"As a working mom of four, Anne Whitmore knows the draw of an iPad screen all too well that's why she and her husband have some hard limits in place, allowing their kids just an hour a day on their devices after school. After dinner, the tablets and phones go away, and there are no screens except for a bit of TV watching."
"Despite their rules, Whitmore says it's not always easy to avoid screens, or know how to manage them especially when she's working from their Surrey, B.C., home and tending to her kids' demands for entertainment. As a parent, we're constantly struggling with how do we prepare our kids for the future? How do we get them ready for a digital world, but also balance the need for, you know, having a broader perspective and having other skills of critical thinking and social-emotional intelligence?"
"And according to a new Canadian study out Friday, all that screen time can also have an impact on school performance. The study by a team from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children (also known as Sick Kids) and St. Michael's Hospital was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It found that children who spent more time on screens before age eight scored lower on standardized tests."
Parents often set strict device limits, such as one hour after school and removing tablets and phones after dinner, but managing screens remains challenging when caregivers work from home. Excessive screen use is associated with poor mental health, reduced sleep quality, and lower physical activity. A Canadian longitudinal study tracked more than 3,000 Ontario children from 2008 to 2023 using parent-reported screen time across TV, video games, computers, and handheld devices and compared those measures to EQAO standardized test scores. The study found greater screen exposure before age eight correlated with lower test scores and with emotional and anger-management problems.
Read at www.cbc.ca
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