornography,” Strasburger said.

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West Australian school bans phones at breaks

Prestigious girls’ school Penrhos College has banned students from using mobile phones during their lunch and recess breaks because of concerns students are losing the art of conversation.

Principal Meg Melville said, even though girls were sitting in groups during breaks, teachers had become aware students were texting their friends instead of talking to each other.

“We decided we wanted to really encourage them during their break times at school to have conversations with one another, face-to-face,” she said.

Mrs Melville said technology was embedded in the curriculum and mobile phones had become an important part of that.

But it was just as important for students to develop conversation skills such as understanding the nuances conveyed by people’s reactions and body language.

“You can gauge how a conversation is going by looking at the way people are responding – you can’t do that in texting,” she said.

“It’s just about being present in the moment. They don’t have to be taking photos of themselves or pictures of what they’ve had for lunch at the canteen.”

Mrs Melville said many adults also did not realise it was “incredibly rude” to look at their phone when with other people.

She said students could still immerse themselves in social media outside school hours.

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