An study of Ofcom the UK’s communications regulator estimates that the average 3-4-year-old spends three hours a day in front of a screen. This rises to four hours for ages 5-7, 4.5 hours by ages 8-11, and 6.5 hours for teenagers, as they usually have their own phones. The high rates of screen time can have harmful consequences for the development of children and adolescents, such as creating an addiction or causing self-isolation.
Setting limits on the presence of technology in our daily lives is important to develop healthy habits of usage and being able to pay attention to the people around us. We know that sometimes it can be challenging, and that’s why we want to help you with this new initiative: “St. Bede’s Phone Parking”.
The purpose of this “phone parking” is to restrict the use of electronic devices in certain time slots such as lunchtime, homework time, or bedtime. In this way, using the template you can find at the end of this post, -which you can build and decorate with the little ones at home-, you can transform the time to stop using the mobile phone into a routine or a challenge.
Quality Time Together
Spending quality time with family is vital to enhance our relationships. It is important to ‘connect’ with others at home, whether that is having family meal times, playing games, reading books, or watching your favorite TV shows together. But quality time with your loved ones should be without a device in hand, because the most important people are in front of you, not on Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, Whatsapp, etc.
No phones on the bedside table
Where do you keep your phone at night? Do you keep your phone on your bedside table? Similarly, we try to educate our pupils on the importance of quality sleep. There is much evidence to show that using devices immediately before bed disturbs sleep patterns. It is also difficult to resist the temptation to check your phone if it pings in the night, thus making it harder to gain the quality sleep needed. So ideally phones should not be kept in bedrooms during the night.