Pandemic leads to kids overusing screens, alarming parents

The day after New Year's, Mr John Reichert of Boulder, Colorado, had a heated argument with his 14-year-old son, James.

"I've failed you as a father," he told the boy despairingly.

During the long months of lockdowns and shuttered schools, Mr Reichert, like many parents, overlooked the vastly increasing time his son was spending on video games and social media.

Now, James, who used to mountain bike and play basketball in his free time, devotes nearly all of his leisure hours - about 40 a week - to Xbox and his mobile phone.

During their argument, he pleaded with his father not to restrict access, calling his phone his "whole life".

"That was the tipping point. His whole life?" said Mr Reichert, a technical administrator in the local sheriff's office. "I'm not losing my son to this."

Nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, parents across the country - and the world - are watching their children slide down an increasingly slippery path into an all-consuming digital life.

When the outbreak hit, many parents relaxed restrictions on screens as a stop-gap way to keep children entertained and engaged.

But often, remaining limits have vaporised as computers, tablets and phones became the centrepiece of school and social life.

The situation is alarming parents and scientists too.

"There will be a period of epic withdrawal," said Dr Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, an addiction expert.

It will, he said, require young people to "sustain attention in normal interactions without getting a reward hit every few seconds".

Scientists say children's brains, well through adolescence, are considered "plastic", meaning they can adapt and shift to changing circumstances. That could help younger people again find satisfaction in an offline world, but it becomes harder the longer they immerse in rapid-fire digital stimulation.

Dr Jenny Radesky, a paediatrician who studies children's use of mobile technology at the University of Michigan, did countless media interviews early in the pandemic, telling parents not to feel guilty about allowing more screen time.

Now, she said, she would have given different advice if she had known how long children would end up stuck at home.

"I probably would have encouraged families to turn off Wi-Fi except during school hours so kids don't feel tempted every moment, night and day," she said. "The longer they've been doing a habituated behaviour, the harder it's going to be to break the habit."

The concern is not just over the habits of teens and tweens.

Scores of children under 10 are giving countless hours to games like Fortnite, and apps like TikTok and Snapchat.

An app called Roblox, particularly popular among children ages nine to 12 in the United States, averaged 31.1 million users a day during the first nine months of last year, an increase of 82 per cent over the year before.

Overall, children's screen time had doubled by May as compared with the same period in the year prior, according to Qustodio, a company that tracks usage on tens of thousands of devices used by children, ages four to 15, worldwide.

Children turn to screens because they say they have no alternative activities, while the technology platforms profit by seducing loyalty through tactics like rewards of virtual money or "limited-edition" perks for keeping up daily "streaks" of use.

"This has been a gift to them - we've given them a captive audience: our children," said Dr Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Research Institute.

The cost will be borne by families, Dr Christakis said, because increased online use is associated with anxiety, depression, obesity and aggression - "and addiction to the medium itself".

Crucially, the research shows only associations, which means that heavy Internet use does not necessarily cause these problems.

What concerns researchers is that the use of devices is a poor substitute for activities central to health, social and physical development, including physical play and other interactions that help children learn how to confront challenging social situations.

Yet adhering to pre-pandemic rules seems not just impractical, but downright mean to keep children from a major source of socialising.

"So I take it away and they do what? A puzzle? Learn to sew? Knit? I don't know what the expectations are," said Ms Paraskevi Briasouli, a corporate writer who is raising four children - aged eight, six, three and one - with her husband in a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment.

Device time has replaced sports on weekday afternoons and soared 70 per cent on weekends, she said.

Before the pandemic, her eight-year-old, Jesse, sometimes used his father's old iPad Pro. During the pandemic, he got an iPad mini and so did his six-year-old sister. "And we got a Nintendo Switch because everybody got a Switch," Ms Briasouli said.

Some days, she said, she watches her son sit with three devices, alternating play among them.

The boy's father, Mr Jesse Tayler, said his concerns about the heavy technology use were offset by some optimism that his children were becoming able digital natives.

Dr Humphreys believed adults and children alike could learn to disconnect. But doing so has become complicated by the fact that the devices now are at once vessels for school, social life, gaming and other activities central to life.

A dynamic playing out in many families was on display during an interview with the Reichert family.

James is an only child who started high school last year and said that because of Covid-19 and distance learning, he did not have many chances to meet new people.

Instead, he hangs out online with his old friends.

"The only way to talk to them, besides going to their house, is through my Xbox," he said. "We play on there every night."

As a new semester started, the parents put new rules into effect: no Xbox or phone during the weekdays for at least a few weeks, and their use will have to be earned for the weekends, through chores.

His mother feels wrenched by the whole thing.

Before the pandemic, James had so many options, she said. Now, "it makes me feel bad when I try to restrict him. It's his only socialisation".

NYTIMES