Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Dr. Meenal Agarwal 0:00
When is enough enough? This is Dr. Meenal, and welcome to Uncover Your Eyes, where we uncover reality. As a mom and eye doctor, I want to know it all today. Let’s break down screens. Let’s face it, screen time is affecting us as adults, as children, as seniors. It is taking over our entire life, and it is affecting our work at the workplace, our school, if we’re in school, and our relationships with family members, friends, everyone. The average screen time in children, ages eight to 12 is four to six hours per day in the US and with teenagers, that goes up to nine hours per day when is enough. Enough screen time has effects on children, as we know, the effects can be physical. So with sitting down and inactivity while being on screens, we are seeing obesity and health issues. We also are seeing sleep destruction due to the excess blue light that’s affecting our circadian rhythm. Then there are the vision problems with increased eye strain and increased chances of nearsightedness onset and nearsightedness progression. We call this myopia, not to mention the mental health or behavioral issues that we can face with reduced cognitive abilities, affecting children at school, and then mood disorders, including depression and anxiety in children. There’s also the huge social development aspect with screens, affecting our ability to have that face to face interaction with people, and then that’s affecting our family time, our relationships with our families and friends. As a healthcare practitioner, I see children coming into my office all the time, looking at their screens and walking into my office, they do not acknowledge me, and they sit down in the chair and don’t even look up at me when I ask them questions, most of them mumble. So screens are really affecting that social development, that social skills, they’re so crucial to be able to handle relationships as we get older. And these don’t have to be just family relationships, but even future relationships in the workplace. On the flip side, there are some benefits to children being on devices. Of course, there’s that educational component. They’re learning tools and great apps and resources to be able to excel academically. And then there’s the communication aspect to it, the ability to communicate with family and friends that are far away from us and in COVID, this was huge. Being able to FaceTime or Whatsapp Video call a family or a friend because you can’t travel that far, is so important as well, and maintaining those social relationships, at least through a device, versus not maintaining them at all. As adults, globally, we spend about six hours and 40 minutes on screens every day with phones, making up the biggest component of that. With adults, we also have the physical aspect to it. It can affect our posture and musculoskeletal issues. We can also have neck and shoulder pain. We call that the tech neck, while we’re on devices all day. And then we also have eye strain while being on a computer all day, especially some of us are working from home. We’re sitting on our computers and phones, and there’s that eye strain, and then there’s the sleep pattern aspect to it right for us as well. A lot of us are on our phones before going to bed, so being exposed to that blue light before bedtime is affecting our sleep pattern, our circadian rhythm, not to mention the mental health aspect, like children, the stress, the anxiety, the pressure to be on social media, the pressure to be on our phone, the pressure to be able to get back to our workplace right away respond to that email. The overuse is creating a mental load on us. This is essentially affecting our productivity. So we are doing more by being in our devices, but we are being less productive because we’re not able to sleep well, and we feel that stress and that anxiety to do things because we are so accessible by email, by video calls from workplaces, and then obviously that affects our work life balance. We’re coming home and we’re on a phone as well, right? If we’re going to our workplaces, we’re coming home. We’re on our phones, and we’re not interacting with our children or our family members as much as we should be, so that, in turn, affects our relationships with family members. So there’s so many effects that the screen time is having on us. It’s physical, it’s mental. There’s a vision aspect to it. There’s a cognitive aspect to it. There’s a behavioral aspect to it. There’s a relationships aspect to it, and it’s affecting adults and children equally. For adults, of course, there are some benefits, which is work efficiency. A lot of us are able to work from home and be more efficient because we can get a lot more done less distractions in a shorter period of time. As a healthcare provider and as a parent, it’s very hard to maintain relationships and see your friends or family members all the time, so we maintain it by text messaging and social media. And of course, there are support networks on certain platforms. For example, Facebook, we have groups where there’s that support and networking to be able to help us through serious issues, health issues, cognitive issues, mommy support groups. There’s every support network on these platforms. So here are my recommendations for children. We want to set and enforce screen time limits with our children. We don’t want it to be open ended, where we hand them an iPad and they can be on it for as long as they want. We want to enforce those limits. We want to take frequent breaks. As eye care professionals, we like to say there’s the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, for 20 seconds, look 20 feet away or just far away. So these frequent breaks help to relax the eye muscles, decreasing the chance of nearsightedness, progression and onset. You also want to have the aspect of maintaining screen free times in your household, so times when they cannot be on screens, and they need to be sitting at that kitchen table having, you know, breakfast with everyone, or at the dining table having dinner with everyone. You also want to ensure that the content that they’re watching is educational or beneficial. And there is that aspect of possibly co watching with them the screens and seeing what they’re doing for adults, I’m going to say ergonomics is huge for me. I know that was huge. So having that ergonomic set up such that you are not always developing that tech neck or that shoulder neck pain, musculoskeletal issues, so ensure that you can set your ergonomics up such that you’re not always having that issue, especially if you are working from home, you want to maintain that setup and get that done so that you are not in constant pain. And then there’s the digital detox. I always like to say there’s that period, whether it’s a Sunday every week, or whether it’s a full two weeks every couple of months, having that digital detox where you’re just not on a screen. So what I like to do when I come home from work is I leave my phone on the kitchen table and then I come upstairs, or vice versa, such that I don’t have my phone, and then I’m too lazy to climb the stairs or go down the stairs to get my phone. So I consider that my digital detox daily where I can’t access my phone or I’m too lazy to access it because I purposely left it in another floor of the house. And then there’s the mindful usage, being mindful of how much you’re on social media and how much you’re just on a screen period. Know your screen time, know how much you’re on it. I encourage you to check your phone settings so you know they they have an area where it tells you how much you’re on your screen daily, and I assure you, it’s going to shock you. It shocked me when I seen my screen time, and hopefully that will help you be more mindful of your screen time usage and then healthy sleep habits being free of screens a couple of hours, at least one hour, if you can, before going to bed, many of us, including myself, lie down in bed, stare at our phone, watch our phone, and then we fall asleep. That is extending and prolonging our sleep time, but also not giving us a healthy, good sleep pattern. So you want to be screen free, away from that blue light and fall asleep and try to go to bed before 11 or even 12, so that you’re having a good seven to eight hours at night of sleep. So I think what I’m trying to say is screens are not bad, but they’re not great. So breaking it down, have the screens, they have a lot to offer, but have that balanced approach. Be mindful of it, be balanced about it, and take practical steps towards making changes, whether it’s as a family, whether it’s as a parent, avoiding screens at certain times, and making practical changes to your lifestyle, such that you’re not on it 24 hours a day. I’m gonna leave you with the stat on the. Global average that we spend on social media per day, it’s two hours and 23 minutes. So let’s break down screen time. Thank you, listeners and viewers, for tuning in. If you want to catch more episodes of Uncover Your Eyes, make sure to Follow or Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube. To learn more about me, follow me on Instagram @Dr.MeenalAgarwal Until next time, keep those eyes uncovered!