Limit children’s screen time

Dear Sir,Our world has been flooded with monitors and screens. They are, literally, everywhere and people spend quite a lot of time, staring at them and communicating through them. Children seem obsessed with them as they are born into a screen-dominated world. Parents, themselves addicted to screens and monitors, find it tough to control their children’s screen time. Screen time includes watching television, using the Internet on electronic devices such as mobile phones, tablets and playing video games.When parents limit children’s screen time, they get more hours to study, socialise and sleep, helping them to do better in school and behave well with others.Children spend an average of seven hours a day using screens, according to a study. This leaves very little time for outdoor activities. Some of them spend hours playing video games, missing out the fun of social interaction.And some of the video games have questionable content and this could make children playing them violent and aggressive. Because of this, limiting a child’s screen time is quite important. But to complicate matters, some screen time can be educational for children as well as support their social development.Some experts recommend discouraging media use by children younger than age two and limiting older children’s screen time to no more than one or two hours a day.Unstructured playtime is more valuable for a young child’s developing brain than is electronic media. Despite the fact that many digital media programmes claim to be educational, children younger than age two are more likely to learn and remember information from a live presentation than they are from a video.It also makes sense for parents to apply the same rules to children’s real and virtual environments. This means playing with your child, teaching kindness, being involved, and knowing your child’s friends and what your child does with them. Zeeshan Aliirfannasir408@gmail.comIn the quest of prosperityDear Sir,The Indian president’s address on the eve of the country’s Independence Day reiterates the fact that attacks on minority sections cannot be tolerated. They will have a negative impact on the progress of a culturally-rich country like India. India had recently witnessed a number of cases where people belonging to some castes became victims of political intolerance, apparently upsetting the country’s communal harmony. India’s traditional values can never condone such practices.As the country is on an evolving path in various aspects, political parties must have a thoughtful approach towards issues that have an influence on the lives of other people. Therefore it’s time for the refined youth of today to come forward and sway the political network in the country in the quest of prosperity. Ramachandran Nair(e-mail address supplied)