In today’s generation, it’s hard for both children and adults to look away from their smartphones.
The negative effects of digital addiction to young people are heavily documented.
Besides physical repercussions such as joint aches and pains, vision problems, too much screen time can also give rise to aggression and loss of social skills in kids.
“If your teens would prefer gaming indoors, alone, as opposed to going out to the movies, meeting friends for burgers or any of the other ways that teens build camaraderie, you may have a problem,” connectivity expert Holland Haiis says in her book Consciously Connecting: A Simple Process to Reconnect in a Disconnected World.
However, she also said that technological addiction isn’t exclusive to young people: it can affect people of all ages.
In fact, smartphone addicted parents can even be more harmful to children.
According to a study, parents who are texting while attending to their children makes their children feel as though they are being neglected. Not only that, they can even feel that they’re in competition against the device.
Child development specialist Dr. Jenny Radesky of Boston Medical Center was inspired to conduct a study after she noticed that most parents are ignoring their kids in favor of a mobile device.
“Upon completing her research, Radesky concludes that kids who have parents eaten up by their phones are more likely to be attention-seekers,” said a Parent Herald report. “And these kids’ life get screwed up later in life.”
Echoing Dr. Redesky’s findings, Catherine Steiner-Adair, author of Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age, she said that such parents are also more irritable and tend to snap at their children when they are distracted from their devices.
As a result, these children, in an effort to get their parents’ attention, become more silly and rowdy. They also get irritated easily as well.
Parents need to be particularly careful not to succumb to such addiction, particularly during their children’s first seven years of life, because this period is crucial to their development.
“What a parent gives to the child during this period should be of utmost consideration,” Parent Herald says. “Love is the ultimate ingredient and for some kids, it is expressed by uninterrupted time for them.”
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