Kids and smart phones; when is too young?

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Well, I thought I was having serious concerns when I see matured people who are addicted to their phones scrolling away all day. What would I say when I visited by elder brothers house to stay with him and his family for some time only for me to notice how his little daughter who just turned four was scrolling away on her tablet.

Tablet? Yep, the little girl has had a tablet since she was like two years old if I am not mistaken. She stays on her tab almost all evening till night when she’s not sleeping and when the tablet runs down on battery, she switches over to her mothers phone or her dads phone but mostly on her mum’s phone. Some times you call the mum and she never picks her calls simply because her daughter is always with her phone. Sometimes the little girl busies the calls or picks it and says nothing depending on her mood, you would have to face either the two but most times she doesn’t pick the calls at all. And my sister in-law would never return her missed calls maybe she never bothers to check if she had any missed calls while her daughter was with her phone.

I have observed this trend for so long because that’s what I see anytime I go there but what can I say. One day I tried to bring her mum’s attention to the amount of time this little girl spends on the internet and on the phone. There is free Wi-Fi in the house and when the Wi-Fi is down, her tab is connected to her mum’s data and the scrolling continues. When I told her mum, she said that she’s watching children’s cartoons and that the cartoons are educational.

She said that the time she spends on the phone and on the internet was the reason why she was able to learn how to start reading and talking on time way before she was even enrolled into school. Well, the connection to a phone and having her own tablet to connect online and learn from YouTube was also the reason for her good ascent. Well, the little girl of four years speaks well and has American accent all thanks to the many hours of internet time.

Hmmm, as much as the explanation was good, but my concern was for how long? It’s only very obvious that the young girl at four years old is already addicted to her tablet or the internet. The only time she’s not on the phone is when she is sleeping or when the tablet is down but even at that mummy’s phone is always available. Four years it too early to introduce a child to smart phones but the world is changing and going digital.

Aside the case of learning from the internet, most mothers even give their children their smart phones to play with just to have some decorum and self time to themselves. Gradually the children get used to the smart phones and begins a fight to possess any smart phones that comes their way. With the way the world is evolving, it’s obvious that children can learn from the internet but there should be time limit placed on the screen time. The parents also should be able to regulate the amount of time they spend on the screen and also the content they watch.

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