Childhood wasted before screen

Simon Rowley. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Meet Sarah who is battling to keep control of 13-year-old Will's electronic life. That's far from easy. Both parents are working and there are three children, aged 17, 13 and 9. Among them they have three PCs, two laptops and a tablet, three TVs, two DVDs and countless PlayStations, Gameboys and Nintendos.

They keep the PCs in their downstairs "homework room" and TV and computer games are allowed only at weekends.

Trouble is, it is difficult to distinguish between legitimate online research and games.

Will* also has his own laptop, which was compulsory at school in Year 6 to 8. He is meant to use it for homework, but 43-year-old Sarah* says: "We'll wake at midnight, hear a sound, and he'll be sitting up in bed watching a DVD."

Similarly in the homework room: "I'll hear certain noises, go in, and he's slipped in to Neopets.com or snuck into the office to play games with someone online in America."

And then there is plain old TV - sitting, snacking and watching bro'Town, and more, for hours on end. That can wreck kids in a different way.

It is all part of a pattern which 110 British teachers, psychologists and children's authors want their Government to stop. Speaking out last month, they called it "the death of childhood" - the end product of major social, cultural and technological changes that are making children more depressed, stressed and pressured than ever before.

They wrote: "Children still need what developing human beings have always needed - real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), firsthand experience of the world they live in, and regular interaction with the significant adults in their lives."

They also need time just to be children.

Dr Peter Watson, of child and adolescent health services in South Auckland, says there are worrying signs here too.

As principal investigator of the first large-scale national survey of those aged 12 to 18, he is alarmed by their high levels of depression and the violence and graphic sexual content on TV, DVDs and electronic games.

"Solid research shows that watching violence desensitises young people to pain and suffering," Watson says.

In other words, if they see people beaten up often enough on TV they're less likely to take it seriously, and more likely to kick someone in the head - and probably, on some level, expect him to get up afterwards.

Other research shows that today's children are more fearful - unsurprising when an average night's 6pm news shows scenes of car crashes and disasters such as houses teetering on the edges of cliffs.

Nielsen Media statistics show that life for 10 to 14-year-olds is bursting with electronic opportunity: 92 per cent have internet access; 42 per cent have Sky; 80 per cent have two TVs in the house; about 50 per cent have mobile phones; and 35 per cent spend the equivalent of nearly a day a week watching TV.

Meanwhile, says Watson, kids are crying out for old-fashioned attention. No matter how they curl their lips at the prospect of TV-free family dinners, remember that 40 per cent of his research group wanted more time with one or both parents.

Paediatrician Simon Rowley, of Brainwave, which focuses on the incontrovertible link between childhood experience and brain development, is convinced that too much cybertime has an impact on young children's still-plastic brains.

It means children get less time to themselves, less time for free, imaginative play, he says. "The idea of giving children flash-cards and teaching them to learn by rote memory as a way of developing intellect is nonsense."

What works, he says, is letting children explore the world: to make a dam in a mud puddle and watch how the water comes up and drowns things. What happens when the dam flows over, when they make a hole and let it gush out. Nothing makes up for direct, tangible experience. "We've gone a bit overboard with the intellectual before the experiential."

Creative play is also how we make emotional sense of the world. "Having social interaction with other people is terribly important in how you develop socially as a person. Sitting in front of TV videos and GameBoys is learning how to interact with a screen. Totally passive."

He suspects that a small yet significant rise in the incidence of autism - a condition where people have serious problems relating to others - may have something to do with all this.

"Maybe there's an important time when children should be learning [how to tune-in to other people] through play and interaction with other human beings, and they're having interactions with screens," Rowley says.

"And maybe that's why we're seeing a bit of a rise in these autistic spectrum disorders. That's my theory."

Rowley also talks about the link between what people see on TV and what they do.

"You see kids watching a tennis match. As soon as it finishes they rush outside and get out their tennis racquet, having not shown any interest for the past two weeks. You have to be suspicious."

THE INTERESTING thing is that different activities activate different parts of the brain.

For example, Rowley says, modern technology shows that children who learn violin using the Suzuki method develop certain parts of their brains.

"We can also look at how they function later, and see that their memory and cognitive function is better than for children who haven't learned.

"An Xbox is probably good for a certain part of your cerebellum, but probably a very small part."

Then there's the materialistic factor. As Rowley says, it is all a matter of priorities. Some families from the same socio-economic group choose to have mum or dad at home and rely on one wage. Others choose the private schools, overseas holidays, label clothes for the kids and all the toys. "There's incredible commercial pressure on kids," Rowley says.

"It fosters materialism and product-related thinking, which is the opposite to spiritualism."

Certainly teenagers like Sarah's Will constantly pester their parents to buy more games and lower the barriers.

Although Sarah insists that Will should use games recommended for children 8+ he wants the 15+ versions he insists his friends are using.

"I just say, 'Bad luck. You've got me for a mother and you're not having them'."

For all the downside of the toxic childhood - sitting like a mushroom in a darkened room, swigging Coca-Cola and grazing on chips, interacting with a screen instead of real people - there are advantages.

Family therapist, Dr Kerry Gould, reminds us: "This is a really great time to be a kid.

"Kids have more of a voice than ever before and they're so smart and wise."

She points out that TV is great when the whole family watches together.

"My kids play obscure, mysterious, made-up games like Simpsons' Trivia, based on the TV programme. And socially there are lots of good things happening when a group of teenage boys play Xbox games. It's part of their culture."

Computer games also have an upside. Gould's boys have learned "amazing amounts" from games such as Age of Empire.

Sarah's children owe their maths prowess to the computer game Numberworks.

"And Will has played Maths Storm since he was 4.

"He's now in the the 98th percentile for maths for his age - and he swears that the computer games are why he's so good."

What parents need to do is insist their children take the antidotes: more time with the family, fresh rather than processed food, and most important, time on their own to explore and make sense of their world.

Take Sarah's Will. Once they limited him to an hour maximum on-line, stepped up his water consumption and added magnesium to his diet, his migraines dwindled from one a week to one a year. "He also gets up early and goes to athletics before school."

As Dr Rowley says, nothing replaces old-fashioned rules and values - restricted cybertime, family meals. "I like to see children running around on the grass, climbing trees, rolling around in the dirt."* Not their real names

What you can do

* Spend time with your children - despite the grumbles, they want it.
* Talk with them about the addictive nature of electronic games.
* Watch the games and programmes they watch.
* Make yourself aware of how much time they spend on computers and games.
* Remove TVs, computers, hand-held Nintendos and laptops from pre-teens' bedrooms.
* Encourage sport.
* Discourage eating in front of TV.
* Try to get a family meal on the table once a day.
* Take them out for a bike ride, hike, picnic and to the library.
* Choose and watch DVDs together.

The facts

* Exposure to violence and sex on TV, movies, DVDs and electronic games desensitises children's behaviour, making them more likely to become violent.
* The more TV children watch the more likely they are to be obese and unhealthy.
* One in five children is overweight and one in 10 obese.
* The more TV children watch the worse they do at school.
* 40 per cent of children want more time with their parents.
* Youth 2000 surveyed 10,000 youngsters aged 13 to 18.