There are many health-related reasons why we should limit how much time our children spend with handheld devices and in front of screens. Their time using tech gadgets should be limited, so it’s important to make good use of it. If your kid spends four hours a day playing games, you should cut this time in half and use half of the new time limit learning to program while the other half is reserved for playing.
Too much time with technology results in children not getting enough exercise. Lack of exercise is not only bad for young bodies, but also hurts how kids’ brains function and develop. In fact, more exercise and less use of tech devices can help improve grades and reduce behavior problems. In this case, exercise is as physical it is as mental.
Recent research has found that toddlers between the ages of two and three who played excessively with tech gadgets had negative affects to their cognitive development. At this age, children need to learn how to develop motor skills, visual skills, and spatial skills. These skills are learned through gadget-free playtime, not through apps or computer games. More and more children are experiencing eye strain from staring at a screen for too long, leading to blurry vision, eye fatigue, focus issues, and even double vision. Remember, your child is still developing and that includes their eyesight! It is best to limit screen time to ensure that children’s eyes develop and stay healthy.
Handheld tablets promote poor posture in children, who are spending too much time hunched over and looking down at a screen. Kids are even spending more time lying on the couch or floor hunched over the screens than they ever have before. Poor posture can cause subluxations, or misalignments, in the child’s spine. These can cause other health or pain issues. Poor posture is even more of a problem for tweens and teens since they are more susceptible to the development of back pain and back problems that will follow them later on in life.
There are many health and social reasons to limit your child’s exposure to all things tech related. You can accomplish this by limiting their time, making a schedule, and trying to use edutainment programs. RoboGarden provides coding education programs in the form of games with vivid graphics. Kids can learn a lot about programming concepts while playing, minimizing their time on the computer because the time that has been spent has been fully utilized it in a useful way. Start your learning journey now with RoboGarden. Register for free.
