Today is a two blog day, to make up for missing out yesterday.

There was something in the news yesterday which surprised me a little. Then I was surprised and a little confused by the reaction, or was I not surprised and not confused? Let me explain.

On a traditionally quiet news day (although I see no reason for the news to be quiet these days) there was a story showing research from doctors that screen time isn’t in itself bad news. The reply from all parents should have been positive. This is good news that giving a tablet or laptop to their children is not causing them harm. Good news, yay! But this wasn’t good news to many, if the news coverage was any measure. However, TV and news debates can suffer from “balance”. By “balance” I mean that the expertise of one guest is balanced out by someone’s opinions based on anecdotes.

What happened was that some parents found that evidence based on observation conflicted with their existing view that screen time was a bad thing. Which I suppose is a good thing and I would expect that they would limit the time that their children use tablets and smartphones. Surely, this is a win-win. Children are not being harmed by screen time, and the parents who knew they were right are right too. But that’s not enough is it! Not only do they have to share their opinion that the evidence is wrong, they think they have the answer to everything – ok not everything. We can limit this to childhood obesity. By doing this they have decided -by anecdote- that there is a direct causal link between screen time and obesity (and possibly all of society’s ills). What they are doing is saying that they are great, and everyone should try and be like them. If that happened the world would be all under control and wonderful.

In a way, you can’t blame them. The message they are getting is not: Screen time in itself is not harming children.

There reaction is: Here’s another story. Chocolate is good today. It will be bad tomorrow. Red wine will save you from heart atacks. Oh no it won’t. 

There are still many people out there who believe that the MMR injections are causing autism, because they heard a story about someone who new someone, who’s child became autistic after getting the jab. This was a story over 20 years ago, and the doctor’s research was discredited, and he was stuck off, but there are parents out there who believe that they are doing the right thing.

Now, I’m not saying that children should be able to use tablets as much as they want. No one is. No-one is saying that they shouldn’t have access to everything on the internet. Where the evidence leads us is that screen time isn’t harmful. If tablets didn’t exist, kids would probably be seriously unfit and overweight. Parents still need to parent. That means keeping an eye on what their children are doing, and that’s really hard, but they have to let their offspring out in to the world, protect them and help them when they fall. It’s tough out there.

So be happy that you’re not harming them. Keeping them up to date in an ever changing world will be a good thing, not a bad thing.