Woman's Hour - Parenting: How much should you limit screen time?

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

How much do you limit your child's screen time? The runner-up of The Fortnite World Cup, which took place this summer, was Jaden Ashman, a British 15-year-old who won nearly a million pounds. Before the computer tournament he was spending more than eight hours a day in front of a screen. We know that screen time already causes lots of family arguments so what will happen when your child says gaming could win them a fortune, just like Jaden? Tina Daheley talks to Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction at Nottingham Trent University and Belinda Parmar who campaigns against tech addiction.

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. This week's Women's Hour Parenting Podcast is about screen time and how you monitor your children's use of screens, whatever it is they're doing. iPads, games, whatever. And your host is Tina Dehealy. Now, the first ever Fortnite World Cup took place this year. A staggering 40 million people applied to enter,

but only 100 made it to the final in New York to compete for a share of £24 million in prize money. Jaden Ashman, a 15-year-old from Hornchurch in London, went home with almost a million pounds as runner-up. Now, he was spending more than eight hours a day playing the video game in the run-up to the tournament. His success will no doubt have led to some interesting conversations in households all over the country about how much time young people should be allowed to spend playing the game.

How have you approached the amount of screen time your kids are allowed? Is it a constant battle? Joining me to discuss this is Mark Griffiths, who is Professor of Behavioural Addiction at Nottingham Trent University. And I'm also joined by Belinda Palmer, who campaigns against tech addiction. Before we hear from them, let's hear from Jaden following his win. And here he is talking about his mum's attitude to him playing. I mean, my mum clashed quite a lot. She didn't like understand how it worked. So she thought I was spending eight hours a day in my room just wasting my time. So now that I've proved to her that I can do stuff, I'm really happy.

And here's what his mum, Lisa Dalman, had to say on the Today programme. We have struggled a lot, a hell of a lot. I found it hard because obviously, Jaden, I was getting phone calls from the school saying he's falling asleep in school and that kind of stuff. But he is above average on all of his grades. But, you know, we've had a lot of issues in the household because of Jaden's gaming. And he shares a room with his little brother as well, which doesn't help.

There has been cases where he's gone to stare at his dad's or his nan's because I've taken the Xbox away from him. I've actually broken an Xbox. I mean, a headset. The headset he's actually got here in the hotel that he's brought with him to New York has actually got sellotape at the top. Some of those issues relatable to many parents listening, I am sure. I'd be interested to know what you both make of that, Mark. Belinda? I think, you know, it's really good to hear how honest Jaden's mum is about it. But I think from Fortnite's perspective and the games industry, it's totally irresponsible to have such a huge

pot of money available to our children. And, you know, while Jaden is a success story, he's the exception. You know, there are for every Jaden, there are hundreds of thousands of teenagers or young children who are susceptible to games addiction. Why is it irresponsible? Because the amount of money, I think there's a couple of issues. I think the amount of money, the pot, as you said, is 24 million. I mean, Fortnite makes $203 million in a single month. So the volume of cash in this industry is just immense.

But the issue is they don't spend it on anything like mental health research, understanding who plays their games. How is it different to young boys and girls aspiring to be footballers? Well, I think, you know, if you compare it to playing a sport or a musical instrument, the thing is, or even watching TV, the TV doesn't cyber bully you. The TV is not designed or, you know, football is not designed in a way to manipulate and hijack our brains. Let's not forget that our teenagers are vulnerable. You know, they're at the stage of their life where their brains are incredibly susceptible to risk and reward.

Some people would say not all, of course, footballers haven't exactly been great role models for children and teenagers growing up. Mark? Yeah, I agree with a lot of what Belinda has just said. Again, the football analogy is very good. I think lots of young boys want to become professional footballers, but actually it's a lot better. Yeah, and my daughter's a soccer player as well.

Yeah, what I'm trying to say is the chances of being a professional footballer, either male or female, you're going to have a lot better chance of doing that than actually winning the World Cup at Fortnite. And in fact, you know, Belinda just mentioned that, you know, hundreds of thousands of children, you know, are not going to be able to do that. It's in the millions, basically. You know, I've spent over 30 years now studying video game addiction. And the good news for parents is that, you know, very few children would actually ever be classed as having a gaming

addiction or gaming disorder i think the issue about fortnight of course as i say that you parents are going to be having those conversations this week because children are going to be turning around and saying look if i you know if i practice this and i play for lots of hours and i could win the world cup but we have to realize the chances of that are infinitesimally small and you know I was glad to hear that Jadon's grades are good you know and I think when you are practicing for something like Fortnite it's not going to be unusual because esports players do play eight nine ten hours a day to practice I think what this competition should have done is actually not allow children to play in the first place have a you know an 18 age to start with I do think I wouldn't I won't necessarily go too far to say it's irresponsible,

but I do think we're now having kids that are going to have unrealistic dreams of winning a video game World Cup based on what they're doing in their bedrooms. But listen, you've just hit the nail on the head, haven't you? Very few children go on to develop gaming addictions. Yeah. So surely that means we are looking at people who've become runners-up in a competition. 40 million people applied to enter. Only 100 got to that final.

A few won. Eight hours playing for eight hours a day is the extreme, surely? Yeah, and I think addiction is one end, and I think we need to take it seriously. The internet games disorder is now a recognised disorder by the World Health Organisation. I am the auntie of the first boy who got diagnosed with games addiction in the UK. I have seen the impact and the devastation on a family in terms of relationship with parents. I mean, Jaden's mum talked about the battle, and I use the word battle, she's had with with Jaden you know it causes

devastation and it causes so many arguments and I think the other thing is when we look at you know I'm a mum I'm struggling to kind of regulate this with my children and a lot of the parents are I feel that it's a digital sedative that kind of blunts our children's emotions you know I want our children to grow up with empathy, with social skills. Those are skills you have to practice, you have to learn. At least with the football, you're out and about, you're learning collaboration, you're learning team player. You know, and while some people will argue, oh, there's such a team element in Fortnite, the way it's designed is you can't actually leave the game if someone in your team doesn't want you to. So what I'm saying is, actually,

how can it be good to spend eight hours a day? At the cost of what? Yeah, Belinda, let me just bring in a message from Kate that's just come in on that point. If the boy who won the million pounds on Fortnite was spending eight hours a day reading science books, would people complain? I think we know what the answer to that is.

But is the problem here that we are using screens, inverted commas, as a catch-all which covers everything netflix how much time you spend on social media i mean being on a screen could also be being on your laptop doing your homework for a couple of hours of an evening yeah and no one's anti-tech i think mark and i we share very similar views on this you know we're not anti-tech we're not anti-games addiction you know technology is wonderful for all the benefits it gives us you know um but the point is here that it's irresponsible the way these technologies and games are designed you've got the ceo of netflix saying his biggest competitor is sleep you know these games companies spend no money on research they don't verify the age limit you know the age of Fortnite is 13, the age restriction.

But there are so many children who are under 13 and the companies don't care. Mark? Yeah, I have to admit, Belinda's hit one nail on the head there is that the gaming industry do not put any money for research into this. You know, I work in the areas of gambling and social media and video games. The gambling industry have now put millions of pounds into research. The social media companies are putting millions of pounds into research.

The social media companies are putting millions of pounds in research. Instagram the other day announced a big research pot to look at the very issue of problematic Instagram use. At the moment, the gaming industry are still putting their heads in the sand and say there is no problem out there. As I say, the World Health Organization now recognizes gaming disorder. The American Psychiatric Association recognizes internet gaming disorder. This is something we do need more research on on and again the issue of screen time you know when i talk about screen time it's not about the number of hours it's about the content and the context of that screen time because i say i mean my kids will probably say to me dad you're

on the screen more than more than they are and i am because that's part of my job it's a functional use and again playing six hours of court you know the call of duty versus you know six hours playing you know mass educational games or whatever it's a totally different context there so we can't really talk about screen time as being you know uh you know the kind of elephant in the room because you know there there's lots and lots of good uses of screen time and as i say i mean belinda just said she wasn't anti-games addiction i think she meant she wasn't anti-games and i'm the same you know wasn't anti-games. And I'm the same. You know, I have three screen ages. They all spend a lot of time in front of screen-based technologies. The one thing that my kids don't do that I used to do when I was their age,

they don't watch television particularly. You know, as a parent myself, as long as my kids are doing their education, their physical education, their chores around the house, and they've got those kind of face-to-face interactions with their friends, to be honest, I'm not too bothered what they do with their disposable time that's left. And most children do actually have, even after they've done a couple of hours of homework, three or four hours when they might be on social media and playing games. But they're not watching television. It's what we did when we were their age.

Fortnite, I think there's this big moral panic now you look at some of the headlines in the papers today our success at the fortnight world cup is a national tragedy at the heart of this are we worrying about something many people don't understand properly because fortnight is so much more than a video game it's it's a platform a shared virtual space where people socialize and whether we like it or not the genie's out of the bottle, it will be here to stay, it's here to stay and there are hundreds of millions of people who play all over the world. So if you are trying as a parent, I did say we'd give people advice, to manage or to try and control or know what to do when it comes to their children's screen time, what would you advise? So I think you're right, we don't want to demonise Fortnite. I mean Fortnite

has been a great catalyst to have this debate, which has long been needed in the industry. I think a couple of things I've done, I mean, I'm by no means the benchmark and like Jaden's mum, I'm struggling with this every day. I think the first thing is to make sure the game's controllers are in a public place because a lot of parents think their kids are playing Minecraft. But actually, if you look at the top best selling video games of 2019, the things like Call of Duty Black Ops 4 Grand Theft Auto Resident Evil 2 so I think firstly is having in a public place the second thing I've done which has been moderately successful is sort of create a pact with other parents to say right as a group of parents whose children all know each other all best friends what can we do collaboratively and then you get away from the peer pressure you know of oh well so and so's allowed it so I think that has been successful and

I think the last thing from my side is don't give up we do want our kids to have social skills and empathy that's what we're fighting for so don't give up keep going I know it's a struggle Belinda thank you very much and Mark very quickly some advice from you well I say I think parents have to get involved with their children, know what games they're playing. You know, I was part of one of the people that got age ratings on video games way back in the early 1990s. A lot of parents, you know, they're giving inappropriate games to their children. You know, you know, and I know there are, you know, I look at my son when he was 12 years old. Everybody in his class was playing 18 plus games, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty. This shouldn't be happening. So parents get involved, find out what your children are playing and actually, you know,

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