World Health Experts Want Screen Time Ban For Young Kids

The World Health Organisation is urging parents to keep smart phones and screens away from young children, with kids under two to be given little-to-no access to screen time.

The new guidelines attempt to address the issue of raising children in the era of technology, with stats showing that 95 per cent of families with children under eight having smartphones.

It then becomes a case of trying to balance soothing the child with a nursery rhyme video and restricting screen time to benefit cognitive development, with researchers acknowledging that the issue isn't as clear-cut as just banning all screen devices.

Instead, it was said that children aged two to four should spend no more than an hour a day with access to screen technology - namely for the sake of encouraging children to develop language and social skills through real life interaction.

"The more guidelines we give, it just seems like there’s going to be more of a mismatch between what experts say … and what it feels like to be a parent in the real world every day," University of Michigan paediatrician Jenny Radesky told the Washington Post.

One key note was that technologies which discourage breaks, such as YouTube's autoplay feature, should be limited and monitored, as young children don't have the requisite self control to interact with these features in a healthy way.

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