Simply speaking, it is just about impossible for us to do two entirely different things at the same exact time, and even more difficult to do two different things at the same time well. For example, kids don’t work on their math problems and practice hitting baseballs at the same time, nor do they complete their school reading while playing basketball. The point is that we can only focus our attention on one thing at a time, generally speaking, and our choice of where we focus has a direct effect on our mental health and wellness. Extrapolating this idea further, when kids spend hour after hour sitting idle in front of their smart phone or gaming system, there are countless things that they are not doing, including life activities and experiences that have a direct effect on their mental health and wellness.
The cost of staring at screens all day
Just think about the differences between two random kids, one who wakes up each day and engages in real-life activities (i.e. playing at the park, meeting friends for lunch, riding bikes, going fishing, climbing trees, etc.) versus a second kid who spends most of his day alone in his bedroom with curtains pulled, sitting in a gamer chair playing video games (and don’t forget the bedroom refrigerator, needed to make sure the kid never has to leave his room). You don’t need to be a psychologist to immediately see the dramatic differences in lifestyles between these two kids, nor do you need to be a mental health expert to confidently hypothesize that these two kids are living two entirely different lives based on how they spend their time.
For the first kid who gets out each day, he interacts with other kids, develops verbal and non-verbal (body language) communication skills, laughs, resolves conflicts, uses creative energy, problem solves, and learns firsthand from the world around him. In contrast, the second kid experiences very little of those same experiences, and instead stares at a screen all day and barely even sees the sun. Kid #1 is out there, interacting with the world and learning from trial and error, while kid #2 essentially wastes away in solitary confinement, logging endless amounts of hours trying to complete video games. Again, you don’t need to be a psychologist to see these stark differences, as well as have concern for the kid who appears to be missing out on chunks of real-life, important, every day experiences.
Playing this out even further and looking at human development over the course of childhood and adolescence, you can safely assume that these two kids will turn out quite different from each other based largely on the ways in which they spent their time growing up. Yes, there is a huge life cost when kids miss out on important interpersonal skills and interactions, and these problems often manifest in mental health issues, including depression and anxiety. While it may still be years from now until we have collected enough longitudinal data to fully understand the impact gaming and screens have on kids, common sense alone tells us staring at a screen for most of each day is an entirely different way to interact with the world around us compared to actually going outside and living life.
Final thoughts
While it is not always easy to see, kids who spend chunks of their days staring at smart phones and video games do experience life in a fundamentally different way compared to other kids who balance their time more evenly between real-life activities and screens. Over time, these opposite lifestyles contribute to differences in personalities and mental health, and while we do not have enough data (yet) to fully understand the magnitude of these differences, parents should still exercise caution when deciding on how much screen time to afford their kids. Rather than jumping to psychotropic drugs, or even counseling, try to first curtail screen usage to get a better understanding of the impact technology is having on your children and their mental health.
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