How Gadgets Affect Your Kids Health?

As we delve deeper and deeper into the age of technology, our children are now completely conditioned to have a dependency on it. Technology affects all aspects of our lives, and we have to accept and adapt to it. However, there is always a fine line as to how much exposure you should allow your children to have certain gadgets, as they may have a negative impact on their health. See 5th Geek for all your tech problems. We’re going to go over a couple of important factors that you need to keep in mind that maybe affecting your child's health when they use gadgets.

How Gadgets Affect Your Kids Health?

How Gadgets Affect The Eyes

The most obvious health issue is how prolonged exposure to electronic gadgets can harm a child’s eyesight. Too much screen time will initially lead to dry eyes, making it hard to focus in general. 

Over the long term, too much screen time will cause serious problems with eyesight. Most commonly nearsightedness and the LED screens can actually begin to damage the retina if the children continue to use the gadgets for long hours and over a prolonged time period. 

Psychological Damage

When your kids constantly have an electronic device in their hands, it’s near to impossible to always know what it is that they’re watching. Too much violence at a young age can do irreversible psychological damage to children. The same goes for exposure to age-inappropriate content that they may be watching or looking at on social media, which gives them unrealistic expectations of how they’re supposed to talk, behave, and look. 

As a result, many children develop insecurities and psychological problems very early on. The good news is, there are actually apps being developed that allow you to keep a close eye on everything they are viewing on their phones. The Spyfone review by The High Tech Society gives great insight as to how these apps allow you to have more control over what your children see and search. By doing this, you’ll be able to restrict their interaction with content that may be harmful to them. You have another option on choosing safe phones designed for kids.     

Early Signs Of Addiction

There is a fine line between moderation and absolute addiction, and when it comes to electronic gadgets, it’s really hard to draw that line, because there’s hardly any kids who don’t have phones on them these days. It becomes really dangerous when you find your children obsessed about a game or social media. 

These are early signs of addiction and this will really harm them and their psychological development. To aggravate the notion of addiction from a young age will pave the way to a very unstable future filled with unhealthy habits that have no limits on how much is too much. So it needs to be managed very early on.

Sleep Deprivation

Along with addiction, comes sleep deprivation. When your child has no restrictions on the gadgets and the phones that they have access to, then the concept of getting a good night’s sleep is of no importance. It’s much easier for a child to pull an all nighter than it is for an adult, but the consequences are much more harmful. 

When a child is sleep deprived, the necessary things your body is meant to do while you sleep to rejuvenate and function the next day are not taking place when they need to, and their immune system becomes affected in a negative way. It’s important that your children don’t have access to any electronic gadgets in their room, and even preferably around 2 hours before they go to bed. 

This is because the glare that comes off of the screens leads the brain to understand that it’s daylight, and so even long after they have gone to bed, they will have a difficult time sleeping or have very restless sleep because the brain is still on and functioning as if it’s daytime.

Susceptibility To Obesity

What electronic gadgets encourage is absolutely no movement. When you allow your children to have no limits on their usage of gadgets, they will become completely engrossed in them and can go hours on end without moving from their place. 

This is dangerous because it makes their susceptibility to obesity a much higher risk than it ever was. Without getting sufficient amounts of exercise and exposure to the outdoors, your children will take to fall into unhealthy eating habits and will get used to the fact that they don’t need to be active. Keep in mind that this will greatly impact their mood and temper as well.

Social Implications

Children are meant to be outdoors and mingling with other children, and even animals to teach them the importance of social behavior and interactions. This social development is greatly affected when they have too much exposure to electronic gadgets. This is extremely unhealthy as it will affect them as they get older and it may lead to severe depression. The inability to develop social skills can cater to a child’s insecurities and encourage them to be antisocial and introverted.

Brain Development

Aside from affecting your child’s physical health and development, too much exposure to gadgets greatly affects how your child’s brain develops. Studies and extensive research have shown how prolonged exposure to electronic gadgets delays cognitive functions in a child’s developing brain. Children need exposure to stimuli in order for their brains to be able to function at its best. Only having exposure to gadgets will hinder them from developing motor and cognitive development that is crucial in the early years.

What your children see and do will always have an impact on their physical and mental health, and this is why, by nature, they are dependant beings until they reach a certain age. This is why it is so important that you, as a parent, are more attentive in terms of how much exposure your children have to electronic gadgets, because the damage runs much deeper than you may think. 

It will affect them for the rest of their lives, so make sure that there is a structure throughout their day and that they have physical activities as well as mental stimulation so that they develop correctly. Keeping them away from gadgets as much as you can will do their bodies and health much better.