Free Republic

The World Health Organization has issued its first-ever guidance for how much screen time children under 5 should get: not very much, and none at all for those under 1. The U.N. health agency said Wednesday that kids under 5 should not spend more than one hour watching screens every day — and that less is better. The guidelines are somewhat similar to advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics. That group recommends children younger than 18 months should avoid screens other than video chats. It says parents of young children under two should choose “high-quality programming” with educational value...

Leading surgeon says lack of hobbies and creativity in schools has affected children’s practical abilities. New medical students have spent so much time on screens that they lack vital practical skills necessary to conduct life-saving operations, a leading surgeon has warned. Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College London, said that a decline in hands-on creative subjects at school and practical hobbies at home means that students often do not have a basic understanding of the physical world. Kneebone said spending hours engaged in virtual worlds was no substitute for experience in the real world. “Partly it stops...

Social media and video games are creating a generation of children with the mental and emotional immaturity of three-year-olds, one of Britain’s most eminent brain scientists has warned. Baroness Susan Greenfield, a senior research fellow at Oxford University and former director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, said she was concerned children were losing their ability to think for themselves, empathise and communicate with each other. Instead, they were being bombarded with instant gratification through social media and gaming which meant that like three-year-olds they would need “something every moment to distract them so they can’t have their own...