An influential pediatricians group is recommending that parents ban tweeting, texting, laptops, smartphones, etc. from their teens’ bedrooms and limit entertainment screen time (including the Internet) to two hours a day, except for homework.
So, The Question is, Do you agree or disagree with the recommendations, and why?
I would say that I disagree with the terms of the new policy, for the sheer fact that it’s just too much. Children and teens today do spend a lot of time online, but I don’t think it’s as bad as people are making it out to be. Trying to impose strict limits on children's’ technology is inconvenient for the parents, irritating for their children, and may even indirectly cause a stall in learning. If other families are anything like mine, parents almost wouldn’t even be capable of enforcing rules such as this. Most parents have more than one child to monitor. They can’t hang over multiple children to be positive that what they’re doing is “just homework.” And what happens when their children are home alone? Their parents couldn’t possibly keep such careful watch from their desks when their children first come home from school. Also: If students are used to having limitless access to this technology, what would happen when it gets cut off almost completely? They’ll get bored and start sneaking around and quite frankly, they’ll probably get annoying. Have you ever had a bored child with a short attention span clung to your ankle? I’ll tell you, I’m the oldest child in my family; I’ve dealt with that. It really isn’t fun at all. And what if what students are doing on the internet is productive, but not school work? They could be organizing playlists, doing college research, writing stories or poems, maybe even just doing research on something else that spiked an interest in them. Do you think that the great minds of our world stop researching once their teachers tell them to? No. They get curious and they keep looking. It may not be school work, but it’s educational, and why would you want to confiscate that? So here there is a grey area, which makes strict rules even harder to enforce, which is a hassle for both parties. All in all, I think it’s just a bad idea to try to be so hard on children and teens, because it would just be so high maintenance, both to monitor and to have to try to work within a time limit.
I, personally, am given almost total free will when it comes to my technology. I do use my laptop and even my phone for more than half of my homework, so already I’m on my laptop for three hours a day just with school. The thing is, I don’t usually do my homework all at once. I’ll do most of one assignment and then stop to check facebook, or play a quick game to clear my head, and then I’ll finish my homework. This is really effective for me because it keeps the stress down. Even with all the free will that I have, I get to bed at a decent time. I get my work done. Occasionally, I push my limits, but my dad tells me when I do and I am quick to cut back from whatever it is that I’m over doing. Maybe some children/teens aren’t responsible enough for that sort of free will, but that relies on their parent’s best judgement. Another issue is the fact that my dad doesn’t have time to enforce rules like that. I come home and wait for my brother, my dad is at work until around five. Then after he gets home, he has to take my brother to an appointment or my sister to dance almost every day. So he wouldn’t notice if I was going over my limits in the first place. There’s also the fact that I use my laptop for plenty of perfectly productive things. I write a lot, and it’s all online, so if I was banned from my technology after two hours, what would I do? I wouldn’t be able to write, and that’s really my only hobby. I’d be left with nothing to do. So I think that maybe things like students' screen time should be monitored, but to have such strict control over it might be overbearing for everyone involved.
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