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Parents turn blind eye to risk of gadget addiction
For 26-year-old mother Muthia, raising two toddlers at home has not been easy
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or 26-year-old mother Muthia, raising two toddlers at home has not been easy. She has to do all the daily household chores alone while keeping an eye on her two daughters, aged 2 and 5.
Muthia is often faced with a dilemma: She has to do all the chores, but her toddlers want to play. When this happens, Muthia lets her children watch cartoons and toy-unboxing videos on YouTube from her smartphone.
Muthia acknowledged that having too much screen time might negatively affect children in the long run.
"But I cannot deny that smartphones can be very reliable to calm my kids down."
Muthia began to notice the impacts of screen time on her first daughter. The little girl started forgetting some Quran verses she had memorized when she was three. Now she loves to mimic the gestures of her favorite YouTubers, most of whom are adults.
"The worst thing is that she tends to ignore my words while focusing on the phone."
The gadget addiction among children has become a growing concern in Indonesia, home to 150 million internet users and 355 million active gadgets, according to a report by London-based media company We Are Social.
In the past few years, hospitals and health centers across Indonesia have been treating hundreds of children who have shown symptoms of acute gadget addiction like depression and temper tantrums.
The National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA) chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait revealed recently that at least 278 children had received psychological assistance for such issues at several health centers in Jakarta.
Similar cases have also been found in the West Java Mental Health Hospital in Bandung, which has treated more than 200 gadget-addicted children since 2016.
Various studies suggest that leaving young children too long with gadgets can affect their behavior and brain development.
Researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in the United States found that preschool-aged children who have more screen time, as measured by the ScreenQ scores, apparently have lower brain white matter integrity, which affects language and other emergent literacy skills.
Higher ScreenQ scores were associated with less expressive language and a lower ability to rapidly name objects.
"The finding highlights the need to understand the effects of screen time on the brain, particularly during stages of dynamic brain development in early childhood, so that providers, policymakers and parents can set healthy limits," said the lead author of the study, John Hutton, as quoted by AFP.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that toddlers aged 2 to 5 years should only watch one hour of high-quality programming per day under parents’ supervision.
Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) commissioner Margaret Aliyatul Maimunah said that parents should create sets of rules to keep their children from gadget addiction.
The rules include "no phones in bedrooms", "no screen time while eating" and that children can only use gadgets with parental supervision.
"Parents can also check on their kids' phones once in a while to ensure that they don’t use them for negative things,” she said, adding that parents should build open and honest communications with their children.
Margaret also noted dangers to children online, such as cyberbullying and online sex predators.
