article on internet / use of gadgets
Answers
Many researchers have studied that children spend average of their time on different gadgets like telephone, radio, TV, games, Xbox, iPod and stereo system [1]. Kids use gadgets for various purposes like playing games, watching videos, listening songs, chatting with their friends, browsing different websites. They spend most of their time in these activities and don’t pay attention to their posture, screen brightness, and screen distance from their eyes which ultimately affect their vision and health.
Staring at electronic screen continuously for long time causes distress [2]. Kids suffer various problems like eye irritation or have difficulty to focus for a while. If we are facing problems to cope with screens, imagine how our child’s eyes must be going through. In this era, we can’t keep ourselves or our children away from these devices so we can try to minimize the impact of these devices on our children. It’s really surprising a 2 year old baby can and knows how to use a gadget, similar to how a kid knows to use a feeding bottle. A study has been conducted in USA on kids and result shows 1 out of 3 children can use a tablet or phone before they even talk?
In 2013 Daily mail reported that 29% of the toddlers can easily use the gadgets and remaining 70% are master by primary school age. Really Surprising! According to the USA Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, an average child spends about 8 hours a day watching electronic screens. As they are growing older the use of gadgets also increases. Too much gadget use can also affect the long-term vision problem [3]. Plus chance of myopia also increases in children when they spend about 8 hours daily on gadgets. When people use electronic screens, they blink less. On an average, a person blinks about 15 times in a minute. Due to the high attention required while using an electronic screen, this rate can drop to less than 5 times in a minute. A lot of research has been done on this type of phenomena; this paper describes the positive and negative impact of gadgets on children (Figure 1).