Transcription:
The Effects of Screen Time on Our Children

Maggie McKay (Host): Through the decades, parents have had battles with their kids over how much time they spend on media, whether it was radio, then tv, then video games, cell phones, and now social media. So how do parents balance their kids time on these devices? My guest is pediatrician, Dr. Sun Lee, who will tell us the effects of screen time on our children. Red flags, how much is too much? And more. This is Wise and Well presented by Community Memorial Healthcare. I'm Maggie McKay. Dr. Lee, it's a pleasure to have you here to talk to us about what all this screen time means to our kids. So to start, how much screen time is okay for my child?

Dr Sun Lee: When we talk at well child checks to parents, we'll talk about, about two hours is probably the upper limit, But then also the younger you get, it should probably be less. For example, I have a three year old, when she was two, we gave her no more than 20 to 30 minutes total. But usual recommendation for a school-aged child is about two hours.

Maggie McKay (Host): And you mentioned, younger in age. I saw on a plane an 11 hour flight. A little girl. She couldn't have been even five years old, and she was literally on her screen almost, I don't know, 10 hours and I thought that can't be good. Not judging, but that cannot be good, right?

Dr Sun Lee: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I totally feel for those parents. I recently went to Hawaii with my six year old and my three year old. And we hadn't traveled up to this point because we had to make that decision of, one, we didn't want to be those parents who had a screaming child on an airplane. Because you feel for the other passengers. But the other part was how do we keep them entertained for that six hour? and so, some of the things that we did try to do was we tried to do the red eye. So they would kind of sleep through the flight, but then we tried to keep them entertained with other things.

We brought crayons. We brought coloring books. We brought stickers things to do on the plane. But if one of those things is that the only way that you're gonna get through any type of trip is to have a screen in front of your child. It's one of those moments where you have to ask yourself as a parent, is my kid too addicted to that screen that the only way I can go anywhere is to put some type of screen in front of them.

Maggie McKay (Host): Can you tell us about red flags that may signal a child becoming addicted to their phone?

Dr Sun Lee: This could be just, toddlers. This could be, children, this could be teenagers, but one of the big red flags, and one question I always ask parents is, does your kid have temper tantrums because of the phone or the tablet or watching tv? And if your kid is starting to have meltdowns because of it, You should start to ask the question why? I say the same thing sometimes an adult medicine, when I was a med student, we would talk about, if you have a patient who when the family approaches them about cigarettes or drugs or alcohol and they start to get very upset, that should probably be a red flag for you.

And the same thing for our children is that we find that these devices and TV and video games are really addictive. So if your kid's starting to have meltdowns, probably should start asking why they're having that meltdown.

Maggie McKay (Host): And Dr. Lee, when it comes to educational content is extra screen time okay when it's spent on that?

Dr Sun Lee: So I think it depends what we're talking about. If we're talking about homework, I don't think you really have a choice, but I do find that the educational games that were given to our kids, those are also very addictive. And I actually experienced this myself with my six year old when he was two. There was a game called the Reading Train game and, it was helping him identify words. But the part that was really interesting to me was that he was doing this. It wasn't so much the learning that was a problem, because I thought was great. But he was trying to win these rewards, win these prizes, and I think that there was this definite addiction to getting to that next award, that next prize, getting the coins.

He started to have more and more meltdowns. So even though there may be some benefit to it, I think have to pick your poison there. I think there's other ways to teach your kids educationally. And I know as parents we're very busy and as we're talking right now, the three year old is wondering the office here and now, worried about, okay, is she entertained enough? But at the same time, if it leads to further addiction, is that something that's worth that battle, or worth the problems that it's going to leave with her children.

Maggie McKay (Host): And you touched on this a little bit, but maybe you could expand on it. Is it okay to use technology as a way to keep my child calm? Like let's say you are in a church service, you know, you see that a lot like when you're just desperate and you have the little person quiet?

Dr Sun Lee: The example of a church situation, what I would say is that if you need to get your child calm, I would actually say it would be better to stand up and go ahead and leave the service. And as a kid remember, parents bringing the crayons and things like that, and I do understand, using some types of distractions because sometimes, when the minister is very motivated by the spirit. They sometimes go very long. But once again, if you're using crayons and a piece of paper, there's not as much of that addictive property. If you're having to use an actual, video or video game that has been scientifically proven to have a dopamine release, very similar to using drugs, that's probably the wrong way to go about it.

Maggie McKay (Host): So what are possible downsides to phone and tablet use in children?

Dr Sun Lee: The biggest thing is, number one is just the fact that they get addicted to it. So as I previously mentioned, our brain has pleasure, responses and these dopamine rushes. And what they're finding is that with, whether it's YouTube videos or whether it's just picking up your phone, to see that if somebody likes something that you put on social media or even just playing a game that dopamine. Release is very similar to when people do drugs, and this is why they have these temper tantrum because they're becoming addicted to it. And we commonly think of addiction of drugs and alcohol, but addiction can be so many different things, right? Some of us get addicted to foods, addicted to gambling, and video games and screen time do become one of those things.

Maggie McKay (Host): And what about those camps where they take away all your electronics and you have to just live for a week with no technology. Do you think those are effective?

Dr Sun Lee: I think those could be effective only if you end up practicing those things at home. So for example, like I always talk about physical therapy with my patients is that I'll have a child with knee pain or back pain and I'll tell them, Hey, you're gonna go to PT. And you might start to feel better a little bit from going to PT. But the most important thing is instituting those things. At home, and so if we're sending a kid to camp for one week of no screen time, but yet when they come home the same things are happening all over again, then I don't know that that's making any difference.

Maggie McKay (Host): I notice we've been talking about little kids, but teenagers, ugh, that's a whole nother level. I mean, you can hardly pry that cell phone out of their hand. And it seems like it gets worse when they get in high school and worse when they get in college. I noticed that when my son was younger and he went to camp over the summer, for a couple weeks, two weeks at the most. He was so much calmer and happier and connecting with nature than when he had his cell phone. I mean, it was a marked difference. And I thought, oh, that's so sad, you know? And he didn't miss it. And he said it was so much better without my phone, but they almost need it to survive socially these days.

Dr Sun Lee: Yeah. And that's the thing that's become really, really difficult, Is that, when I was in high school, I had friends and we played games like, soccer games, or we played NBA live on the PlayStation or on the. Nintendo. But the other thing that's come in contact was video games. And then the whole social media component is their social structure in school starts to become related to these video games and to Instagram. And so I have a patient who he got very upset about Fortnite because he said, well, all my friends are on there. If I'm not playing, then I'm missing out.

Maggie McKay (Host): That's what my son said.

Dr Sun Lee: I mean whether it's adults or children or teenagers, the FOMO thing is for real. Right? and that's the thing that we're battling here, is that I do have some parents who, their kids are like 15, 16 years old and they have no phone. And some of these kids are okay with it. And then I have some kids when the parents take away the phones, cuz their grades are poor, they're doing stuff they shouldn't be doing, they're lying. It's like their whole world explodes. And it's a complete meltdown. And I think that's where from the beginning, we have to start having boundaries when it comes to having a phone or understanding of what having a phone means.

I do try to tell my patients, that have phones that your phone is not a right. It's a privilege and if you start to lie, your grades go down, you become too addicted to it. you do things that you're not supposed to. I tell them that their parents' responsibility is to take that phone away. So I also put the onus on the parents. It's really hard for parents now because things like phones, it's something that we didn't grow up with and so we're trying to navigate. parenthood with something that we don't truly understand, on their level or sometimes even how it affects us as adults.

Maggie McKay (Host): And then there's the whole safety issue. They need to have the cell phone so they can call you or you can 360, track them and see where they are when you can't get ahold of them.

Dr Sun Lee: Yeah, sometimes the kids get really mad when I say this. If you go to the Verizon store and you ask them about flip phones, they will bring out a cardboard box and they still have flip phones. So, if it's purely to call your parents, I think you can do that. I do know that they have other tracking devices that are GPS locators for kids, so it doesn't have to be that cell phone. And once again, here you have to pick your poison. In my family, I have, a lot of uncles who were, basically functional alcoholics. And when I got to college, I realized I liked video games way too much.

And I have a joke with my wife that if I had an iPhone when I was in college, I probably wouldn't have become a doctor because I would do is I'd play videos with my roommate. I'd probably go a little too far, and then I would leave and go to a library, I'd go to a lecture hall, and I would isolate myself from the world. Get my work done. If there was a phone that was going with me, I probably would've started playing video games on that phone, or my friends would've started text messaging me and I would've gotten distracted just because my personality as a person is so addictive.

And so I have to be very careful, even as an adult, sometimes I turn on the screen time app on my phone just to look at what I'm doing. Did I spend more than 30 minutes on Instagram or Facebook? And so even as a parent, I have to watch myself because I'm also modeling for my own children.

Maggie McKay (Host): That's a really good point to, monitor yourself and look once in a while, how much time am I spending on the screen myself, because we have to be an example I guess. So anything else we should know about the effects of social media and children?

Dr Sun Lee: So the other parts with social media, especially Instagram and TikTok now, is that how tied in teenagers their self-esteem is with the likes and the friends and the followers that they have. And I also worry about, we always had this problem even in the nineties where you thought that you should look a certain way when you saw supermodels or actors and people in media. But now you're having people who are, quote unquote Instagram famous or just a regular person who they post pictures of themselves. And the other thing that's just wild to me is just. These filters work.

And so sometimes people are posting pictures of themselves and they actually look nothing like they really look. I see it with my friends where I look at these photos and I'm like, wow, did somebody really lose weight or what happened here? But I think the hard thing is that our children see these pictures of how people look, our sons and our daughters, and they feel like this is how I should look. The other thing is that, many times when people post things on Instagram or Facebook, they post about their life, but it's not really their life.

I always try to use myself as an example and, my wife and I are both doctors and we're both very busy. And my wife, because I have a crazy clinic schedule, she's so supportive and she helps me, to be able to do what I do. But, we have the same struggles that other husbands and wifes do. And it's interesting because, sometimes my wife will be like, Hey man, It's been a bit much lately, and she'll let me know that she's struggling. But when sometimes people look at our posts, we don't post the difficult things. We post the happy things.

The camping trips, the trips, things that made me smile about my kids. And the thing I posted may have been a five minute awesome moment with my kids, but I'm not posting about the, two hours of the I want this, I want that. Oh, he's not sharing. But I think our kids get that same example, So some of times we look at our friends, our married friends, and they think, oh, they have such a great marriage or so supportive, but we're not seeing the real life in the background. Our kids see the same thing. They see their friends posting on Instagram and they think about how their friends lives are so perfect and theirs aren't.

I think we always had that in the eighties, the nineties, but I think it's gotten that much worse because it's so instant with the Instagrams. And so I do think that there's these levels of depression that because they feel like, oh, my life stinks, and then the other part, when you look at the data, when you look at when smartphones first came. Anxiety and depression started to go up and every social media platform that came out first it was Facebook, then it was Instagram, then it was Twitter, and now it's TikTok.

Each time that happens, the rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, it keeps increasing. And so I think the big thing that we need to, think about as parents with these devices is we have to balance, okay, is this what's good for my child. Is this gonna cause problems later on? And I think right now we're in a crisis where so many adults and children, have anxiety and depression. And of course, some of the lockdown and covid has been the cause. But this was happening before. And to think that this is just all Covid is, I think we're fooling ourself. There may need to be a fundamental change in the way that we're raising our kids.

And even, when you were asking about school things with devices used for school, personally, I think that it would be just better if we all went back to paper and pencil. I don't think giving these kids devices, is helping them. I think that it's also causing problems because many of my patients take these devices home and start using the YouTube and they start using the internet on there and it's not filtered to a way that parents can control them, but then they have to have it at home because it's demanded by the school.

Maggie McKay (Host): I agree. I don't see it going back to paper though. Do you?

Dr Sun Lee: No, it, doesn't seem like it, but I, think can't say if we hit a certain crisis, but I think we're in a crisis point right now that I think we need to make decisions about what's the most important thing for our children. And so like my son, sometimes I give him extra homework, but everything extra that we give him, we try to give him on paper and pencil. And I do appreciate that his, kindergarten, his first grade class, all his homework has been on pencil and paper. The school did give us an iPad and I laughed when we handed it back at the end of the year because it had a big layer of dust on it.

Maggie McKay (Host): Good good for you. I was gonna say, when their teenagers get ready to be the unpopular parent, just as an example, my son's friends got cell phones pretty early and we said that's great for them, but that's not our choice for you. And oh my goodness, the daily battles. We squeaked out, I don't know, maybe when he was 13 we got him his first cell phone, which is pretty crazy these days. I don't think you could get away with it at this point, but to remember, you're the parent.

Dr Sun Lee: I tell parents this sometimes when it comes to weight issues or other things, I remember when I took my dog to the vet and my vet told me my dog was overweight. and he just looked at me and I said, But she's always hungry, right? And he looked at me, he says, you're the owner, right? I said, yeah, I guess so. but I and it's so hard, right? I think you know, that moment that you have that child, your feeling is that I'm gonna give this kid the happiness that I feel like you deserve because you love them so much.

But I think that the less boundaries that we have with our children, the more difficult they do become when they're teenagers and I think this also affects them how they interact with others when they're adults. And to be honest, these types of decisions, I have a saying that this is what parents get paid for, You don't get paid to make your kid just laugh and smile and be happy. You get paid for it to give them the boundaries and give 'em the skills necessary to become a well functioning adult.

And it's really so hard. And I talk about this and maybe it makes it sound like a know it all, but it's actually not the case. I sit there at night wondering, okay, am I doing the right thing? Am I making the right decisions? Am I doing things that is gonna be beneficial to my kids in the long term? Or am I a little too tough? I doubt myself all the time. And that's the part that's, so difficult with being a parent, raising them in an ever-changing society.

Maggie McKay (Host): And you're a pediatrician, I think all parents, no matter what, they do doubt themselves daily, well, thank you so much for helping us understand how to better manage our kids' screen time and our own. Actually, this has been so helpful and we totally appreciate you sharing your expertise, Dr. Lee.

Dr Sun Lee: Thank you for having me.

Maggie McKay (Host): . That's Dr. Sun Lee,

and To learn more about pediatric care at Community Memorial Healthcare, visit my cmh.org m y cmh.org. Or you can go on YouTube and look for Dr. Lee there at Community Memorial. He. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out the full podcast library for topics of interest to you. This is Wise and well presented by Community Memorial Healthcare. I'm Maggie McKay.