A legitimate fear is the fear of screen time and its impact on children’s mental and physical health. Much of the literature on screen time emerged during the television era where screen time was passive one-way consumption; unlike a multimodal way of interactive consumption in the internet era.
Thus, much of this fear is just phobia with very little science to back it. Pediatricians and cognitive neuroscientists today concur that there is a need to differentiate between good screen time and bad screen time.
Screen times that are passive (like watching YouTube Cartoons or binge-watching a Netflix series) are harmful when done for long hours. Also, screen times that are fast-paced with a little too bright moving parts, as seen in many video or mobile games, are harmful to children.
But more than the impact of the screen time, it is the content consumed through the screen that has an…
