Children Spend Three And A Half Days Of Their Summer Holiday Glued To A Screen
School children spend a huge amount of time looking at screens. [Photo: Rex]
Summer holiday activities have definitely changed since we were young. If we were lucky, we were allowed to watch 20 minutes of TV a day, but usually we were instructed to ‘read a book’ or ‘play a board game’ or something to that effect.
Nowadays, with screens everywhere it’s so easy to just plonk a child in front of the telly, or hand them a tablet to play on for half an hour. But while there are benefits to screen time, there are arguably more downsides.
So it’s not good news that the average UK child will spend three and a half days of their six-week-long summer holiday looking at a screen.
According to a survey conducted by Go Ape, kids devote 14 hours and 28 minutes a week of their school break to staring at a screen of some sort. This adds up to a shocking 86 hours and 48 minutes of their summer. And parents aren’t happy with that figure.
It’s not just school children; toddlers spend plenty of times using screens too. [Photo: Rex]
Out of the 2,000 polled parents, three quarters wished their little one spent more time playing outdoors and 82 per cent confessed that their child were less active than they were at that age. So why all the screen time? Apparently parents succumbed to screens to keep the children busy.
All of the screen time means that today’s kids are missing our on the traditional Enid-Blyton-style outdoor activities that most of us did as children.
From den building, to tree climbing, to kite flying and fruit picking, the survey revealed that children haven’t had a chance to try some of life’s really fun (and free) classic childhood experiences. Instead of two hours of screen time a day, children could have just half an hour and spend the other 90 minutes boosting their creativity skills, teamwork and imagination skills by making up their own games sans screens.
Are you worried your child has too much screen time? Tweet us at @YahooStyleUK.
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