At the outset, I pose three questions. Does your child spend more time with smartphones? Do you feel your child is addicted to smartphones? Are you worried about your child’s phone addiction? If you answered yes to all three questions, you may definitely want to address this problemand protect your child.
Hence, the three key pointswhen addressing this issue are: 1.What signs say that your child is addicted to mobile phones? 2. What are the adverse effects of mobile phone addiction? 3. How to use sports and physical activitiesto rid your child of mobile phone addiction?
Signs of smartphone addiction
Smartphone addiction or internet addiction is known as “monophobia”, which is the fear of being without a mobile phone. As a parent, first, you should be aware of your child’s behaviour. You can observe and identify whether your child is overusing the smartphone.
Researchers have identified the following key signs displayed by children: Using different types of devices (social networking, texting and gaming), sleeping problems, inability to focus on daily tasks, if you do not give the phones they become angry, upset, and irritable, start to argue with parents about mobile phones and credits, worry about phone battery status and credits, signals, spend more time on texting, video games, Facebook, etc., physical isolation from family, and having a “fear of missing out” (FOMO).
If your child is displaying the above factors, it gives you some alarming signals of your child being addicted or progressing towards mobile phone addiction. There are physical, psychological, and social dangersof mobile phone addiction that you should be aware of.
Dangers of mobile phone addiction
Physical issues/digital eye strain: The overuse of mobile devices would expose abundance of screen light to child’s eye. This would make eyes fatigued, which can lead to eye pain, burning sensations in the eyes, headaches, and evenblurred vision.
Increase the risk of obesity: Kenney and Gortmaker (2017) found that when device usage hours are increasing, the risk of obesity also increased.Obesity leads to many health issues such as diabetics, heart diseases, etc.
Neck problems: Neck pain resulting from looking down at the mobile phone fora longer period.
Dysfunction of fingers: Since playing games and texting requires heavy use the fingers, fingers may start to malfunction with time.
Psychological issues
Psychological effects of phone addiction are more concerning, since identification as well as treating psychological issues is more complex and difficult. Some such concerning psychological issues are as follows:
Fuelling anxiety and depression: Studies have commonly found anxiety among the people who over-usemobile phones, especially when people decide to use technology to escape from their stress.
Most of the video games as well as social media posts and news contribute to stress building. The in-built competitiveness of video gaming triggers anger, sadness and feeling of loss among players. Additionally, it is found that low credit, low battery status and low signals also make them feel anger. Overall these situations increase the anxiety and depression among overusers.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD): Panagiotidi and Overton (2020) argue ADHD symptoms are associated with increased smartphone addiction risk. When children give full focus to video gaming, movies, and social media they make it impossible to focus attention on any one thing for more than a few minutes without feeling required to move on to something else.
Increased loneliness: When they lose the online, phone battery or signals they feel loneliness.
Sleeping problems: Mobile phone use at bedtime has an adverse effect on their physical as well as psychological health. The blue light released by the phone screen controls the production of melatonin which helps to control the sleep hormones. Inadequate sleep leads to several chronic health problems, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
If you worry that some of these signs are visible in a child who is addicted to mobile phones, reaching the professional help (e.g., Doctor, counsellor) is the most suitable option.
Social issues
Relationship problems: A mobile phone addicted child might isolate from friends and family, and spending time absorbed in the digital world. Because of that, they would struggle in developing their social skills and their ability to deal with society.
In more severe situations, when physical, psychological, and social factors reach extremely negative ends, such addicted people would struggle to control themselves. Such would lead to efforts of harming themselves and even attempts of suicide.
Sports and physical activities
Sports and physical activities facilitate the development of attitudes and various social skills (e.g., improved self-esteem, goal-setting, unity and leadership). Therefore, sport can be successfully used to prevent mobile phone addiction among children.
Limit screen time and encourage to do house chores (home-based physical activities). You can limit the screen time with mobile phones and get them to do house chores like sweeping, gardening, cooking, washing dishes, washing clothes, cleaning the house, etc. Through those activities, they can be physically active well as it helps to avoid the phone usage time.
Establish a phone-free time period every day and include family sport time. You can create a family sport time and do small sports activities, exercises with them. Remove all technological devices in that time and only focus on sports activities.
Keep mobile devices away from the bedroom and do mind relaxation activity. Keep away the child’s phones at their bedtime and encourage them to do bedtime yoga exercises and give them to listen to the deep sleep music. Encourage them to do deep breathing it will help them to calm down and relieve all the tension at the end of the day.
Change the thinking pattern of children by introducing sports and physical activities. Talking to children about the importance of sports and physical activities would help to change their thinking pattern and to get rid of mobile phones. Encourage and support them to participate in the school sports activities once school starts.
Be a role model and limit your screen time and be active. Most importantly, you as parents should be a role model and limit your screen time to do exercises and sports activities. Children do learn from their adults and parents as their role models.
Start the day with Yoga or Aerobics. Not only ending your day, but start your day with Suraya Namaskaraya (Sun Salutation) aerobics exercises. It helps to keep your body and mind fit for the whole day. If you think you don’t have time, simple suggestion is to wake up 30 minutes earlier than your usual wake up time and dothese exercises for 30 minutes a day.
Make rules. As a parent, you can establish family rules for your children. Through games, you can teach them to obey the rules and win the game. Likewise, unintentionally they learn to obey your family rules. In the meantime, you can make rules on mobile phone use time, places credit times, etc.
Replace mobile phone with a sport. Most young children treat mobile phone as toys. As a parent you can give them a chessboard instead of the phone. A chess game is like a brain tonic sport that enhances concentration, patience, and perseverance, as well as develop creativity, memory, and learning to make tough decisions and solve problems flexibly.
Parents can practise these activities with children to improve their physical, psychological as well as social health and prevent them from mobile devices addiction. As parents we have the responsibility to control your child’s behaviour to secure a healthy future for them. Don’t let them control you!
(The writer is from the Department of Sports Science, University of Sri Jayewardenepura)