Half (52%) of 5-year-old kindergarten children spend an hour or more in front of a screen in a typical day, reveals the Observatory for Toddlers in a report it published on Wednesday.
And where are children exposed to screens? “The answer is that we don’t know,” says the observatory’s director, Julie Cailliau.
The figure reported by the organization comes from a survey by the Institut de la statistique du Québec that looked at Quebecers’ habits at home. However, screens have also made their way into classrooms: 67% of Quebec public schools “integrated digital technology into kindergarten by 2023,” notes the Observatoire des tout-petits.
“We can’t say: ‘we have to stop everything,'” M said in an interview.me Cailliau: But we need to “better document” the effects of screens on children, especially since research indicates “that there are more risks than benefits to using screens during early childhood,” she recalls.
His warning was also echoed on Tuesday by the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec. Specialized scientific advisor Andréane Melançon recalled that “every half hour” of screen time added to a toddler’s life “will have an impact on the development of overall health.”
Currently, there is “no data on the context and duration of screen use in Quebec schools,” notes the Observatoire des tout-petits. The Ministry of Education also does not formulate “any directive or recommendation on the use of screens in a school context,” notes its report.
As a reminder, the Canadian Paediatric Society recommends limiting screen time to one hour or less for children aged 2 to 5; for children under 2, all exposure should be avoided.
Advocate the precautionary principle
In its report communicating the state of knowledge, the Observatory for Toddlers advocates the precautionary principle. “Even if we do not have all the certainties, the situation is sufficiently worrying for us to take care of it,” it states.
Screens, “have documented impacts on language acquisition, which is fundamental for reading and writing. They have effects on socialization, emotion management, physical health, vision, sleep,” lists M in an interviewme Pebble.
She also emphasizes the importance of thinking about the content and context of screen use. “Using the screen during a meal or using it to calm or entertain a child — for example, during a waiting period — can accentuate the harmful effects. When you want to calm a child or distract them [avec un écran]we deprive him of the possibility of developing self-regulation mechanisms,” she says. The Quebec Strategy on the Use of Screens, prepared by the Ministry of Health, also specifies that educational environments must “avoid using screens as rewards or during an activity such as snack time.”
The report from the Observatoire des tout-petits also highlights that a Quebec study that analyzed the functioning of 249 games that were “free and very popular with children,” some of which were under 5 years old, revealed that “these applications introduced children to the world of games of chance and money before they even started school, which increases the risk of developing an addiction in adulthood.”
In context, Mme Cailliau believes that Quebec must act on the regulatory level, with technology companies, so that we understand “who the games put on the market are intended for” and that they “take into account the needs and rights of young children in the digital environment.”