by Sofia Avery, Consultant and Researcher, Digital Content and Media.
For teenagers and grown-ups alike, nowadays, it’s all too easy to let our worlds revolve around screens.
From checking our phones the moment we wake up to watching some evening entertainment before bed, we’re never far from a digital device. This is certainly
something not to take for granted since technology allows us to do wonderful things. But in the same breath, it’s important to be wary of the impact that overuse of digital devices can
have on our overall health and wellbeing.
Adults should already be in tune with the impacts of excessive screen time, but these negative effects can often go unnoticed by young people. Worryingly, perhaps, one report
found that children and teens aged between 8-18 spend an average of 7.5 hours every day
looking at screens purely for entertainment. With children using phones and other digital tools earlier in their lives than ever before, it’s imperative that we help our teens form healthy relationships with technology from a young age. This doesn’t mean removing technology from their lives, which we all know is impossible in today’s tech-centric world. The key is striking the right balance since not all screen time is necessarily ‘bad’.
My tutor, a tutoring company in the UK, created a guide to help manage your teen’s tech habits. Find the guide here. It provides useful tips and advice on how you can form healthier relationships with your devices as a family. It also highlights some of the signs that your teen may be using their screens too much or in a negative way. Making it a collective effort to manage technology use in the home will encourage your teens to make more positive choices, which they’ll hopefully hang onto as they enter into adulthood.
This blog post and the guide shared are provided by Sofia Avery and MyTutor.co.uk. Everything said in this space is not responsibility of Dexterity Club.